My Mother / My Self / Our Memories (part IV)
Dear reader:
It’s been awhile since I last posted, but it felt necessary to update you with the latest happenings in my life regarding my Mother. She has been in the hospital for over two weeks. The doctors are not sure what’s wrong with her - she is not doing well. If you’ve read my previous posts (part I, part II, part III), you’ll know that my Mother spent a significant amount of time in the hospital when she had her aneurysm. I kept the details vague. When I write personal things, it’s hard to be descriptive - mostly because a) either the details are too offensive and disturbing to mention b) I don’t want to scare you. Now that she’s back in the hospital I felt like filling in the gaps -- the things I observed, the things I internalized, and the slow and painful recovery that happened from beginning until now. In this moment I’m writing it all out without any regrets. This is not a cry for help. I’m not looking for you to feel sorry for me. I’m writing this for me and in hopes that maybe someone out there will be reading this and can appreciate my words for what it is - honest and real - me.
Thanks for reading.
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I woke up in a daze, but I don’t remember falling asleep. Only lying and waiting all night for sleep to come. And because I couldn’t trace the transitions from day to night to wake to sleep it took me a moment to remember where I was and then I realized that my Mother was in the hospital and I wasn’t there.
A jarring sense of reality came crashing over me. My Mother is sick and once again we don’t know what’s wrong or how things will pan out. The parts of my life that I tried so hard to block out were all of a sudden flooding back in my head. Segments of words and moving pictures tumbled back to me. This intense feeling was like a film reel speeding past, flashing colors as I zoomed in on specific stories and jumped from one to another. Age 5 we were making sandcastles on the beach. Age 6 we were decorating the Christmas tree. Age 9 we were playing duets on the piano. It’s odd how clear those images could be at times, lines so familiar as if I rehearsed them for years. I see colors upon colors, memories upon memories - and then I see blank. Because after my Mother’s aneurysm in 2006 there were only gray moments.
This is where I open up and share these gray moments.
It’s September 11, 2006 and I am sitting on the bathroom floor sandwiched in the corner. I just received the news that my mother had an aneurysm. The phone is laying restless in my hand as my Father is on the other line crying. His words are ringing all around me like sirens sounding off in the night.
Now I’m in the hospital. Doctors are shuffling around me. I’m wandering down the hallway alone. I’m experiencing pits of anxiety. My feet feel like their floating. This walk seems like it will never end. And then I reach her room. She is weak and vulnerable, strapped to the bed with foreign tubes and devices. They say she is in a coma and has a 3% chance of survival. I stand next to my Mother’s bedside and the doctor tells me to talk to her. “When people are in a coma they can still hear you,” he says. In that moment I couldn’t find my words. I could feel them lingering at the edge of my throat, but I didn’t know how to get them out. Then I started to talk. “Hi Mom,” I said. “I’m talking to you because the doctor said you can hear me.” And then I remembered what had happened that morning. My Mom had called me to say hello and I barked at her for waking me up. I laughed to myself. Had I known what would happen later I would have handled that better. And then I remembered what happened the night before. My boyfriend Ben and I were having a drastic argument and he pushed me down the stairs. I ran out with a handful of clothes and my dog and drove nervously home. I called my Mom in a frantic and told her what had happened. I’ve only heard my Mother cry twice in my life - this was twice. I thought maybe I had caused the aneurysm to burst. And then I stopped reflecting and snapped back to reality. I looked down at my mom and said, “I’m sorry.” For a moment I completely lost it. Everything began to end, degenerate, crumble. I knew I wasn’t dead, but this was the closest I’ve ever felt to it.
The next 20 hours operating on her brain will be the longest wait of my life. The hours in between wander aimlessly and blend together. I begin to accept that my Mother is already dead. This is the only way I’ll be able to survive.
And this is when things got weird for me -- my Mother survived. I had already answered all of the “what if’s,” written my memorial speech, and prepared for all of the days, months and years to come after. Any normal person would have embraced this joyous news, but her living was not my reality.
From September 13 - November 25 I will spend every day from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm at UCSF med center and then at St. Mary’s hospital. It’s only September 14th and I’ve already dissected every inch of her hospital room. The colors, the space, how the weight and taste of the air shift in her presence. I start fixating on the wall pattering to keep my mind preoccupied and wish fervently to never see this eyesore of a pale blue color again. For a person with a type A personality, sitting still for more than a few hours does not bode well with me. I experience nervous twitches and verbal ticks and always have to get up and walk around.
After 10 pm I’d come back to the town home that I was renting with Ben. I had found out he had cheated on me the day before my Mother’s aneurysm. He had said the day before that he “wanted to be with me forever.” The words ‘forever’ meant nothing anymore because all sense of time was lost. Ben was still living in the town home. I was too nice and let him stay until he found another place. My Dad had temporarily moved in until my Mother was out of the hospital. The three of us spent the next month sleeping under one roof. Pain, anxiety and anger began to build and internalize. No matter where I went I had no escape. I had no outlet.
Sometime a week later my Mother is able to talk. She calls me Kristin. That is my cousin’s name. She recognizes me, but does not remember that I am her daughter. Everyone is relieved that she is speaking and there is an optimistic sense of change on the wind, if only I could better enjoy it. The best part part of it all was that Ben finally moved out. I was relived over the idea of finally being able to sleep.
The doctors told me that “aneurysm's trigger memory loss” -- my Mom experienced a lot of it. In the next few months she’ll constantly confuse her past with her present and see things that never were there. “Go find my Mom and Dad,” she’d say to me. I’d respond, “Mom, they are not here, they passed away” never knowing if my answer was the right answer. “Can you get your camera and take pictures of the bats in the room?” she asked. “There are no bats in the room, Mom.” By then nothing she said jilted any reaction. I’ve become reaction-less.
By Thanksgiving my Mother was released from the hospital. The doctors said that she could go home under supervision of a live-in nurse. The hospital stay was costly so my Dad asked me to take care of my Mother full time. I couldn’t say no so I moved back to my parent’s house.
There were a lot of days I’d spend daydreaming. I’d think, “right now I’d be in grad school studying journalism...I’d be living on my own in an apartment....I’d be that much closer to the job I’ve always wanted.” Then I’d remember where I was. I’d examine every detail of my surroundings and how everything drastically changed. The house grew full of organized clutter - stacks of magazine, papers and debris of clothes. My Father had emotionally checked out and our house became practically unlivable. And my Mother was completely unable to care for herself -- she was like a baby. I remember flipping through photo albums of me as a child -- a picture of me with a neatly tied bib around my neck while my Mother fed me, another of Mother washing me in the tub, another of her tucking me into bed. Now the roles were reversed and I was the caretaker. This process went on for months, and with no one to talk to I slowly began to deteriorate.
There were three instances that will forever haunt me:
The first was when my Mother raided my makeup. She forgot how much makeup to apply so she painted her face until she looked like a clown. I remember just looking at her and leaving the room. I went into the bathroom and sat in the corner for awhile. The bathroom corner became my go-to safe place.
The second time was when my Mother ran out of the house with nothing but an adult diaper on. I grabbed her arm quickly in hopes that nobody saw us. I locked the doors and went back to my safe place.
The third time was when I left my Mother in the house alone, took the car keys, and went for a drive. I came back to find our walls painted an ugly red. My Mother had called someone to take her to Orchard Supply and paint the wall. And when my Dad came home I took off.
It’s 2008 and I have not been home in over a year. I had moved back to San Francisco to get my life back on track, but instead I became a hermitand life outside of my confined walls became nonexistent. Like my parent’s house, my apartment turned into perpetual chaos. I’d let the clothes and alcohol bottles collect on the floor and the debris around me became not filth, but insulation. An entire day would be consumed by sleep interspersed with drinking. My only contact with the outside world was through my window where I’d stare blearily from the inside stuck in a state of sleepy disbelief. There were only wakeful moments that I can recall feeling life was worthwhile, and then I’d go back to my routine and sink into my mattress gracefully. They say we live in order to have something to think about. But there were a lot of times I didn’t want to think anymore. This was my life for four whole months.
The years between 2008 - 2010 was a slow and painful recovery process for Mother, therefore it was slow and painful for both my Father and I. The aneurysm had put a strain on our relationship, and it took two whole years for us to become a family like we use to be. During that time I struggled answering my parent’s calls and emails. Every time I was pressured to come home I was overcome with anxiety, and every time I didn’t I would feel a overwhelming sense of guilt. One time I tried to go home and I panicked, turned off on Highway 24, and went back to the city. I’m not sure what happened, but eventually all of the anger and guilt I was carrying eventually stopped burdening me less and less. Maybe I just needed time. Or maybe I just needed to see my Mother look and seem like she use to be. Maybe I needed both.
Now it’s July 2, 2011 - present day. My Mother has been in the hospital for over two weeks. Today will be my first day visiting her. I pull up to UCSF med center and the memories start to come back: the narrow hallways, the pale blue color wall pattering, the weight and smell of the air. When I enter her room I am overcome with shock - it looks like she had -- against all odds -- gotten a lot sicker. She was rail thin and I could see the outline of her rib cage pertruding from her skin. I sit in the chair in front of her, fidgeting anxiously, toying with the drawstrings on my sweatshirt. Once again the words I want to say are lingering in the back of my throat, but I have nothing worthwhile to say. I could feel a wall separating us. I could feel time passing. This discomfort is not foreign to us -- strangely the pain is sometimes just as comforting as it is without it.
Today is July 6, 2011 and I’m trying to find the right words to conclude this post. Usually I have some clever sentence or two to wrap things up, but I’m not even sure why I’m writing all of this in the first place. In the last few days I’ve found myself slipping back into old habits. I’ve been experiencing fits of anxiety and haven’t had a good nights sleep. I hesitant to answer my Father’s calls and go back to the hospital. I’ve also had to re-convince myself that my Mother is dead again, so I can keep myself maintained and from losing myself. Last night I started flipping through old albums trying to find the last photo of my Mother and I. The last photo of us was unfortunately was when I was a baby. I snap a photo of the photo. I want to substain this moment and never let go. I’m not sure what will happen in the next hour, day, week with me or my Mother. But right now all I want to do is hold onto the good memories -- the sandcastles on the beach, the decorating of the tree -- those segments of words and flashes of color that existed before the grey moments and use to them to build over the holes in my life that are there.
Thanks for reading.
-----------
I woke up in a daze, but I don’t remember falling asleep. Only lying and waiting all night for sleep to come. And because I couldn’t trace the transitions from day to night to wake to sleep it took me a moment to remember where I was and then I realized that my Mother was in the hospital and I wasn’t there.
A jarring sense of reality came crashing over me. My Mother is sick and once again we don’t know what’s wrong or how things will pan out. The parts of my life that I tried so hard to block out were all of a sudden flooding back in my head. Segments of words and moving pictures tumbled back to me. This intense feeling was like a film reel speeding past, flashing colors as I zoomed in on specific stories and jumped from one to another. Age 5 we were making sandcastles on the beach. Age 6 we were decorating the Christmas tree. Age 9 we were playing duets on the piano. It’s odd how clear those images could be at times, lines so familiar as if I rehearsed them for years. I see colors upon colors, memories upon memories - and then I see blank. Because after my Mother’s aneurysm in 2006 there were only gray moments.
This is where I open up and share these gray moments.
It’s September 11, 2006 and I am sitting on the bathroom floor sandwiched in the corner. I just received the news that my mother had an aneurysm. The phone is laying restless in my hand as my Father is on the other line crying. His words are ringing all around me like sirens sounding off in the night.
Now I’m in the hospital. Doctors are shuffling around me. I’m wandering down the hallway alone. I’m experiencing pits of anxiety. My feet feel like their floating. This walk seems like it will never end. And then I reach her room. She is weak and vulnerable, strapped to the bed with foreign tubes and devices. They say she is in a coma and has a 3% chance of survival. I stand next to my Mother’s bedside and the doctor tells me to talk to her. “When people are in a coma they can still hear you,” he says. In that moment I couldn’t find my words. I could feel them lingering at the edge of my throat, but I didn’t know how to get them out. Then I started to talk. “Hi Mom,” I said. “I’m talking to you because the doctor said you can hear me.” And then I remembered what had happened that morning. My Mom had called me to say hello and I barked at her for waking me up. I laughed to myself. Had I known what would happen later I would have handled that better. And then I remembered what happened the night before. My boyfriend Ben and I were having a drastic argument and he pushed me down the stairs. I ran out with a handful of clothes and my dog and drove nervously home. I called my Mom in a frantic and told her what had happened. I’ve only heard my Mother cry twice in my life - this was twice. I thought maybe I had caused the aneurysm to burst. And then I stopped reflecting and snapped back to reality. I looked down at my mom and said, “I’m sorry.” For a moment I completely lost it. Everything began to end, degenerate, crumble. I knew I wasn’t dead, but this was the closest I’ve ever felt to it.
The next 20 hours operating on her brain will be the longest wait of my life. The hours in between wander aimlessly and blend together. I begin to accept that my Mother is already dead. This is the only way I’ll be able to survive.
And this is when things got weird for me -- my Mother survived. I had already answered all of the “what if’s,” written my memorial speech, and prepared for all of the days, months and years to come after. Any normal person would have embraced this joyous news, but her living was not my reality.
From September 13 - November 25 I will spend every day from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm at UCSF med center and then at St. Mary’s hospital. It’s only September 14th and I’ve already dissected every inch of her hospital room. The colors, the space, how the weight and taste of the air shift in her presence. I start fixating on the wall pattering to keep my mind preoccupied and wish fervently to never see this eyesore of a pale blue color again. For a person with a type A personality, sitting still for more than a few hours does not bode well with me. I experience nervous twitches and verbal ticks and always have to get up and walk around.
After 10 pm I’d come back to the town home that I was renting with Ben. I had found out he had cheated on me the day before my Mother’s aneurysm. He had said the day before that he “wanted to be with me forever.” The words ‘forever’ meant nothing anymore because all sense of time was lost. Ben was still living in the town home. I was too nice and let him stay until he found another place. My Dad had temporarily moved in until my Mother was out of the hospital. The three of us spent the next month sleeping under one roof. Pain, anxiety and anger began to build and internalize. No matter where I went I had no escape. I had no outlet.
Sometime a week later my Mother is able to talk. She calls me Kristin. That is my cousin’s name. She recognizes me, but does not remember that I am her daughter. Everyone is relieved that she is speaking and there is an optimistic sense of change on the wind, if only I could better enjoy it. The best part part of it all was that Ben finally moved out. I was relived over the idea of finally being able to sleep.
The doctors told me that “aneurysm's trigger memory loss” -- my Mom experienced a lot of it. In the next few months she’ll constantly confuse her past with her present and see things that never were there. “Go find my Mom and Dad,” she’d say to me. I’d respond, “Mom, they are not here, they passed away” never knowing if my answer was the right answer. “Can you get your camera and take pictures of the bats in the room?” she asked. “There are no bats in the room, Mom.” By then nothing she said jilted any reaction. I’ve become reaction-less.
By Thanksgiving my Mother was released from the hospital. The doctors said that she could go home under supervision of a live-in nurse. The hospital stay was costly so my Dad asked me to take care of my Mother full time. I couldn’t say no so I moved back to my parent’s house.
There were a lot of days I’d spend daydreaming. I’d think, “right now I’d be in grad school studying journalism...I’d be living on my own in an apartment....I’d be that much closer to the job I’ve always wanted.” Then I’d remember where I was. I’d examine every detail of my surroundings and how everything drastically changed. The house grew full of organized clutter - stacks of magazine, papers and debris of clothes. My Father had emotionally checked out and our house became practically unlivable. And my Mother was completely unable to care for herself -- she was like a baby. I remember flipping through photo albums of me as a child -- a picture of me with a neatly tied bib around my neck while my Mother fed me, another of Mother washing me in the tub, another of her tucking me into bed. Now the roles were reversed and I was the caretaker. This process went on for months, and with no one to talk to I slowly began to deteriorate.
There were three instances that will forever haunt me:
The first was when my Mother raided my makeup. She forgot how much makeup to apply so she painted her face until she looked like a clown. I remember just looking at her and leaving the room. I went into the bathroom and sat in the corner for awhile. The bathroom corner became my go-to safe place.
The second time was when my Mother ran out of the house with nothing but an adult diaper on. I grabbed her arm quickly in hopes that nobody saw us. I locked the doors and went back to my safe place.
The third time was when I left my Mother in the house alone, took the car keys, and went for a drive. I came back to find our walls painted an ugly red. My Mother had called someone to take her to Orchard Supply and paint the wall. And when my Dad came home I took off.
It’s 2008 and I have not been home in over a year. I had moved back to San Francisco to get my life back on track, but instead I became a hermitand life outside of my confined walls became nonexistent. Like my parent’s house, my apartment turned into perpetual chaos. I’d let the clothes and alcohol bottles collect on the floor and the debris around me became not filth, but insulation. An entire day would be consumed by sleep interspersed with drinking. My only contact with the outside world was through my window where I’d stare blearily from the inside stuck in a state of sleepy disbelief. There were only wakeful moments that I can recall feeling life was worthwhile, and then I’d go back to my routine and sink into my mattress gracefully. They say we live in order to have something to think about. But there were a lot of times I didn’t want to think anymore. This was my life for four whole months.
The years between 2008 - 2010 was a slow and painful recovery process for Mother, therefore it was slow and painful for both my Father and I. The aneurysm had put a strain on our relationship, and it took two whole years for us to become a family like we use to be. During that time I struggled answering my parent’s calls and emails. Every time I was pressured to come home I was overcome with anxiety, and every time I didn’t I would feel a overwhelming sense of guilt. One time I tried to go home and I panicked, turned off on Highway 24, and went back to the city. I’m not sure what happened, but eventually all of the anger and guilt I was carrying eventually stopped burdening me less and less. Maybe I just needed time. Or maybe I just needed to see my Mother look and seem like she use to be. Maybe I needed both.
Now it’s July 2, 2011 - present day. My Mother has been in the hospital for over two weeks. Today will be my first day visiting her. I pull up to UCSF med center and the memories start to come back: the narrow hallways, the pale blue color wall pattering, the weight and smell of the air. When I enter her room I am overcome with shock - it looks like she had -- against all odds -- gotten a lot sicker. She was rail thin and I could see the outline of her rib cage pertruding from her skin. I sit in the chair in front of her, fidgeting anxiously, toying with the drawstrings on my sweatshirt. Once again the words I want to say are lingering in the back of my throat, but I have nothing worthwhile to say. I could feel a wall separating us. I could feel time passing. This discomfort is not foreign to us -- strangely the pain is sometimes just as comforting as it is without it.
Today is July 6, 2011 and I’m trying to find the right words to conclude this post. Usually I have some clever sentence or two to wrap things up, but I’m not even sure why I’m writing all of this in the first place. In the last few days I’ve found myself slipping back into old habits. I’ve been experiencing fits of anxiety and haven’t had a good nights sleep. I hesitant to answer my Father’s calls and go back to the hospital. I’ve also had to re-convince myself that my Mother is dead again, so I can keep myself maintained and from losing myself. Last night I started flipping through old albums trying to find the last photo of my Mother and I. The last photo of us was unfortunately was when I was a baby. I snap a photo of the photo. I want to substain this moment and never let go. I’m not sure what will happen in the next hour, day, week with me or my Mother. But right now all I want to do is hold onto the good memories -- the sandcastles on the beach, the decorating of the tree -- those segments of words and flashes of color that existed before the grey moments and use to them to build over the holes in my life that are there.
