Mother’s
Day, May 8, 2011
Dear
Jonathan,
Thank you so much for the WikiLeaks
release confirming me as the World’s Best Mom Born after 1921. I’d been focusing so much on the World’s Best
Mom Born in 1921 that I’d forgotten I
was a mother too!
I can remember when her life was so
full that one year when we called to see what she’d like to do on Mother’s Day,
she already had plans! She changed those
plans, which were with the friends she’s now turning away most days, telling
them they’ve got to get out quick because she doesn’t want them to get hurt by
the demons in the place.
We knew she might have a day like
that today. But we still had hope and a
Plan A and a Plan B. I reserved the
beautiful room in Aegis that looks out on the garden. Remember how she said in her Advance Health
Care Directive that if she ever had to live in a care facility, she wanted to
spend as much time outdoor as possible?
Most days she’s too frightened to go even around the corner. So we had a Plan B—the dining room where she
usually has her meals if she’s willing to leave her room.
We were going to include Kay and Ada
too in case their families didn’t come for them. Kay can be civil. Just a couple of days ago when I came to
visit, Mom was talking to her in a really sweet, soothing way, as if Mom were
her counselor, which Mom sometimes believes she is. She seems to think she works at Aegis, and I
think she wonders when her work day will end so she can go home.
Anyway, Javier and I got there
before Kathy and Suzy, and Mom was still in her nightgown and without her
teeth. She keeps losing them, and since
they cost $4000, the staff has suggested that we not replace them until Mom is
in a less agitated state. Last week she
broke the glass of two emergency fire extinguishers. But that was when she was on Seroquel, and
they’ve taken her off that. Now it’s
Zyprexa and Ativan.
I’d brought vases as well as flowers
for both Mom and Kay, but Kay wasn’t in the room, and Mom said this wasn’t a
good day for us to come because she was going to be executed.
Of course, we gave up on the idea of
the garden dining room, but we did set up a pretty table for her in what they
call the Recollection/Memories section (not specifying that they mean long-term
memory and recollections from long ago.)
“Just
come and take a look,” I said. “And if
you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to.”
Suzy
and Kathy had set up a long table on one side of the dining room—the side the
farthest away from the corner where Mom plays the piano.
“Oh,
hell!” Mom said when she saw the pretty spread.
“Don’t you see? It’s all been
poisoned.”
“Mom,
you’re just having a nightmare,” Suzy told her, and she got her to sit down.
“I’m
going to have to eat it all. I don’t
want you to get poisoned!” Mom said.
She
took the ice cream scoop from the carton and started shoveling the ice cream in
her mouth. Then she reached for the cake
and started slashing it.
The
Aegis staff, always gentle and patient, came to her.
“It’s
all been poisoned,” Mom said, standing.
She turned to the other residents in the room and said, “I have an
announcement. Don’t eat the food. It’s all been poisoned.”
The
Aegis staff calmly walked her back into her room, and then, seeing that none of
the poisoned food could really be salvaged for the others or for Mom in a
better frame of mind, Kathy and Suzy dumped all of the ice cream and cake into
the garbage can.
“I wish I were dead,” Mom told me.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mom,
because we love you so much.”
She’s terrified of being killed and
yet she really wishes she were dead.
I thought of that John Donne poem we talked about with Mom that Mother’s
Day you and I saw W;t at the
ACT.
“And death shall be no more; death,
thou shalt die.”
Mom knew why the punctuation
mattered. Just how much pause was there
between death and the death of death? I was trying to remember why she hadn’t
seen the play with us, and then I remembered that she’d already gotten tickets
to see it in Ashland with friends—the friends she’s now turning away. That’s one of the things that makes this so
agonizing. We thought we’d be able to
comfort her by visiting her so she would know she hadn’t been forgotten, but
her state of mind cannot take visitors.
John Donne may be right that death
won’t last. But right now Mom makes me
think more of Dylan Thomas. “I will not
go gentle into that good night.” But
it’s not a good night. It’s a nightmare.
I know what you say. The fact that her life has ended up this way
doesn’t negate all the wonderful years when she was a model of how to live life
fully. But she used to quote that
saying, “Count no man happy until the end is known.” I wonder who said that. The Best Mom Born in 1921 would know or would
have known.
Oh, but I don’t want to end my
letter this way. I much prefer the
beginning of that New York Times
article: “In what may be the most
sensational release yet by WikiLeaks, the organization has produced a new cache
of documents that includes a United Nations report confirming that Tina Martin
is the World’s Best Mom (born after 1921).
Now we’ll start planning Mom’s 90th
birthday celebration and hope that when the end is known, we can count her
happy.
Love,
Mom
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