My mom's disappearing.
We spend the mornings teaching kindergarten. Online Kovid Kindergarten. I feed her breakfast and then we sit in the kitchen with my computer and she watches while I fake "teach" helping the real teacher I'm assisting. I don't feel too bad because all the kindergartners have their moms there with them too. I have to angle her out of the camera, but she's right there, and if you can see a tiny section of my arm moving, it's because I'm rubbing her back while she sits there with me.
On the days I'm teaching we move outside for the second few hours so she can move around and because who wants to sit in the kitchen all that time. I sit in front of the computer doing the math lesson which is kind of fun, it's all about being curious and less about actual math thank god. It's about noticing and wondering. My mom sweeps up leaves usually during this time, and sometimes sits down with nothing to do.
When school is over I make us lunch. If I don't pay attention to her like today, I decided to write instead, I had to write this Lewis and Clark ridiculous thing that has been in my head and if I'm not giving her focus she just gets less and less lucid. She needs interaction, but all of us are working on school or something. So she just sits there like a flower that is fading in the sun. Then by night at least tonight anyway, she is barely there, she's confused and bent over and this is my mom, what happened to her. She is fading away. Maybe it's because I was busy, without prompting and attention, or maybe it was just the way of the dementia day today.
When I put her to bed I get mad at myself for needing to write sometimes or do things that I need to do to stay alive, or connected to my own kids, or exercised. It feels weird to still be trying, to be trying to keep my feet under me and my head working out problems, and my heart feeling things and laughing. There's this person I'm caring for who is doing all the opposite things, maybe I have to see that it's her time to be doing the floating away things, I guess I just feel like it's not fair that you want to keep your mom. Not fair that you feel like you're trying to scoop her back with a slotted spoon and she's sliding through the holes, escaping she will not be caught, she is beyond my ability to keep.
It's not fair because we aren't conditioned to lose our moms, we are determined to keep, nurture, secure, provide shelter for, hold on to.
She isn't following any of the rules. It is a beautiful thing, if it wasn't mine, my mom. It's okay to watch things that don't matter to you your whole life, solid structural things, lift off and blow away in stages. It's only hard because it's her, and she asked me to be there, so she could feel safe to go.
Of course I have to be there.
It is a wicked thing, loving people. Vital people.
In my best moments I am able to just give the love, the back scratches, the humor, the soft pink shoes, the reminders, the I know where your bag is you don't have to worry support. I can give freely because I can see she needs it and I have it to give. In my worst moments is when I feel all of it for what it is. My mom is slowly leaving, having her brain eaten but her mannerisms are all here like she's tricking me.
She will hold my hand and she will laugh and she loves the horses. She accepts all hugs and she needs me.
I am just missing her and missing it all.
I have to get better at the watching it go, like dandelion cotton in the wind. I have to remember I'm getting the time to be with her, and she's showing me what she has left, and what it looks like to be her, and where she's going and how she's going. Stay curious and full of wonder, say the kindergartners, if you can hold your heart together for the whole show, says the Julie.
