It's not easy to die

I think about my mother, off and on during the day. It's easier than living with her.

When I lived with her I thought about her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I laid in my bed and worried about her. I worried that she was awake. I worried that if she was awake she would trip going down the stairs. I worried that she was taking too many pills. I worried that she wasn't taking enough of them. I worried that her blood sugar was too high. I worried that it was too low. I worried that she was too cold or too hot. I worried that she didn't have any food she liked in the house and would ask me to make a special trip to the store for her. I worried that she was going to ask me to call her doctor for her or the pharmacist. I worried when she didn't want to go to church. I worried when she went outside for a walk. I worried that I wasn't giving her enough attention. I worried that I got too mad at her too easily. I worried that I made her feel guilty.

I pulled up some pictures from last Thanksgiving and some of them were of me and some of them were of Mom. In one, we were smiling at the camera, our heads tilted together. I was wearing a hat that she'd knitted for me. By Christmas, when the next pictures were taken, I looked ten years older, faded. There are no pictures of us together.

She took a handful of her blood pressure pills on a Friday night in January. When I went in to check on her the next morning she was laying on her back in bed, her hands folded on her chest, like she'd been laid out for her funeral. I thought she was dead, and then I saw her chest rise and fall. She opened her eyes, sat up abruptly and said, "Marie? I tried to kill myself last night." I looked at her, alive and alert and I thought, "How? There's no blood. Her wrists look fine. Did she imagine it? Dream it?" and aloud I said, "It didn't work." "No," she said and got out of bed.

I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper

"Marie?"
"Hi, Mom."
"I'm calling to tell you something."
"Go ahead, Mom."
"Did you know I'm a lesbian?"
"Yep."
"I just wanted you to know."
"You've lived a good life."
"No, I haven't."
"Well, I forgive you."
"I was going to ask you to forgive me."
"I forgive you. I love you, Mom."
"Would you tell Mary?"
"Sure."
She hangs up.

Thanks

Talked with Mom late yesterday afternoon, after playing tennis with Steve and the boys, after listening to Oliver Twist on the headphones. Oliver had it rough.

She sounded pretty good. Told me that David had dropped by and had lunch with her. She said she'd gotten her hair shampooed and set the day before. "It's a little flat in the back where I slept on it," she said but I reassured her it didn't matter. She said her cousin Richard had stopped in earlier to say hello as well. "It was before my hair was done," she said.

She told me how she'd informed her mother that she was planning to marry her cousin Richard when she was a little girl. "My mother told me I couldn't because he was my cousin. She said we couldn't have had children then. I was mad at her."

"How old were you?"

"About ten."

"You were very opinionated back then, weren't you?"

"Always have been."

Later I told Steve that it was easier to bear conversations with my Mom when she's talking about hearing voices. Then I can say to myself that it's good she's in a nursing home where she's being cared for 24 hours a day. When she sounds so sane, like yesterday, it's harder to deal with. I feel like I should pack her up and move her out of there and in with me. I talk myself out of this, usually within minutes. I know that I can't watch her all the time. I know that she has more problems than I can handle. She told me that, once. "You couldn't handle me," she said. I felt bad and a little defiant, but I believe her now.

She said she was glad I'd called, that she loved me and then she said goodbye.

Onofrio speaks

I called her just now and she said she'd changed her mind about the flowers.

"You don't want me to cancel them?"

"No."

"It's nice to have something cheerful in the room," I said, and she agreed with me. After a few minutes listening to me tell her stories about my boys, she said she was waiting for the nurse to come back because she had to talk to her. The doctor was by the day before on his rounds and she said she'd been getting instructions from Dad's father again. He's been dead for fifty years, but Mom hears him talking to her.

"He says I'm only allowed to eat mashed potatoes and graham crackers and peanut butter and I can only drink tea."

"Why does he have so much say over you, Mom?"

"He says I'm being punished because I put your Dad in this place."

"Do you ever dream about Dad?"

"Oh, not lately. Last time I dreamed about him we were dancing. Your father loved to dance."

I tried to make the case that if Dad was dancing with Mom in her dreams then he was happy and had forgiven her, if she needed forgiving, but she wouldn't have any of it. "Heaven and Hell don't communicate with each other," she said, when I suggested that she ask Dad to intercede with his father on her behalf. And Onofrio, Dad's dad, is in Hell, so my mother says.

She said she'd cancelled her appointment to get a permanent today ("I'm afraid I'll have an allergic reaction to the chemicals,") but she thought maybe the stylist might have time to give her a shampoo and set. "It's nice to have someone play with your hair," I told her. Then she said she had to get ready for lunch, told me she loved me and said goodbye.

Mailing out

Sent a letter to my mother with some pictures in it of my daughter at college and one of my sons working on a school science project. I put the pictures in the envelope after writing on the backs of them, explaining what's going on in them, maybe too much. She's not stupid.

I try to send her four pictures a week. Sometimes I get my camera out and force myself to record something, anything, so that I have something to send to her. Today I found a picture on the internet of a snowman built out of Legos. I printed it in the corner of a sheet of paper and folded it up so that it made a greeting card. I was sending her Maxine cartoons but then I found them so annoying I decided she'd probably not like them either. Some crabby old woman making nasty remarks. Mom's already surrounded by those.

Still haven't responded to the letter from Mom's cousin. I feel as though anything that I say about Mom and her condition will just sound defensive. I don't want to be defensive. This cousin was Mom's favorite person in the whole world growing up and beyond. Her best friend. How can I tell her that Mom is in a nursing home? How can I admit to her that I couldn't take care of her best friend? Because that's what I'd have to tell her. I couldn't do it. I tried and I failed to provide a home for my mother.

Instead I keep sending these little peace offerings--letters, pictures, flowers--waiting for forgiveness. Which is dumb, because she can't forgive me and I shouldn't be waiting for it. She says she's being punished for having put my dad in a nursing home. I tell her it's not true, but she doesn't believe me. I encouraged her to put dad in a nursing home because I could see it was killing her to have to take care of him twenty four hours a day. It was the only way to save her. Now it's circled around again. Putting Mom in a nursing home seems like the only way to save me.

I'll try to call her today.

Motherland

I got a card yesterday from my mother's cousin. She'd had a phone call from Mom and it had upset her, this cousin, so she'd written to me, looking for explanations. She said in the card that she was worried that my Mom was thinking about ending her life. She was looking for reassurances.

I don't really know what to tell her. Mom seems okay on the phone sometimes. Other times she calls to tell me she never loved me and not to phone her anymore. "You kids were all conceived in lust, not love," she says. She tells me that she talks to Onofrio, my father's father, and that he's the devil and he tells her to do things, awful things, and sometimes she does them.

She used to live with me, right up until the day she took an overdose of her blood pressure medications. And then she was admitted to the psyche unit at the hospital and from there she went to a nursing home close to where she used to live. And now, she's still there, making phone calls to everyone on her Rolodex, telling them not to call her.

When I think about her, which is a lot less frequently than I did when she lived with me, I try to remind myself that she's among people who know her and that she's being cared for, fed and housed, at least, if not medicated. She won't take her pills anymore. Even though they might keep the voices away, keep Onofrio from tormenting her. She thinks they make her worse. How much worse can she get?

Guilt is pointless unless it moves you to do something. I keep feeling that I should do something for her, something more than calling her, sending her flowers, pictures, letters.

Sometimes I think that she would be better if she lived with me again. But I remember how it was and how I couldn't believe that she was seriously off her rocker until she took the overdose. And then I felt so much relief when the doctors recommended a nursing home. I felt like someone else was taking responsibility for her, finally. It was as though an elephant had been lifted off my back. And I didn't much care where the elephant ended up, just so it was somewhere else.

I'm a thousand miles away from her now. My brothers are in charge of her care. I keep hoping that she would be normal again. Sometimes she sounds that way on the phone. But if I keep her talking long enough she'll slip in something about her father-in-law or about her allergy to water or about how she can't eat anything.

Yesterday she called and left a message describing the last bunch of flowers that was delivered to her room. She sounded so happy, telling me the colors and what kinds there were. She called again later. "Don't send any more," she said. There were too many and there weren't enough vases. She still had some left over from the week before. I'll check again on Friday and see if she still means it.

Word game

My oldest son has a large vocabulary, which I love, except sometimes I don't know what he's talking about. "Don't worry. I won't do a meddycore job," he assures me, regarding his thank you notes to his aunts and uncles.

Funny how a little thing like the accent on the wrong syllable can completely throw off a person's understanding. When I figure out what my son is trying to say, I correct him. "It's mee-dee-O-ker," I tell him, showing my teeth on the E’s and stressing the third syllable. "Whatever," he says, shrugging.

I like that he's so comfortable trying out new words, especially since I'm such a coward about it. Sometimes in conversation I can see the opportunity coming up to use a new word but I'll be unsure about how to pronounce it. When the space to drop the word in actually happens, I'll substitute a more familiar word or phrase that conveys my meaning, but not exactly. It’s not the efficient, new word.

Once, when I was twelve and reading a Nancy Drew book, the word "antique" showed up in the story. I pronounced it "anti-cue" in my head. I remember being puzzled by it, but it didn't seem to have any bearing on whether or not Nancy recovered from being knocked unconscious and locked in a cellar by her villainous high school physics teacher, so I never looked it up. Fifteen years later I heard it used by someone in passing and finally, it clicked. "Oh, anTEEK!" I chirped, which brought me some weird looks but lots of personal satisfaction.

Thank goodness my son isn't hung up on whether or not he's got it right. "God is omni-SESS-ant," he says. "I think you mean, omNIscient," I say helpfully. "WhatEVER," he says, grinding his teeth.

"I think all the RESS-i-pants will like these, don't you, Mom?" he told me the next morning, showing me the progress he'd made on his thank you list. "ReCIPients, and yes, they will." "Aauughh! WHATEVER!"

I once corrected someone’s pronounciation of “harassment”. Annoyed, the speaker informed me that the polite thing to do when someone mispronounces a word is to mispronounce it yourself later in the conversation. But surely that would simply reinforce the wrong way to say the word and the next person they use it on may well doubt their intelligence.

Yesterday my son and I disagreed over the word "penalize." It's PEEnalize" I told him. "No, it's PENalize," he shot back. We looked it up and discovered we were both right. "But mine is listed first," I said smugly. "WHATEVER!" he snarled.

I worry that all my knee-jerk correcting will stifle his linguistic daring. What if, because of my need to have my kids be perfect, my darling child quits talking altogether? What if he stops trying out new words because he's afraid some lurker will spring out and smack down his fledgling attempts at elegant word usage?

Last week I bought him a dictionary and put it on his desk. But lately I've been wondering if maybe he's thinking he doesn't need to look things up when he's got an obsessive compulsive mother hanging on his every word.

Like today I heard him in the kitchen talking to his brother. "The next time I tell you to stop it will be quite a bit more veHEment," he warns. "VEEhement," I say from the next room. "STOP!" he yells. I look up and he's grinning. Who needs a dictionary when you’ve got Mom?