Sorry I'm late. It's the story of my life lately; the Arizona Department of Transportation is tearing up every major street in the Metro area, spending the stimulus dollars the GOP insists aren't doing any good, and so my commute is that much longer. Also, I'm working harder these days. I don't want to; it's just that my workload has tripled in the past year. Budget cuts, you know. Doing away with dead weight.
At this time last year, my mother, who was 80 years old and suffering from Alzheimer's, macular edema, and a weakened heart, had been moved from John C. Lincoln Hospital in Deer Valley to a rehabilitation facility in Fountain Hills. She'd broken her hip early one morning--in fact, the morning after she'd come home from that same hospital, where she'd been taken for an out-of-control urinary tract infection.
I find myself counting the steps of each anniversary, like a pilgrim on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. October 25th was the first anniversary of the night I called paramedics, when Monistat, cranberry pills, and various over-the-counter remedies failed to treat Mom's pain or halt the sudden fever that gripped her. November 5th was the first anniversary of the morning she rolled out of bed and fractured her hip. November 13th was the first anniversary of the day Mom was transferred from the hospital to the rehab facility.
Soon it will be December 9th, the first anniversary of her death.
I'd give anything not to relive any of this.
When Mom died, people assured me that the pain would eventually ease. Grief is natural, I heard from all sides. Mourning is a gradual process, you'll see. You don't get over it, you just learn to live with it.
I received a great deal of comfort from my friends, here on DK and elsewhere, who listened to me talk of how much I missed Mom. She'd been my near-constant companion for 40 years--all of my life. Her face is the first I remember. Mine may have been the last face she saw.
When I say we did almost everything together, I mean almost everything. She didn't go out on any of my dates, thank God; nor would she have wanted to. But we talked about everything. We told each other secrets. We shared dreams, although I kept some of mine from her as she grew older and sicker, because she hated the fact that I was taking care of her. It wasn't because she hated me. It was because she wanted me to be free.
She knew she was losing her mind all last year. In and out of her fugue states, as I came to call them (moments-cum-hours where she would be lost in her dreams and fantasies--and nightmares), Mom would turn to me at times and tell me so. "I don't want you to see this," she told me once, sobbing. "I don't want you to be burdened with me."
I held her and told her, "I'm going to be here with you until the end."
Papa Chach has said something in his heartbreaking diaries about losing his beloved wife: The only way out is through. Damn right.
This has been both the longest and the shortest year of my life. I barely remember what happened in December after Mom died. I know I boxed up her clothes and donated them to Goodwill, keeping only her pretty sweaters that she loved, and her Bears jacket that we bought after Da Bears won Super Bowl XX. (It really does carry her scent. I can't bear to touch it.) I can tell you I've spent my days packing photographs, sorting and getting rid of so many knickknacks that I feel like the apartment should feel emptier than it is. I've gotten up, gone to work, come home, sat in front of the computer, and wondered when this feeling of listlessness is going to end. I spent 12 years as a caretaker, all of those during my late twenties and thirties. Those are the years I should be chomping at the bit to get back, somehow. Shouldn't I have gone a little crazy? Raced out to the clubs, had wild sex, gotten drunk on the weekends?
Instead, I've woken up sobbing from dreams where Mom has come back, lucid, smiling. I've had dreams where I wake up in terror, because I've had to return to the rehab facility to pick up Mom and take her home. It's a miracle--she's alive, she came back from the dead! And here I stand in the lobby of the facility, wondering how I can explain to everyone, friends, family, that I've hidden the secret of Mom's return to life for so long . . .
Recently, though, I had a dream where Mom and I were walking through a half-empty house. A realtor we'd befriended here in Phoenix appeared to take me out. I turned to Mom and said, "It's time to go home." Mom smiled at me, and said, "I am home."
And then the realtor led me away.
I wish I could say that things are neatly resolved now, but why lie? All I know is that I'm 40 years old and suddenly free. Not free as in liberated, but free as in . . . unattached. I have no one to care for. I'm not mourning the loss of my vocation. I've just approached the end of this first long anniversary and realized that there's still so much ground left to cover.
And the only way out is through.
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