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All the Time in the World, Part 2

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All the Time in the World, Part 1

I try to remember my mother wasn’t always old. When George returned from Europe in 1946, he and Stellajoe could finally begin their life together. The world was their oyster, waiting to be discovered. . . . (Continue reading)

Part 2

December 2015

My mother’s hopes and dreams of the future are all far behind. She has no projects, save sorting her clothes—or thinking about sorting her clothes—and trying to record her mother’s story. During my childhood, she never took time for herself, developing her own interests and hobbies. “I don’t have time to read,” she would say, when my sisters and I urged her to go sit in the living room with our father after dinner so we could do cleanup without her telling us how to do it. I don’t remember ever seeing her read a book for pleasure. She dabbled with a variety of crafts in her 70s, but the idea of engaging in anything for shear pleasure wasn’t ingrained in her over a lifetime, so she didn’t stick with it then and she has nothing to sustain her now.

Her interests remain confined to the kitchen and obsessing over her health. And she can’t do much in the kitchen anymore.

“I was lazy,”or “worthless” she says when I ask how her day was. Relaxing is not okay, even when listening to a recorded book. She sets the kitchen timer for 20 minutes for a nap, as if she has something to do, places to go, people to see when she gets up. She berates herself when she sleeps through it, getting up two hours later. “I wasn’t asleep,” she tells me, as if sleeping is a personal failure.

I didn’t know that young woman, but now I know this old one better than I ever dreamed I would, and yet I can’t figure her out. After my father died, she reclaimed her fierceness, caring for herself with no one’s help. She never asked her daughters for assistance in making decisions. From across the country, I had no idea what she was up to. I read about studies, based on Maslow’s theory, showing that as people age they focus on being rather than doing. Not Mama; she still wants to do, and here I am doing it for her. I wonder if she is stingy with expressions of gratitude because she resents me for being able to do what she can’t. Telling me how to do things is a desperate attempt to stay in control; and to remind me—and herself—that she is competent.

Her dreams now are nightmares. She struggles to dress herself. She slowly stirs on the stove the maple-favored Malt-o-Meal I measure out for her the night before. She doesn’t go outside alone. She pushes her walker through the rooms of this house she has lived in for 55 years, running into furniture she once used as markers as she walked with fading vision through the rooms. She won’t move them or eliminate them to make space for her current needs; she can’t imagine anything other than the way it’s always been. The walker bumps through doorways not built for such conveyances. I smile as I see three-year-old Rebecca in my mind—who never walked but ran—racing on her short legs down the hall through the same doorway into the kitchen, running into the same jamb as she wheeled around the corner. It’s a house of ghosts, dead and alive.

My mother is utterly alone in spite of those of us walking this journey with her. Her love is gone again, forever this time. Hope is gone. All that is left is the waiting. Waiting to leave this good life she has had and has no more. And stubbornly hanging onto control, even when it doesn’t serve her. Maybe it’s what is unwittingly keeping her alive beyond her desire to be here.

This morning, as I transcribe another letter from 1944, I watch Mama over the video monitor, fumbling in her bedding to find her talking clock to see if it’s time to get up or still the middle of the night. Getting up for what? How does she keep going?

Someday I won’t climb mountains, travel alone, dream of the future, either. Like my mother, I am stubborn and independent. I have the opportunity right now to choose how that manifests itself. If I hope to be more grace-filled, more accepting of the way things are, kinder to those who care for me, I should start practicing. I probably won’t lose my vision, or be as anxiety-ridden; but whatever life throws at me, I hope I will be as brave as my mother.

“I have seen in you what courage can be when there is no hope.” May Sarton

It’s the Moments

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We do not remember days, we remember moments (Cesare Pavese, Italian writer).

My mother was passionate about her rice bags. Each evening—and afternoon when she began napping in her bed—regardless of the season, she’d microwave-heat one for her feet in spite of wearing socks, one for her knees, and one for her right arm on the window side of the bed. At eighty pounds, she was always cold. At least that’s the reason she gave, or that I assumed.

A few years ago, my daughter-in-law made fancy rice bags for Christmas gifts. The past two winters—Covid winters—I’ve become attached to mine. Yes, the foot of the bed is cold (and I do not wear socks), but it’s warm after about a minute and I move the bag up to hug in my arms. It’s not the cold, it’s the comfort. It’s like my tight-fitting fingerless gloves, the weight of the yoga blanket across my mid-section during savasana, the electric fireplace near my desk in the pre-dawn morning, the heated seat in my car, my hand knit throw across my legs on the sofa in the evening, my cat Lena snuggled close to my legs at night. It’s not about cold. It’s comforting. I don’t think my mother would have articulated that’s what the rice bags were for her, but now I wonder.

How she must have missed my father all those years. Never a pet person, she had nothing after he was gone. I suppose she had gotten used it—alone is not lonely, living with someone who is distant is. And I expect she was more lonely after I arrived on the scene. I find myself wishing I could have laid down beside her in bed, rather than impatiently waiting to get her settled in bed so I could retire to my quarters in the downstairs suite for the evening. I wish I could have provided the intimacy of my presence in a way I had not since I was a child. And now I’m wondering about rice bag comfort.

Notice I say I wish I “could” have, not I wish I “would” have. Subtle difference, but I am not so far removed from the reality of the years with her that I have forgotten what I was and was not capable of. Even had I thought to climb into bed her—had she even wanted me to—I could not have. If I could have, I would have, but we were not emotionally close enough. I did not have enough love. There, I said it.

This is why my memoir does not include the perspective of the look back. It would not be an accurate depiction of the days in the trenches, it would be too easy to change the story. My mother changed the story of the years she cared for her mother . . . but that’s another story. We do the best we can—and even with all the knowing that someday we will look back and grieve, it’s impossible to apply the future to the present. When we are so tired it’s impossible to really understand the surety, even, that some day this parent or this partner will be gone forever.

What we can do, though, is notice the moments: right now I am holding her hand, right now she is saying she loves me, right now I am describing the sunrise to her, right now she is telling me a story of my infancy. Right now there is a moment to cling to. Right now I am her rice bag. When I’m bashing myself for all I did not/could not do, the words I wrote then remind me: there were many moments; I was not a terrible daughter.