For my inaugural post, GreyHawk suggested I submit the following piece I wrote before we married.
As many of you know, "Mumsie" -- my mother -- has late-stage Alzheimer's. As with most dementias, her's crept unseen for many years prior to diagnosis, but such is the child/parent bond that one knows "something" unspoken is going on.
A month after turning 13, I lost my father to cancer. Mom spent almost all her time at his bedside. Never once during his illness did we speak of it directly. All I knew was that he wasn't going to make it, and there was nothing I could do.
I suppose it's natural to find yourself reverting to what I call "child mode" when a parent is ill. For me, the mode is primal, and no, in some ways it doesn't lessen when you are a bona-fide adult. Neither does it lessen much once your parent is in a nursing home.
Except when I went away to college, "Mumsie" and I, until her placement, always lived together. As much as we fought when I was younger and the issues each of us brought to our relationship, there is a bond there that can never be broken. She is my mother. I am her daughter, despite her calling me "Mama" nowadays. Simple as that.
I think there will always be a frightened 13-year-old inside of me...
I don’t remember when I started tiptoeing into my parents’ bedroom to make sure my mother was breathing. What I do remember is that my father was in the hospital yet again – another operation? Chemo? Radiation? All I knew was that the hospital bed we had set up in the den was empty, the starkness of the white sheets blinding anyone walking by...
I shush myself with a whisper, lest my breathing or footsteps wake her up. The light is off, so, with arms outstretched, I try to navigate by touch –oops, there’s the closet...I think that was the wastebasket...nope, I’m too far away to bang into the bureau...slowly I edge myself closer to her side of the bed, praying that I won’t knock into it because if I do, she’ll automatically spring and start yelling as to why the heck I’m in here.
I can just barely make out her supine form thanks to the moonlight filtering through the shades. She lies with her head askew on the pillow, as though someone or something had just plopped her there. I don’t hear any breathing, so I creep closer to see if her chest rises and falls.
Why can’t I see anything?
I’m afraid to come closer because she’ll wake up.
But if I don’t come closer, how do I know that she’s alive?
Usually I stand there at her side, watching for any movement of chest, blanket, or sheet. Sometimes she snores a tiny bit, and that’s my signal for me to return to my bed. When she doesn’t, I just stand there, oblivious to what time it is, oblivious that I have to catch the school bus at 7:30 or else I’ll have to carry my frighteningly whale of a body a mile, which means that it’s just as well that I don’t go because I’ll never get there before the tardy bell. Sometimes I’ll go out with my books, and then return home after she leaves for the hospital. Other times I’ll go to school and hide in the girls’ lavatory until lunchtime, then magically appear in my afternoon classes saying that I arrived after second period or something.
School doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t care if I’m flunking pre-algebra, French, and science. I just want my mother to breathe.
Sometimes I cry silently waiting for her breath, thinking what would happen to me if she didn’t breathe. How would Daddy find out? He wouldn’t be able to do anything. Mom hasn’t spoken to her relatives save my uncle John in years. Daddy’s sister and my cousins are out of state, and they only know me because Mom sends me there on school vacations so I won’t be alone. They laugh at me anyway. The only other people I can think of are Daddy’s business partner and his family, but we only really visit with them on holidays...
Mommy, I don’t know what’s going on.
Please breathe.
Sometimes, even now, I still check on her before logging off the computer for the night. Realistically, there’s no reason for this –- compared to her contemporaries, she’s a healthy senior citizen – but sometimes in those wee hours when everything’s quiet and the moonlight and streetlights glow through the windows, I’m suddenly awash with fright and find myself at her bedside. I stay just long enough to hear her breathe or see her move. When that happens, I know it’s time for me to turn in.
Mom, I’m an adult and I now know what’s going on, but it doesn’t mean that the little girl – your baby – deep inside me knows. She’s the one who propels me here to watch you breathe, to make sure that you’re suddenly not going to abandon me. She’s the one who’s kept me here with you all these years because she’s afraid that if she goes away, you’ll stop breathing, and when she returns, she’ll be an orphan. She knows you’re my oldest living relative, and she knows you’ve been carrying grief and anger all of your life, and that you always take it out on her because...well, because she’s the only one around. But she also knows you love her fiercely, and would sacrifice your own life for her.
Ironic that sacrifice works both ways.
.
One of your most memorable quotes is, "If something happened to you, I’d kill myself." You once said this in front of a bunch of people you worked with, and I screeched at you to "Just stop it!" Your reply? "Well, it’s the truth."
So what did I do? I stayed with you, sacrificing my own life as a full-fledged, living-on-my-own adult because the little girl inside me was petrified that you would actually attempt something if I did leave. She keeps me here, still, because now you’re older and that if I did leave and/or marry, she’s still afraid something’s going to happen to you.
Mommy, please breathe.