REMEMBERING: Mom And Me

It happens in the blink of an eye. It happened
today. Not an hour ago.

I had just gotten home from work. I was
trying on a blouse I’d ordered that came
in the mail today. I’d guessed it was going
to be longer than I like, but, no matter. I
can sew, can hem by hand or machine.

I turned the hem up to have a look, all
the while considering just exactly how
I would go about making the alteration.
And my mind took it’s natural course.
"If you want it hemmed right, have
someone pin it while you're in it." My
mother’s words. My next thought came
just as naturally. “I’ll have Mom pin it
up for me.”

As quickly as the plan was formed in my mind, the sharp pain of reality
clamped down on my heart with a death-grip. Mom is gone. Mom can’t
pin up hems anymore.

That’s the way it always seems to happen; when my mind is sort of on
auto-pilot. The last time it happened and effected me as badly as it did
tonight, our granddaughter, then four months old, was in the Emergency
Room at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, with a very high temp, a white
count of 28,000, and she was moaning. One of the most frightening
sounds I have ever heard. The doctors were slow in determining what
was going on. They couldn't get an IV started. They were unable to
successfully perform a spinal tap. And Sydney, the most pleasant baby
on earth, kept right on moaning.

I was as upbeat as possible with my daughter and son-in-law. Tried to be
as positive as I could with my older daughter who, like me, has been in the
medical field too long to take any illness for granted. But on the inside, I
was terrified to the very core of my being.

I'd been making and fielding phone calls from family and friends, slipping
in and out of Sydney's room, praying for progress or news, and visiting
quietly with my husband, Sydney's paternal grandparents, my sister, and
others who showed up to support and pray for our precious girl.

A few hours into the ordeal, as we still languished for answers in the
Emergency Room, I slipped my cellphone from my purse thinking, "I've
got to call Mom." I was halfway out of my seat...and the thought knocked
me right back into it. It happened not once that day, but twice. The
second time I made tracks for the ladies room where I broke down.
Clearly my stress level was high. I needed the level-headedness of
my mother. In simpler language, I needed Mom.

Did I lose her recently? No. Not at all. I haven't literally lost her yet.
But she cannot take or make phone calls. She cannot pin up a hem or
thread a needle. Neither can she bathe or feed herself independently
nor can she distinguish between persons on television and real people.
She possesses no recollection of my brother, my sister or myself, she
seems to only have, on her good days, the vaguest notion of who our
father is, even after fifty-five years of marriage. When she looks into
a mirror, she cheerfully greets the person looking back at her because
she no longer recognizes herself.

My mother has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Mom was sixty-four when we began to note something amiss. Living
in close proximity, my sister and I began to suspect the worst very
early on. The diagnosis was devastating to us and, of course, to her.
She and Dad both are the two healthiest individuals I have ever known.
Mom had never had a serious illness and I fully expected her to outlive
all of us.

We began losing Mom in 1999. Almost ten years ago. She fell away
from us in pieces. Like a roof that loses shingles with the passage
of time. For every milestone of decline, there was for us, her family,
the confusion of emotions that comes from looking back, which hurt,
and looking forward, which hurt even worse. Personally, I pretty
well stayed in denial. My sister took on the job of doing what needed
to be done. Pam is both a rock and scissors. I am paper, and flimsy
paper at that.

When I see Mom, I just want to hug her. To touch and hold her hands
and rub her arms. It's like I regress to the innocent little girl who
used to be me (pictured in the above photo with Mom in happier
times). I want mother-love from the only person on earth who can
possibly give it to me. I didn't need mother-love ten or fifteen or
twenty years ago, and I'm confused by my need for it now. Could it
possibly be a longing to return (by virtue of her inability to connect at
all), to the simplest, most naturally occurring bond of all, that of mother
and child? That sounds good, but I secretly harbor a great deal of
shame over what might simply boil down to emotional immaturity.
I cannot be in my mother's presence without breaking completely
down. Because of that, I go to see her infrequently. The source of
my greatest shame.

The pop-up flashes of Mom being available to me as she once was
do not happen often, but hardly an hour passes that thoughts
of Mom, the texture of her hair, the pattern of freckles on her hands,
her perfectly manicured nails, the sound of her laughter and red-
headed temper, her kick ass cooking, vacations together, Mom and
my girls in the back seat comparing their jewelry purchases, and
much, much more, pad quietly through darkened hallways of my
mind. Mom cannot pin up my blouse or call me on the phone nor
can she recall one moment of our lives together, but regardless,
Mom is and always will be with me.