Every day wherever I am my mom is there.
I drag her everywhere I go, she's on wheels and she doesn't like being moved but she goes because she can't sit alone why sit alone if you have a family.
Every day has its own different rhythm and all of them have this weird silence where my mom used to be. It's been ten months now. A year ago she could use the phone. She asked me to come. I didn't know this wave of her was about to hit me and we'd both be drowning.
She has not been without company. When I go for a ride I leave her in the sun if it's nice weather, on the comfy lounge chair outside because she doesn't like tv, she likes the air and the birds and the dogs. She has lost all or most understanding of what is going on, although she knows it's all happening and that we're all working around her. She sometimes says I'm sorry you guys when we set her down in bed or her chair. She always says I love you.
Tonight I was watching Woman of the Year on TMC because I too hate to sit down unless there's no other place or thing to do outside. But the black and white and visual poetry of the movie made it feel like it's okay to have your mom moaning over in the fat chair next to you. Even though I've given her juice and food and ice cream (maybe she has a stomach ache) (is she dying) I've felt so bad ever since I had a heating pad on her back and later saw that it hadn't turned off and burned a blister bubble onto her skin. Nathan said oh yeah she can't tell us.
I hadn't thought that she can't tell us.
I'm putting her to bed at night tonight and she doesn't seem right, she seems in pain or uncomfortable and I suddenly get scared
don't leave me with these people
(like when emma left on the train and I thought
don't go where are you going)
mom, you are my people
why are you broken
she keeps coming to me broken
Divorced, broken. Drunk, broken. Divorced again, broken. Lyme disease, broken. Now dementia, broken. She's like Pinocchio, at her worst, and I am Gepetto.
I was thinking wow that's so much pain, how am I not awash in pain, I was her Gilligan all these years, and then tried to deflect all the pain on various terrible relationships of my own (i made them terrible) but no wonder because
mom love is everything
I have to keep her from falling apart
that is a young, old feeling
This one I'm going to lose, paco
I was feeling trapped, feeding her lunch outside today, that feeling goes over you because the care is so great a responsibility. Then tonight when I was putting her to bed I was thinking this is only going to get worse and then end and there will be relief but there will also be no mom
so maybe her eating lunch sitting with me is not my tragic taking care of her, but her being there for me
the best she can do, still being there, minding me
doing me a favor, still being my mom, letting me still have her, burden and butterfly, both
I don't think love is apart from pain, faking love is easy but the real stuff is TNT (not the network)
I passed a sign on the horses the other day at a construction site, it said HaulAway and that's her name, Bonnie Hollaway.
I don't want her to go, I told the horses tonight in the dark crying barefoot standing in dust. Dewey breathed on my head. Who am I without her
Who are you without apples, Dewey is musing
B would say it is 100 billion percent worth it to love someone and not understand any of it at all
