Missing Mom

My favorite photo of my mother

The first anniversary of the day she died, someone kind enough to remember asked me, 'do you miss your Mom?'

It wasn't a quick, easy answer, an automatic 'yes'.  

I do. But not the Mom I lost three years ago. 

That Mom had been trapped in the midst of a terrible disease that took away the essence of all that she was.

It left behind someone who was constantly anxious and scared and confused. 

Over things like a glass jar of jelly sitting on a side table. 

Or whether her roommate pulled her shirt up to show everyone who visited their room her chest. 

That was the world she was living in, the last time I visited her.

We took her out for ice cream that day. She stood at the counter of Baskin Robbins, looking across all the flavours, and seeing only colors. Two choices was too many, and 31 was completely beyond her. Much like a child (and ultimately that was what she had become), she chose rainbow.  I remember watching her out of the side of my eye, as she sat next to me, completely unaware she needed to lick fast enough to keep it from dripping down the side of the cone. Me trying to clean the sticky ribbons of rainbow ooze, as it ran down her fingers and wrists, with crumpled paper napkins. She held her melting cone between her hands, as she looked out at water gurgling over rocks in the mountain stream next to us with such longing in her powdery blue eyes, but she said nothing.

I found out later that day that she'd had ice cream right before we arrived, but it wasn't about the ice cream. She was happy just to be with me, to sit there in that moment. The past was fuzzy or gone, and she had no thought of the future. Just now. Likely she didn't recall that she'd had ice cream a few hours before.

She'd become the child, which meant I wasn't. The quiet heartbreak of it weighed down on the moment, as I realized our roles had switched to a place we could never turn back from.

How old are you when you don't need a mother? To be the child to someone?

I do not know.

Later, after we were back at the facility, before I got ready to leave, we walked down the hall together, to take the jar of jelly to a nurse at the desk, so she would not have to be concerned over it. She reached out and took my hand in hers, much like my grandchildren do with me now. Her face spoke everything she no longer could. The look of pride in just being with me, walking down the hall together where her fellow residents could see someone had come to visit her.

She'd won the prize that particular day. Someone cared.

Her shoes made swooshy sounds against the tile floor as she shuffled next to me.  I had to slow my long strides to line up with her choppy ones that tended to go more side to side than forward. Pretty fitting for where she was in life right then. Not forward, not back, just marking time.

Back at the door to her room, l I stopped to hug her goodbye, and she said, 'I don't want you to leave.' Tears immediately welled up in my eyes and just as immediately, a nurse swooped in to whisk her away. This place she lived was not blessed by displays of emotion, if they could be avoided. I leaned down and hugged her to me, and told her, "You know I'm praying for you, always, and I love you." Then she was gone. 

None of us has the surety of tomorrow, but today, a little more than three years later, I still feel the ache and longing in her question - 'please don't leave?' and that I couldn't assure her - or me - that we'd see each other again.

We didn't.

My mother was a voracious learner, always, always on the lookout for something new to learn about. She was a nurse by profession, and had worked at this facility a handful of years before, serving in the same wing where she now lived. About two years before this visit, she and I had talked about her confusion, and whether to see a doctor over it. She  - my mother, the nurse - got quiet, and asked me, 'you don't think it's that bad disease that starts with an A, do you?' 

I lied. 

A day or so before she died, my brother took a photo of her, lying in her bed. To view it would wrench the heart of someone who didn't even know her, so obvious she had hours, not days left on this earth.

I have it on my phone, to look at it now and then, and remind me that I don't miss that mom, the one who came undone over whether a jar of jelly might fall off the side table. Who yelled at her roommate, also trapped in this terrible disease, and the mom who couldn't remember she was allergic to cats; the mom who couldn't remember that deer were called deer, and who was scared of the little man across the hall who had a tendency to wander at night because he'd been a night guard back when his mind and legs were both working better.

I miss the mom who spent money we didn't have on a set of encyclopedias.

Who let us hang freshly washed sheets across the clothesline to build playhouses. 

Who sang off key to Bruce Springsteen, as we drove through the mountains, windows down of course.

Who couldn't fix her hair to save her life, but loved to brush mine from my eyes.

Who was feisty and opinionated and fierce about defending the rights of others. The only curse word I ever heard from my mother was 'damn', and if she said that, you better give her some space!

Who couldn't tell a joke because she'd get so tickled she'd start laughing and trash the punch line.

Who collected rocks from the mountains when I took her there, so that she reminded me of that episode of I Love Lucy.

Who never wasted a single day of her life cleaning house.

Who never gave up on any of her six kids, even when they had given up on themselves.

Who wrote poems too flowery, about too many men who didn't deserve her.

Who turned almost any conversation into an intellectual jousting session.

Who loved BBQ and ice cold striped watermelons, especially if they'd been bought at the side of the road, unplanned.

Who loved to cheer for the Broncos, even though she didn't really understand the game. 

I don't have a lot of memories of my younger years with my mother. There were six of us and we sort of all shuffled along in a pack. She didn't have the luxury of concentrating on one at a time. Her style of mothering us was much more like a mother hen, keep us close underfoot, rescue whoever needed it, and then let us fly the coop when the time came. Most of my memories are from my late teens on, and after I'd moved out of our home and was on my own. So many conversations over the phone as we tried to span the miles between us. Talking about women's rights and racism and all that was wrong with the world, and how it could be fixed. And when we'd hang up, always, always, she'd say, 'I love you Darlin'.'

So no, I don't miss the mom I saw for the last time a little over three years ago.

But yes, I miss that other one.