My mother was very beautiful. Photographs of Marylu in her youth are like seeing a movie star with her classic features, elegant style and mischievous smile. Today when we page through the albums she remarks on these pictures with a laugh, commenting occasionally when they include images of her father, mother or brother. She often speaks of her Swiss ancestry and points to the furniture in the room that she inherited from her family and brought over with her when she came to America from Switzerland.
The fact that she was born and has always lived in this country no longer seems as important as it did when the mental slippage first started happening. Nor does the fact that she does not really know where she is these days, and can be confused as to exactly who her husband of 55 years is, and even, of course, who I am. My mother, like so many mothers and grandmothers whom we celebrate on this Mother's Day is living with some form of dementia or Alzheimer's disease.
In earlier years, my mother hated the thought of ending up like this. She was vibrant, curious and motivated. Marylu had no tolerance for sickness or slowness and her children often had to run to keep up with her. I was never quite convinced that she wasn't trying to lose us in the crowds of the mall. She was an artist of both clay and photography, an activist in politics and an excellent golfer and tennis player. I remember her and my father joking that they wanted to die rushing the net.
But instead she is living today with severe arthritis, an uncomfortable and ugly skin condition, and a mind that cannot remember the very acts that we generally celebrate on Mother's Day such as the various and conflicted ways she loved her often unruly and ungrateful children over the last 50 years. Now, instead of caring for us, she is tended to by a staff of nurses, and by my father and my oldest sister who are involved in the extraordinarily burdensome task of daily care, and the mundane yet heroic efforts of being there for her when she is no longer entirely there for herself.
For me, who lives further away, the lack of shared memory is the most difficult adjustment when visiting my mother. We can no longer stand upon a foundation of past family experiences and view the future from the loft of accumulated recollections. We can't even discuss the meal we just had, or the activity of the morning. My mother's condition has disrupted the linear nature of time which had provided a comfortable road upon which we had traveled together regardless of present circumstances. In the absence of memory or time I flounder, seeking firm ground and questioning where to place the meaning of our shared lives.
It recalls the disturbing lines from the book of Ecclesiastes:
All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? ... The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
The word for vanity in Hebrew is 'hebel' and it's literal meaning is puff, steam, or whiff -- it refers to anything ephemeral, or insubstantial. The stones of memory we gathered to make the permanent foundation of our lives are crumbling into dust and blowing away before my eyes. The cumulative logic of life is confused as I also lose my sense of direction, feeling that we are moving backwards as much as forwards.
And yet, if I stay completely in the moment with my mother as I see her rapturously listening to Puccini, laugh with her uproariously at a silly movie, or listen carefully as she tells me a complicated story about her life that has no factual basis and no clear beginning or end; if I stay in the immediate present and hold her bruised hand not too tight, but tight enough so she knows I am here; if I honor all of her life that has brought her to this moment and love her in whatever way I can that will give her joy right now -- then I am proclaiming that her life is not in vain.
Instead of a puff of smoke, I see my mother as an orchid who has lost her petals, but who is eternally rooted in the Source of All Life. In that deep place of God we will never part, and we will celebrate Marylu's life -- in this life, and in the life that is beyond life.
I love you Marylu. This mother's day I will remember for both of us.
Follow Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raushenbush
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Stymied at every turn by my mom, who has more pride than common sense, she's 89 and refuses to make plans for dad should she die before him. She wants to die and has said she doesn't care what happens to him after she's gone.
This is a nightmare. I have considered getting power of attorney but she is too lucid for me to fight her and I don't want the animosity that would come from such an action. So, it is a wait for the other shoe to drop situation. I hope it drops soon...
Best wishes to your mother and all who love her. I have my 91 year old mother living with me.
Qur'an 17:23-24. Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him and that you be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor. And out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility and say, "My Lord! Bestow on them Your Mercy even as they cherished me in childhood."
All the best
I'd prefer a big soft pillow held over my face than to live like that. It's not "love" that make people prolong the living of people in a horrid state, just their own selfish fear of death
It is challenging to submit yourself to someone else's care. But it is a gift to allow someone else to show they care. My mother is in her 15th year of dementia, the past 4 years in a nursing home. She has changed so many lives since she went to the home. Her Dr. told me that there is no medical reason for her to be alive. She seems to live on love alone. I used to ask my brother, a priest, why is that she can't just go to her rest. He said that perhaps her work here on earth is not done. She has not yet met the person she is supposed to help. Or perhaps her work is to show the world how her family cherishes her because of who she is, not what she does. She doesn't have to do anything to be worthy of love.