Me and Mom
I woke up depressed yesterday morning. It was all too real for me. My mother is going to die, I thought. It’s really going to happen. The thought of her being gone left me feeling empty. I walked through my morning routine. The world didn’t seem right anymore. Like the foundations of the earth had collapsed underneath my feet.
Last weekend I took my kids to an ice cream social at the long term care home. “We won’t be there long,” I said. “We’ll just eat our ice cream and leave.” My kids don’t like going there. “I don’t like seeing her that way,” my son, Max, said.
I'm glad the ice cream social was held upstairs and not in the memory care unit so my kids didn’t have to see their granny “like that.” They were going to give the residents downstairs ice cream after their meal. The kids stood at the door while I said goodbye to Mom. She was frail, sitting in a wheelchair as the CNA spoon fed her.
“Well, Mom, I’ll see you later,” I said. Nothing. Just a flat affect. No expression on her face. No acknowledgement of my presence. I stood there for a moment. Maybe the CNA noticed the sadness on my face. “Well, Mom, I love you,” I said, patting her arm. Then I joined my kids, punched the number keys that opened the door and walked dolefully back to my car.
It was a relief to leave.
I just want to shout it from the rooftops to all these people taking care of her, “That’s not my mother!” Vickie was outgoing, always hanging out with her friends and talking on the phone. (This was before texting.) She liked going with her girlfriends to see Mosley Street Melodramas and Wichita Thunder hockey games. She volunteered as a poll worker during elections and always got roped into helping with Vacation Bible School at her church. I think she was on a church council or was church secretary or something like that. Maybe both. She would talk ad nauseam about whatever she was into such as when she took a multicultural class at the college.
“The rich people in power like to pit different groups of poor people against each other so they’re no threat to them,” I once said.
“Did you take sociology?” she said, referring to another class she took. “That’s sociology 101.”
Mom and I were always talking about news events, social issues and political stuff and let me tell you, she wouldn’t like that guy, Trump, one bit. I can imagine her ranting about him. I hear it in my mind right now. She’d think he’s a Big Mouth, which he is.
She used to be a prolific letter writer - an art form I believe should never be lost. This started when she was a kid way back in the ‘50s. Her dad was the youngest of 10 kids so she had aunts and uncles all over the country, some she’d never met, and she used to write them letters and get responses. The most imaginative letters she received came from her uncle Harv in Encino, California - a man who only had a third grade education, but managed to do okay with his life.
“I used to get these five page letters from your mom and you inherited that from her,” Doxie, a family friend in Iowa told me.
“Yeah, well some things I inherited aren’t so great,” I said.
“Well, we all can say that.”
Mom even went to the funerals of her former in-laws and went to the family gatherings at their home afterwards.
“You think it’s right for Mom to be here?” I asked my then wife.
“I don’t know, but I love it,” my cousin Danny said.
That really touched my heart, the way my cousins, who have lived in Georgia for decades, were so nice to Mom. They remembered her from when they were kids in Kansas in the ‘60s. In those days, Mom’s mother-in-law taught her to play church hymns on the piano.
I corresponded with my cousin, Dawna, through email a few years ago and told her my mom was having memory problems.
“It’s so sad your mom has Alzheimer’s,” she wrote to me. “She was always so sweet and pretty. To me, she’s Aunt Vickie. I can’t call her anything else.”
Since then, Dawna has died from ovarian cancer. After her parents died, Mom said, “My family of origin is disappearing. David and I are gonna be the oldest generation.” But now her brother, David, is gone, and Mom is dying. Although she’s hung around a lot longer than I thought she would. Uncle Dave was lucky. He didn’t linger on forever, deteriorating from this damn disease. I know she’ll be better off when it’s all over, and I thought I was prepared, but when I saw her that day I was so heartbroken and I knew when I get that dreaded phone call, it’s going to be a terrible day.
She used to tell me what her mom told her - that “dying is as much a part of life as being born.” From the distance of a philosophical, literary perspective, I find the whole thing fascinating, but experiencing it up close, I say the cycle of life sucks.
I know people who are estranged from their parents. Unless your parent beat the hell out of you on a regular basis or something worse, I don’t understand that. People who have disowned their siblings and shun them like they don’t exist. Shaking my head. It’s no way to live a life. I would implore you - don’t shut people out. Don’t let that day come along and bite you in the butt.
And as long as I have a pulse, I’m not going to stand for my mother being thought of as some feeble, lifeless thing. She was animated. Vibrant. She liked to laugh, play
and listen to music.
You better remember that.
"Catch the Wind" - Donovan