Spencer's Mom

Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

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January 14, 2018

The Last Escape

New mom

 

My eyes snapped open as I heard the soft creak of the stairs, the gentle whoosh of the front door, then a few minutes later, an engine turn over. As it idled for a minute, my husband rolled over next to me.

“Why does she do that?” he asked in a half-asleep voice.

I smiled as I heard my mother back carefully out of the driveway. “She hates good-byes.” I waited until I could hear the Toyota pushing off into the still dark night no more, then turned over and went back to sleep. That was around 2006.

            On December 17th 2017, she skipped out on her last goodbye, with a swift downward spiral that hailed a trip to a local ER. When the phone rang just before midnight at my brother’s house, he assumed it was an update. But she was gone, like a night bird, swooping high into the midnight sky.; escaped from the ancient tent that kept her bound. And no goodbye.

            My mother was never easy, but once you accepted who she was, it made your life, well not easy, but better. Quirky, defiant, stubborn and often withdrawn, but yet so fierce in her love for her children, she was a study in opposites. She was soft as a southern teacake – surrounded by barbed wire. We tried, all of us, over our adult years to bend and shape her into a more ordinary mom – enticing her into classes or retreats, even bus tours. And how about book clubs, or the senior center? But she ignored us, usually withdrawing further into her New York Times crossword puzzle or a solitary bench in a musty library, a pile of books beside her.

            We were different. She was brilliant, wary of the world before her and unsettled until she could piece it all apart and diagnose it. She hated laziness and stupidity, especially together, and was blunt and condescending in her opinions. I was more like my dad – simple minded, naive enough to step boldly into quicksand, then fast enough to scuttle out. I was a peacemaker; she wielded a sword. I let go, she held fast to any grudges she could gather.

            As she aged, her world grew smaller, but the possibilities for catastrophe loomed large. Anxiety grew as her mind slipped away, replaced by copious Post-It notes dotting her walls and cabinets. Then a major artery in the left frontal lobe went. The next year, one on the right blew, and we had a brand new mom before us. The intellect, and the fear attached to it, was completely erased. The New Mom laughed a lot, painted her nails with White Out, ate napkins and would tickle you if you stood close enough.

            “How are you doing?” I asked my brother Bob last week.

            “I’m not sure who I miss the most,” he said. “The Old Mom or the New Mom.”

            The New Mom lasted a lot longer than we thought she would. We assumed one more stroke would take her quickly but instead she declined slowly in a sweet little nursing home overlooking the Hudson River. You would find her in a wheel chair, sometimes wiping the fingers of her baby doll and kissing them one by one. In 2011, as I came around the corner and met her eyes, I said goodbye to the last remnant of the mom who loved me. She no longer knew who I was.

            At the funeral, I was transfixed by an old black and white photo of a young woman, her mahogany hair long and messy, clothes hanging loose on her thin frame with the knee highs pulled up on her skinny white legs. My grandfather put this frail young girl on a train back when deep South meant a whole different country and sent her towards her dreams; graduate school, Columbia University, New York City. I think he knew that the little redhead who survived encephalitis at age five was much tougher than she looked. Her smile is wide but slightly pensive. She is looking at her future husband holding the camera, with guarded hope. This is the mom I never knew. By the time we could talk face-to-face, that hope had morphed to a droll cynicism and her courage had hardened to defiance. Like me, she had buried a son, and reached out to grasp the hand of a God she took years to come to terms with, surrendering in fragments and pieces. Ironically, the child that gave her the most trouble, (that would be ME) showed her the way to grace, to a Jesus who was bigger than a book or a class in theology, a Jesus who would love her tenaciously yet tenderly in her loneliness and fear. After I lost Spencer in 2002, she became an outright evangelist. “Let me tell you about my grandson who loved Jesus,” she would begin.

            Mama was an amazing cook, seamstress and a natural beauty too but she never taught me a dang thing except how to make the best southern biscuits in Dixie. You better handle that dough like it’s a newborn. Maybe if I’d stuck around past age 15 I would’ve picked up some things, but I doubt it. I did share her overall disinterest in all things material and domestic. I think we were both hippies before they were invented.

            “Nothing in my house matches,” I told my granddaughter Brooklynn recently, as she nodded in agreement. “It’s wonderful! You don’t have to worry if something breaks!” We laughed together, and then I added almost secretively, “Some people have matching everything!”

            She gave me a sweet smile and said, “Ama, I think MOST people have matching everything.” And we laughed at the craziness of that, and of her grandmother too.

            They say daughters invariably become their mothers. That thought would’ve made me cringe 40 years ago, but now I like it, most the time. And when I don’t ( my siblings and I have coined a new adjective for it: being “martha-ish”) I just ask Jesus to pull away the barbed wire and give me His love instead.

            After I got the call that my mother died, I lay down on the couch in the quiet house and cried. I will miss her; the old mom, the new mom and that gutsy redhead alone on a train. But as I stared out at the moonlit night, I suddenly saw her running, and laughing. It was a mom I never knew! She was free and she had some people to see. And I waited until I could hear her laughter no more, until the night turned silent again. No more goodbyes, sweet mommy. Then I climbed back into bed and fell asleep.

 

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Psalm 124:7

 

Filed Under: Dementia, Loss, Love Tagged: biscuit, loss, mother
10 Comments

Comments

  1. Karen says

    January 14, 2018 at 9:26 pm

    Great blog, it’s weird how after my mom passed all the things the things about my mom I thought were terrible now don’t seem so bad. Like you I prayed with my mom but for me it was 3 weeks before she passed. Till we all meet again we have memories.

    Reply
    • Robin says

      January 14, 2018 at 9:48 pm

      What a great honor to be able to give back to our moms something of such immeasurable value! Til we meet again…

      Reply
  2. Leah says

    January 15, 2018 at 9:23 am

    Robin,
    Thank you for sharing this peek into your history. I smiled as I read because your mom sounds a lot like my paternal grandmother. Sometimes I think it’s an east coast thing. Her second marriage lead her to Virginia, but I teased her once that she is so much not a southern wife. She agreed.

    My heart goes out to you as you endure another loss, along with remembering your own son this month. You are in my prayers.

    -Leah

    Reply
    • Robin says

      January 15, 2018 at 10:51 am

      Thank you so much Leah, and for your prayers. I am leaning on those everlasting arms!

      Reply
  3. Maria says

    January 25, 2018 at 4:29 pm

    Hi Robin,
    I just finished reading your lovely, tragic, yet tenderly written book while sitting in my 89-year-old dad’s RI hospital room in Providence. So many, many thoughts, I won’t share here, but mostly so glad YOU WALK IN LOVE. I pray we continue to do so.
    Love sincerely,
    Your colleague,
    Maria Latta,

    Reply
    • Robin says

      January 25, 2018 at 4:43 pm

      Maria, Thank you! I hope your dad is okay – such a frail age and hard time for us kids.☺️ I look forward to talking more with you. I guess it’s one of the good things about work!

      Reply
  4. Bob Gulian says

    February 4, 2018 at 10:08 am

    Thanks sis,

    What wonderful insights into our Mom and one incredible insight about our Dad, “naive enough to step boldly into quicksand, then fast enough to scuttle out.”. Yup.

    love,
    Bob

    Reply
    • Robin says

      February 4, 2018 at 1:08 pm

      ❤️ Thanks bro!

      Reply
  5. George Steele says

    February 12, 2018 at 12:48 pm

    I will share two things that transpired after my Mom passed away, many years ago, at age 93. It was a few days after the funeral, and we had a momentary power outage – a common occurrence for those of us who live near the water when the winter winds blow. I was in the bedroom preparing to slide between the cool sheets for the night, and when the lights flickered back on, the answering machine played back a message spontaneously. “Hi, Holl – it’s me – just saying hello. Nothing to worry about; everything’s fine here.” I still have a lump in my throat remembering my Mother’s voice that night – a gift of peace from I know not where.

    Some time later I was cleaning the house out, sad as could be, and came upon a little music box I hadn’t seen before. I opened it to see that it was empty inside, but it began to play – “Somewhere, over the rainbow . . .” Although I had lost my confidante, my rock ever since my father passed away when I was 10, the other member of our little two-person team struggling to get back on our feet – the comfort of that little, tinkling music box made me feel that she was still there, looking down, on guard, from somewhere, over the rainbow.

    I’ve never told this story before.

    Reply
    • Robin says

      February 12, 2018 at 12:55 pm

      Very beautiful. Thank you for sharing your heart!

      Reply

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