Dementia

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 Quirky, defiant, stubborn and often withdrawn, but yet so fierce in her love for her children, she was a study in opposites.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

One of the best cards –

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.

—Anna Jarvis

and inside…

Anna Jarvis. You probably don’t know the name, but during a memorial for her mother, Ann Jarvis, in 1905, she decided it was a great idea to honor your mother, so she campaigned and lobbied tirelessly to make it an official American holiday. Naively, she thought it would just be nice to write mom a letter of appreciation, or just say I love you. When Hallmark began selling Mothers Day cards in 1912, she got mad – so mad she tried to get Mother’s Day rescinded. She even got arrested at a carnation distributor’s plant in Philadelphia. America won out. There was, after all, a lot of profit to be made in this confusing holiday.

I remember my dad giving us five bucks to run to the corner store and buy a big box of chocolates for my mother. The funny thing is, she hated chocolate. The box lay open on the kitchen counter for days, and we nibbled on them like mice, leaving those gross jelly filled chocolates ripped open on display, like someone might come along and say, “Hey, that looks irresistible!” Maybe my dad…

The 21^st century Mother’s Day has morphed into a grotesque commercial blowout, like so many American holidays, plying shamelessly on the consumers guilt or gullibility. I read an article about a woman who went on a website for people who want to commit adultery – sort of like a Sleazeball.com – because her husband did not give her jewelry for Mother’s Day.

My husband feels bad for me on Mother’s Day because A) my own mom is alive but has no idea who I am or what Mother’s Day is and B) my sons are far away – two in North Carolina and one in heaven. He has offered to buy me things but I remind him that I am not his mother. This seems evident. And I am blessed 365 days a year by two wonderful sons and their wives.

My children have bought me little trinkets over the years, including a necklace I still own and wear each Mother’s Day, but they know that my most favorite gift is a card or letter, just sharing their hearts with me. I guess if you have daughters this is not so uncommon, but sons emerge emotionally on rare occasions, like the seventeen-year cicadas. I have saved some of the Best of the Best over the years, including a box of poster paint handprints and IOU’s for doing dishes, back rubs and five dollars. Who knows? I may need them someday.

When you lose a child, the holiday screams at you at first, then over the years it becomes another reminder that we are not complete. There is a quirkiness that comes with this type of loss. My own mother, who lost a child when she was 36, skipped Quirky and went right to Crazy for many years. It did level off into an odd type of neurosis; sort of a combo Anxiety mixed with Fatalism and Reclusiveness. She loved her kids reluctantly after that. Motherhood had become risky and unpredictable. When my older brother had to tell her that my son had died, she started beating him in the chest with her little bony fists, yelling No! No! No! I think she was saying No more for me than Spence.

My mother grew up in the upper echelon of Southern society, where table settings and debutante parties trumped family time. Her mother’s alcoholism was a secret she shoved into a full family closet, until she was old enough to run, and she did – all the way to New York City. My father offered every thing she did not have; security, sanity and a family that fit nicely into a big station wagon. When my brother Timmy died suddenly in 1964, her world imploded and she accepted a twisted lie as her truth – she was no better at mothering than her own mom. She retreated into a purgatory of fear and self-doubt.

I think that the thought of her own daughter carrying the same legacy caused her to spin out into a gale storm of anger and confusion after Spencer died. My brothers intercepted and kept her away for a time so she could heal and I could breathe. Then for just a few years before her first brain hemorrhage, we became friends, and I discovered a bond we shared. We had both buried a son. After decades of being at odds and circling each other with suspicion, we found a common ground; a place of such unimaginable pain and sorrow that to this day I can only share with other women who have also lost a child. Then the connection is immediate. Deep calls unto deep. And there I found my mother’s love.

Like mom, I am quirky too – but with one outstanding difference. The anchor for my soul that is in Jesus Christ holds me securely from busting loose into a dark abyss without gravity or bearing. Yet I know what that dark place is like and it causes me to stay close to Jesus and look upward, using heaven to navigate by. For that, for this “thorn in the side”, I am grateful. There is no better place to spend your life than in Christ. And in that place of pain, He has made a garden. All kinds of things grow there. It’s crazy – good crazy.

I think grief is the most pure form of love. My heart is heavy for those who are new to this journey, who are spending their first Mother’s Day without a child that should be there, but is gone …the footstep, the laughter, the goofy cards and the clumsy words from a heart that loves their mom. If you know one of these moms, the broken ones, give them the best gift of all; let them talk about their son or daughter, or tell them you miss them too. The fear that you might awaken sadness is ridiculous. It never sleeps, trust me.

Spring is here. For those of us that endured the Big Freeze of 2015, we are a little amazed that anything can grow but it’s no big deal for God. The fragile bud opens, the pale green leaf uncurls like a baby’s hand and stretches out into new life.

In the hospital where I work, they play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” overhead when a baby is born. When I tell patients and families what it means, it never fails to illicit an “Awwwww” and a smile, even among the sickest or grumpiest. Upstairs a young woman holds out her arms and a squirming, wet and bewildered infant is laid there. She is mom, whether she is Princess Kate or a heroin addict. God has just changed her forever. The cord is cut but the heart is sealed with the most powerful love on earth. For as the little life unfolds and blossoms and someday leaves her, she is Protector and Keeper of the nest. Her job is to hold, then let go.

Can I suggest that this Mother’s Day we return to the humble beginnings of this day? Men, use words. Ladies, just love your imperfect mom. She did the best she knew how to do. Life is ever changing and in an instant, she could be gone. In the spirit of the first mother’s day, just say I love you and lots of Thanks. It really beats a box of chocolates.

***Anna Jarvis died at 84 in a sanitarium in Pennsylvania, never taking a penny of profit for Mother’s Day. Although she was the 10^th of 13 children, 7 who died before she was born, she never married or became a mother. She insisted the day was Mother’s day, singular not plural, so that people would make an effort to honor their very own mom, in a personal way. Although she fought tirelessly to keep it simple and not commercial, she lost that battle. Like my own mom, she spent the last few years of her life with dementia and finally happy.

Being silly, just a few months before her second stroke. Love you mom!

The Last Escape

A Mother’s Day KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)