When I tell Mom about Peter, she is stunned, speechless. I do this over the phone because I'm so excited when I read cousin Dan's email. I say--"Mom, I think I've found Peter, or rather cousin Dan has found Peter." There's silence then, at least ten seconds of it. I say--"Mom are you still there? " More silence and then she says--"You have?" as a question, like she's not sure she heard me right or can't believe I actually did what I said I would do--find my lost brother. "Yes, Mom," I assure her, "I know where he lives."
When I get to the Mirabella, Mom's tired--she's had a hard day, but really no harder than other days--PT and OT and sometimes ST. But for some reason Mom is exhausted. Her neck is crooked to the right dramatically--and when I try to tilt it back to a "normal" position it won't budge, it's frozen in this bent position. Two rounds of Tylenol don't seem to help with the pain. In PT she does well, despite having no energy. Beverly is full of praise as Mom begins to turn the foot pedals of the bicycle partially on her own. Now, instead of her right and left foot doing none of the work, she's doing 29% of the work of spinning with her left foot and 45% with her right foot. Her effort is excruciating. Nonetheless, this is progress! I can't help but form a comparison in my mind, however, with my own spinning earlier this morning--30 minutes of sweating and panting on a bicycle in a music-filled room for a total of 12 miles and 410 calories. I may have gone farther than Mom but we've both worked hard. Then Mom attempts to do her standing drill--Beverly lines her up with the parallel bars and begins to work to get Mom to tilt forward out of her seat. It takes ten minutes to get her to the place where she is couching-half standing, with Beverly carrying most of the weight. It's a good thing Beverly is a strong woman. From the sidelines it's hard to tell whether this is a success or a step backwards or more of the same. I ask Beverly--"So how is she doing?" Beverly says--"Well, she stood for 20 seconds with just one assist this time....as opposed to standing a minute with a two-person assist last week....so I'd say this is progress." I feel relieved--but there was nothing about Mom's struggle with gravity and paralysis that looked easy or successful. Sometimes sight is deceiving.
Back in HC 201, Mom continues to slump with exhaustion in her wheel chair. I ask her if she wants to lie down, she says--"No." I ask her if she wants to watch a movie, she says--"No." Finally, after sitting there for a few minutes, I show Mom the document Dan sent me. She's quiet, saying nothing. I ask her--"What do you want me to do?"
When she doesn't answer, I give her some choices: "I can call him...or help you call him...or we could write a letter together....or we can do nothing at all."
Finally she says--"I don't want to...you know...scare him...scare him away." Her answer is stunning. I think--after all this time, she's still afraid of losing him for good, losing him to place where she can never find him. But isn't this where he's been for years? Somewhere she can't find him?
And then Mom says the thing that I can't get out of my head, the thing that makes me want to burn these four sheets of paper from the Vineyard Church and never think of Peter again: "A letter won't work," she says, "we need to come with it." With what, Mom?" I ask her. "You know....with it." No, I don't know Mom. Tell me." "It," she nearly screams at me, rubbing her fingers together of her left hand, an age-old gesture of want, of greed. And I get it then--money. She's saying that "we" will need to come with money if he's going to talk with her at all. And I think--this is not a son. This is a monster.
By now Mom is staring straight ahead and slightly up, not looking me in the eye. Her breathing is hard, like she just labored up a steep hill without adequate breath or water. The fingers of both her hands are laboring the trim of her coverlet again. She's working the fabric like the beads of a rosary--her customary worry mode ingrained from her childhood where she helped her best friend, Mary Margarete, say Catholic penance for her weekly sins. Like the good Catholic that she isn't but could have been, Mom's hoping that somehow, someway a "happy" ending can be found, no matter how much damage, how many "sins" have been occasioned. Everything can be forgiven, with the right words, the right amount of money. Anything is possible.
It takes work not to react to her, not to tell her what I really think about Peter and "the money." So instead of saying--stop worrying about the fucking money and focus on the man--I ask her calmly what she wants to know about him, what she wants to say to him.
Mom responds with--"I want to tell you about things...things you need to know."
I realize now that Mom is dictating a letter, the one she wants me to send to Peter.
"Should we start with 'Dear Peter' I ask her? "'Dear Son'"?
Mom nods her head to both of these, something she's been doing of late--when I give her a choice she assents to all the options, leaving me the burden of discerning what she really wants, needs.
"I'm dying," she resumes. Mom's words stop me, as I can hardly believe the word "dying" has left her lips. It's not something Mom has directly admitted to me. "And I want to tell you things" she continues, "things you know...you need to know."
After this amazing bit of clarity, Mom's speech begins to falter: "He'll say...want to know...won't come without it." "What do you mean Mom?" I ask her. "Want to know these things," she repeats. But I continue to be stumped. "What things Mom?" She replies--"What I say" and when she gets these words out she's grinding her vocal cords with the effort, her frustration is that great. We're both quiet for a minute, each collecting our thoughts, our emotions.
"I think it's time you gave some respect to your mother," she resumes smoothly, like the previous minutes of frustrations had never happened. Parental "respect," I'm thinking, is not something my oldest brother is known for.
"And how would he 'demonstrate' this Mom?"
"By sitting down and talking to me," she says quickly, like this should be an obvious thing.
"I am making a study," she continues, but then corrects herself--"I have taken some effort to find you and it will make me very..."
"Very 'what', Mom?"
"Make me..." she repeats again but cannot seem to finish her sentence. By this time I'm as frustrated as Mom. I simply have to know what emotion she will feel, as I couldn't guess at this point as to what her emotions are about my brother. She's both cynical and childishly hopeful. Both hurt and angry. Both victimized and victimizing. What will she feel? But instead of an answer, there's more of my mom's half-finished sentences--"I'd like to...I don't know what...How can we get..."
"What is it that you want Mom," I ask her again. "Tell me what."
Mom says nothing. My powers as a physiogamist fail me. Into our silence, Mom passes gas, a noisy uncomfortable fart. "I'm so sorry," she says with a small smile of apology, "I've been making a racket." With both giggle with this, glad perhaps for the diversion from the task at hand. "It's okay Mom," I tell her, "I can handle it." I then see her face scrunch with effort, becoming wrinkled and creased like an apple left to sweeten too long on the tree, as she attempts to collect herself, her thoughts.
"I would like to give you," Mom resumes, "if we had been able to have time..." And I'm thinking--not "the money" again. I just can't listen to her talk of the money. "You do remember," I interrupt her, "that you gave him an annuity trust, to be set up upon your death." Mom nods "Yes" but I suspect she doesn't remember, though she doesn't let on.
"I need to explain things," she continues, "if you could have been involved along the way..." Mom's voice trails off but then resumes again. "I'm sure there are times when you needed things," she says, "but you never let me know." And I'm thinking--this is flat out wrong. He did let you know but you said "No" out of necessity as you had so little cash yourself. But I say none of this to her. What's the point?
At this moment, Mom stops talking as Lorna comes back into the room with a JC Penney's flier open in her hands. "My dear, look at this," Lorna says with enthusiasm, oblivious to the weighty conversation we've been having--"one curtain thirty d-o-l-l-a-r-s and the second eighty-eight cents." She's pointing with her right hand excitedly, wanting Mom and I to see the amazing deals advertised in the "HUGE" sale at JC Penney's. Lorna is a shopper, a frugal shopper. She knows how to find good things for cheap. Shopping for value is her skill, I think, not something Mom ever learned to do. Despite Lorna's talents, however, curtains hold no interest for Mom or me.
After Lorna's JC Penney's extravaganza, Mom is distracted, incommunicable. It's not Lorna's fault, her timing's just unfortunate. I realize there will be no more conversation about Peter tonight.
As I busy myself to leave, Mom has slipped into a fog of confusion, her sentences jumbled beyond deciphering. "I'm going to there," she says, then follows this up with--"I haven't moved in yet." And I'm thinking--where does she think she is, where does she think she's moving to?
I never know how much weight to place on Mom's words, as language is not her friend. In fact, words are her least reliable communication. And yet words are what I desperately need from Mom, after having made do with so few for so long.
Mom's a desert of pure feeling, no language in sight.
Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--
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