Captivity
“You send hope to the falling and healing to the sick; You bring freedom to the captive and faith to those who sleep in the dust.” -Avot V’lmahot (The Prayer of Redemption), Gates of Prayer, 135
Seven months ago, my 87-year-old mother worked daily on her third book. She would drive herself to church each Sunday and to her writers’ group every Tuesday. She was excited about our upcoming trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania to chase our Native American ancestors. Physically, she was in pretty good shape; she walked short distances with a cane and had no trouble getting around her two-story townhouse.
Then the strokes began.
I suppose, in comparison to others, my Mom is in decent shape. She can converse. She can understand things that are explained to her. She can walk a couple of dozen steps with a walker. She cannot drive herself but she can enjoy a short trip somewhere outdoors.
On the other hand, she tries to go to sleep all of the time. She has no attention span for television or movies. She cannot maintain eye control long enough or well enough to read, a disaster for a woman who considered even the shortest moments to be time to read something.
She tells me that she’s glad to see me because she knows I’m “real.” She often considers the most commonplace sights and events to be something her mind has imagined. She will insist that she has seen something patently impossible, such as an airplane landing in the driveway.
She asks me to help her wake up.
She tells me that she’s being held captive.
Patiently, I tell her what’s real. I tell her what’s impossible. I force her to stay awake while there’s daylight because she has an awful time staying asleep at night, including the occasional night terror. I talk with her and take her places and even get her to write sentences about things we’ve just talked about, which she does despite her sight problems.
She smiles at me while we do these things. It’s as close to “normal” as she can get now. But there’s no progress; we begin every visit with her imaginings, her lack of attention, her sleepiness, her sense of captivity. I’m reminded of the movie The Notebook, a little, as we repeat behaviors until there is a temporary breakthrough, and then I have to go home, and what we have reached is lost.
These hours with her are a challenge. I can’t let myself become frustrated because she is doing the best she can now. I can’t let myself be sad in her presence because she can become so sad at a moment’s notice; it’s my job to be upbeat but not cloyingly so. My Mom does not have Alzheimer’s or dementia. She’s had strokes that have damaged her brain. She cries “help me, help me,” to wake up and escape her captivity.
And my deepest fear is that the part of her that is unavailable, the part that was curious and vibrant and aware, the part that made her what she was until so recently, is not really lost. It is locked away in a six-by-six room and she is aware of its existence and condition.
Only death will free her.