motherlove

"I didn't know she was...you know...going to...to...be gone," Mom says.

We are both sitting in Mom's bed, Mom actually in bed and me on her bed with my back resting against what passes for a foot board. We've been looking at pictures of Mom's mother, Berentina, who died in 1945 when Mom was twenty-one. Usually Mom begins to cry when we talk about her mother, but today she's able to say a few things more before collapsing into tears.

Berentina was hospitalized during the summer of 1945, but Mom can't remember which month, except that she was going to summer school at the UW. So it had to have been June or July or early August. What comes through strongly is Mom's regret--how she can hardly live with the fact that her mom was there at the hospital (not sure which one, but definitely in Seattle) and Mom was occupied with school and homework. Mom's father, Deda, was also working during this time at Star Lighting. So the long and short of it was that Berentina was by herself much of the time, primarily, it seems, because no one understood the seriousness of her illness.

"He was bad," Mom says then, unexpectedly. "Who was bad?" I ask her. "You know...that man...the one with her." "What man?" I ask, hoping to get at the identity of this "man" from a different angle. "You know...the one looking after her." Then it occurs to me who she's talking about--the doctor attending to Berentina when she was ill that summer. "Oh, you mean Berentina's doctor?" "Yes," Mom says in return, "Yes...that man." And as I hear her say these words I can register the venom in her voice--the true hate that radiates her vocal chords. And I think--wow, after all this time, Mom still reviles this man, the doctor who was not forthcoming. I need to understand more about this.

"What did she die of, Mom?" And when I ask Mom this I'm almost certain she will begin to cry. Marguerite was this way also: an image of Marguerite holding a wet dishtowel (or was it something else?) wringing her hands and sobbing into the middle of her linoleum kitchen floor, not long before Alzheimer's claimed her brain cells. Such grief these two sisters carried, unresolved pain. But Mom surprises me--no tears wet her face. Not yet.

Mom sputters now, her lips moving but I can't tell what she's trying to say. "In here," she says finally, pointing to her chest. "A heart attack, Mom?" But to this she shakes her head "No." "Cancer? Another nod "No." "Pneumonia?" I ask her then. Mom says--"No" again but then begins to form her lips into a "B" and I'm reminded of what I'd forgotten--that Berentina had chronic bronchitis.

"She wouldn't have died," Mom continues. "Not today."

"So it was pneumonia," I say back to her, "fluid in her lungs that killed her?" Mom says nothing, just stares at me. I'm thinking, this was before the era of ventilators which artificially keep people alive when fluid in their lungs prevents adequate oxygenation of their blood.

"How long was she in the hospital?" I ask her.

Mom's silent and then starts mumbling again, something I can't understand. So I prompt her--two weeks...three weeks? She nods her head "Yes" to both. "Which?" I ask, a bit frustrated. Mom says nothing.

"So she was by herself...for most the time?" To this, Mom answers a definite "No" "There were...you know...people there," she adds. "Like in the ICU--nurses?" "Yes," she nods again.

My questions and Mom's incomplete answers go on for several more minutes. What I deduce is this: Berentina had chronic bronchitis and during the summer of 1945 she suffered a particularly bad attack of this, an attack that resulted in her hospitalization. It's unclear whether she was hospitalized for the pneumonia or whether her pneumonia occurred after her hospitalization for bronchitis. In either case, the family was not aware of the seriousness of her illness. Again, not clear if it was the doctor's refusal to be forthcoming concerning the risks or whether he was simply incompetent and had no idea she was that ill. The end result was that Berentina died alone and without her family's full understanding of how ill she was. This is grief, I think, the kind that lingers. Lasts.

I consider now whether to ask anything further, wondering how much more I can prod before the floodgates open. But what is there to lose? If I don't ask, I won't know. When Mom dies her mother dies with her, as I have no independent knowledge of Berentina, no way to preserve the past. I never met Berentina and my grandfather Deda died when I was eight. And isn't this what my questions are all about--my attempts to keep Berentina and Deda alive, somehow, despite their plot and headstone in Walsheli Cemetery?

"What was it like Mom...when she died?"

And then it happens, what I've known all along, the tears that would end our conversation. Mom's face scrunches with the effort of weeping, leaving not a square inch of her face untouched. Her skin sears red and wounded, like a burn where just the mere touch of oxygen causes unimaginable pain. Tears ooze from her sores. Almost too awful to gaze upon. I'm sorry I've pained her...but, at the same time, I want her to tell me everything, tell me the stories so I too can know this miraculous love--this motherlove Mom has for her mom, the love that survives Berentina's death, survives sixty-four years of living motherless. Maybe I too can learn how to keep Mom "alive" despite the absence of a breathing self, a body. Maybe I too can learn to resurrect Mom in my head, when there's nothing else left for me to do.

Mom's dinner comes now--"Chicken Penne with Roasted Tomatoes and Onions." Yum--this is one of Mom's favorites. Mom's tears are forgotten. When I inspect the meal, however, I notice there's just one measly piece of chicken, small enough it hardly qualifies as a bite, amidst a sea of limp green onions. No tomatoes. "Look at that, Mom" I say, pointing to the lack of protein on her plate. To be frank, Mom really hadn't noticed. If Mom had her way, she'd eat none of her dinner (much less worrying about protein), and focus only on the ice cream (it's vanilla tonight, her favorite). "No way," I say, as I get up off of Mom's bed and walk out the door in search of the kitchen and more chicken. This is at least one thing I can fix.

Minutes later, we have a second dinner plate, heaped high with pasta and, fortunately, roasted chicken and tomatoes. There's more chicken here than Mom can eat. Mom struggles with the few bites of penne she can manage. Mulu holds the fork--Mom's too tired to work on grabbing hold of her own silverware tonight. One, two, three bites and then, what I've come to expect: "I am NOT going to eat ANOTHER...NOT ANOTHER BITE!" These words come out clear and crisp--they sound like a rant. No problems with expressive aphasia when it comes to refusing food. Mom knows just what she needs to say. Mulu and I cajole her, beg her, "trick" her into eating more. Mulu is a pro--"Come on Gamoo...you must eat this to get strong. Just one bite more. That's all." But of course, it isn't "just one bite more" as Mulu has Mom's fork poised and at the ready for at least three more bites beyond this. Mom gets really mad--every time, like we are trying to poison her. "Stop it," she shouts, louder than I've heard her all day. "I WON'T. I WON'T." Mulu and I look at each other, and then back at the petulent child Mom's become. So this is when Mulu and I quit--we've had enough. A person does, after all, have the right to decide what and when to eat, or whether to eat at all. A piece of human dignity.

After the remnants of dinner are cleared away, I ask Mom--"do you want to write that letter?" Mom looks confused. She doesn't remember the letter. "You know," I say to her, "the one to Peter that you want me to help you write." "Oh," she says, "Oh" and nods her head "Yes" or at least I think she does.

When I've retrieved a tablet and pen, we begin. "What do you want to say first, Mom?" Silence. "You know, as in how do you want to greet him--'Dear Son'...'Dear Peter'?" I wait, letting the pause widen, the silence deepen. And I wait some more. We're not getting very far, so I decide to change my question.

"What is the thing you want to say to Peter, Mom. Tell me and then I can help you say it." Still she doesn't say. So I decide to fill in the blanks.

"How about we say--'Dear Peter: How are you? I miss you'?" When I'm saying this I'm looking at Mom, trying to read her face, trying to anticipate what words she might want to say even if she can't say them.

"The thing is," she finally says. "The terrible thing...you know...just can't...can't....you know."

"Can't what Mom?" I ask her.

"Can't...can't..." and then another pause. "Can't write."

And then it's my turn to weep, because the thought of Mom being unable to write to her son, unable to write period is more than I can cope with at the moment. This is not new information--she's been unable to even sign her name for a year. But really, it's not even this--instead, it's her knowledge that she can't do the most basic of things--to write--the thing that I do for hours everyday, including this day. The way I make my living. Gone to her forever. And she knows it. The loss of this is unimaginable to me.

I don't want Mom to see me cry because it will just make her own grief deeper, longer...but I can't help it, as my eyes water, lids brimmed with tears. I see a drop rain down and blur the "D" and the "e," the places where I'd begun to write--"Dear Peter" but then stopped. We just sit there then, me with my tears and my writing right hand and her with her dry eyes and her useless right hand. Peter's letter is forgotten, left for another day. Or maybe not at all. Who's idea was this anyway?

My mom is a complicated woman, more so than most. She is so many women under that reptilian skin of hers, the age-puckered skin that I too will possess when I get to be her age. She can shed one dry flaking skin after another and miraculously there's another, waiting. No matter of lotion applied by Lorna or Mulu can stem the transformation. I look at my photo montage of Mom--Mom the sweet young girl of eight, Mom the sexy, sultry young woman of eighteen, nineteen or twenty, Mom the timid new wife and then the harried new mother of Peter, Mom the motorcycle Mama and the beach queen, Mom the satisfied mother of Christine, the daughter she didn't know she wanted but once here, she couldn't live without. Who is my mother? Is she the fragile, silent woman in that bed tonight at the Mirabella or is she one of these woman captured in my film? If she can no longer throttle her Honda, no longer sweat and labor her way nine miles to Frosty Pass, no longer lounge in a wolf fur coat outside her home in Sun Valley,Idaho, then is she still these women?

Who are you Mom?

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--