Dutiful Daughter
Sick and Lonely in the Land of Dementia (cont.)
“What are you going to do about your mother?” My cousin had visited her new home and felt her condition had worsened.
“Has anyone called my brother?” I cradled the phone against my ear and poured a box of pasta into boiling water. My skin felt tight, and an ache was nagging its way up my shoulder.
How was I supposed to care for Mom and tend to the knifing grief I felt every day from losing my son? Wisdom preached that if I wanted to stop the weight loss, hair loss, and mysterious skin rashes that had plagued me in the years after his death, I needed to stop putting the needs of others before mine. Had to stop chiding myself for still feeling unmoored by Mitch’s suicide and cease fabricating the lie that my pain was less acute than my husband’s because he was the one who found our son and tried to resuscitate him that awful October morning.
Certainly, I felt compassion for his plight and gratitude toward him for urging me back into the house, protecting me from feeling the lifeless weight of our boy, of seeing him zipped in and carried away. But grief also compelled me to make space for what I’d lost—all the ordinary moments I loved having with Mitch. How serving him cheesy eggs, and French toast coaxed a shy smile to his face; how he came to my classroom after school every day through eighth grade, grabbing a donut from the office on his way to me, the fringe benefits of being a teacher’s kid; how we were simpatico, sharing the same random sense of humor, making up silly words and expressions like “henna penna” and “freakadelic” to express our delight with the world.
Then there were the times he had me gasping for breath, laughing at his accurate imitations of a helicopter in flight, a hip-hop bass line, the timbre and pace of his cousin’s voice whining for a snack, a child grating her bow across violin strings at church one Christmas Eve, murdering a rendition of “Carol of the Bells.” In short, Mitch was my favorite person, and grieving him could no longer be deferred even as my husband spiraled deeper into a depression he’d harbored well before our son arrived.
Has anyone called my brother? The question hummed the distance between my cousin and me, the answer so obvious he didn’t have to answer—of course not. Regardless of extenuating circumstances, as my mother’s eldest child and daughter, I was obligated to review her situation and take the necessary steps. This precedence was established when I was 12 and she was in bed with pneumonia for two weeks, the illness exacerbated by years of smoking. It was further confirmed by the care I gave her after a procedure in her late forties and back surgery in her sixties. Still, caring for Mom’s body was one thing, figuring out how to manage a strong-willed woman, who might be losing her mind, quite another.
The pasta water had bubbled onto the burner, and I dialed the heat to low. “Thanks for letting me know all this, Cuz. Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out.”
I dialed Mom and asked if I could come out in February, and help her sort through boxes and old paperwork, to set her house in good order. Organization comes naturally to me as a teacher though boundaries with family members do not. “I can come for three days,” I said, trying for the elusive line in the sand.
“That’s about all we can take, isn’t it?” Mom chuckled into the receiver.
Her response, both cogent and perceptive, gave me hope—maybe her cognitive condition wasn’t as dire as my cousin believed.