Monday, August 6, 2012

Occam's Razor

I exhale, standing in line for my morning coffee. Present and accounted for a full 30 minutes before my early meeting. My shoulders sag, free of the tension of fighting traffic and a sleepless night of running over the upcoming meeting in my head. Mentally I am still rehearsing the points that need addressed at the meeting with my boss. No way am I gonna let him brush off real discussion this week.

Ba-Da-Na-Na-Nah......Ba-Da-Na-Na-Nah...... I fish in my purse for my phone, see it’s my mom and answer it. A small and very teary voice on the other end says "Hello." CRAP! She's having a bad day.

“What's up mom?”

A frightened voice more suited to a four year old than my 85 year old mother says “I know I am at home, that Pumkin is my dog, but I can't remember how to make coffee and I'm out of milk. I'm lost and scared can you come up?”

“I'm at work right now, but I'll be there in about 30 minutes. Can you just hang tight until then?”

“Yes.” More sobs and a few sniffles.

I bolt for my office hoping to be able to check in with my co-workers and explain briefly, before turning around before retracing pretty much the same traffic-snarled route I just navigated back toward my moms. On the way, I phone my brother, fervently hoping he can handle the situation today. No answer. Not that connecting with him would have altered my course.

All thoughts of work and my morning meeting forgotten, my mind churns with worry about what I will find today when I walk thru the door. Is she hurt? Is she sick? Is she having a bad day? Or is today the first day of a forever of bad days? That last thought causes a grip in my midsection like the rebound from a welterweight punch. My heart breaks a little. I am not ready for this I shout in my head. The tears push through the barrier and threaten to spill. Well ready or not, it's coming and crying? Really? That won't help. So pull it together and be there for her. See where she is today and stop imagining zebras.

Distracted, I run a red light as I speed through downtown. I look around guiltily praying that no cop saw me do that. A ticket is the last thing I need this morning. No point in killing yourself. She will still be there whenever you get there. With some effort, I ease my foot off the accelerator, slow to the speed limit, and try to focus on the driving. But my mind is still only partly on the task. The rest is tucked up with my mom in her little crackerbox house. JustbeOK. JustbeOK. JustbeOK. I loop it in my head and unconsciously press down on the accelerator again.

I pause for a moment, hand on the door. Breathe. You can do this. Pushing the door open I find my mom sleeping on the couch.....or is she? FUCK! But I can see her chest rising shallowly with each breath. I exhale. Squatting down beside her, I touch her on the arm. The eyes that flutter open are as lost and confused as the voice that croaks out a small “Hello”. For a moment I realize she doesn't know me and that little crack in my heart widens. The tears threaten again, but I stifle them with a quickness. “Hi mom” I greet her, hoping for a gleam of recognition where there isn’t one.

I rub her arm gently, aware that touch sometimes helps her find her way back into the now from wherever she goes in the past. Nothing. I kiss her on the forehead and decide to give her space to wake all the way up before panicking. I unpack the milk and pastry I picked up on the way, start coffee perking and walk back out steeled with my best game face.

She is sitting up and looks at me when I return, some faint whisper of recognition there. “I feel dizzy” she states simply. I stand her up, hoping to gawd she doesn’t vomit. I don’t do vomit. She lurches and I think we are both going down, but then I catch my balance and right us both. I sit her down in her chair at the dining room table, the one facing the big picture window, the one that has yesterday’s paper spread out like an unruly roadmap in front of it. It’s on the puzzle page, but the puzzles remain blank. This woman who used to do the crossword in ink has left them blank, the crack groans under the effort and tears threaten again. You can’t cry. Not now. Later.

I feed her disgusting sugary pastries because they are her fave, serve her juice and coffee as I wonder, When was the last healthy meal she ate. Conversation is small in clipped sentences. I try to figure out if there is something more wrong with her than the usual Alzheimer’s associated things. Is it possible she had another TIA? She has had one before, but it’s almost impossible to tell the symptoms of that from her Alzheimer’s. While she sips coffee, I slip into the bedroom and call her doctor. I want someone with some medical expertise to evaluate her. No dice. He is out of the office and his staff coldly tells me to take her to the ER if it’s serious. Motherfuckers if I knew it was serious we would already be at the ER. Sometimes medical staff makes me want to go Rambo. But I know Rambo wouldn’t be able to help any of us where we are today.

When I go back out, she looks a bit brighter, but still mostly absent. Like a toddler, she announces “I’m tired” and I walk her to her recliner and settle her there. “I’m cold” she says in that same flat voice that scares me more than Pennywise the Clown ever did. It’s August, the A/C is on and it’s pleasant in her house. She is never too cold, a fact I attribute to her childhood in the Dakotas. I cover her gently with a fleece throw, kiss her forehead. She is asleep in moments and I suspect she will be out for a couple hours. So, bad daughter that I am, I slip home to grab some things.

Driving home, that’s when the tears hit. I barely make it the mile between her house and mine. Stumble up the stairs and throw myself onto the couch where I dissolve in sobs that originate somewhere in the vicinity of my toes and feel like nothing so much as teary vomit. Then there is real vomit the way that too-strong emotions always bring that for me. I hear her little voice say “I am tired”. I nod my head in agreement. I am tired too. Tired of this situation. Glad for every moment that I have her aware and that crack in my heart ever widening in the moments she is not. One day there will be no bounce. She will stay in the away place. The crack will break my heart into pieces. Please don’t let that be today I pray.

Exhausted, I fall asleep with that prayer on my lips. And in my dreams I see my grandmother and with her a platoon of stern-faced, broom-wielding women I intuitively know to be my greats. Hard and dutiful farmwomen whose genes I carry despite moving away from farm life. They are me and I am them no matter where I live, no matter what I do. I should mention that my grandmother scared the crap outta me my whole life. There was no pleasing her, I was too loud or too quiet, I was always improperly dressed and behaved like a hooligan. I was lazy and needed discipline. Only when she fell into her own Alzheimer’s hell did she soften. By then she no longer recognized me. Perhaps she was softer than her mother, the way that my mother was softer than she, the way that I am softer than my mom. The way my daughters would have been a better version of me if there had been daughters.

When I return to Mom’s later, she is awake and seems fine or at least what we are calling fine these days, fine being a sliding scale. I take her to lunch, we go fabric shopping, we laugh and things in my world right themselves again.

I like to think that my grandmother and her broom posse came to my mom while she slept and swept out the cobwebs. It’s like this morning never happened for her.  Too bad I can't same the same for me. That is both the curse and the blessing of where we are. But this morning did happen and sometimes I can still hear that little broken voice coming thru my phone and see that vacant sparkless look in her eyes in my head. It’s coming, the day without a bounce. But not today. And until then, I’m keeping the grandmothers on speed dial.

4 comments:

  1. This made me shiver and brought tears to my eyes. Telling you I'm sorry (me being a complete stranger) won't help you much but I wanted you to know your words touched me. I wish I could do something to help you through this situation and I hope it helps you to know you're in my thoughts and prayers.

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  2. What an achingly beautiful post. My heart breaks for you. (((Hugs)))

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  3. Hauntingly beautiful, Mary. So sorry you're facing this, but thank you so much for sharing your voice.

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