I was driving back from the gyno crying, I'm scared.
If my mom was dying that day, I was scared. To be on this earth without her. She ushered me in. Even though she's not doing much ushering these days, she's still my usher. Fall of the House of Usher.
I woke up hearing her terrible cough. She'd had a little cough for a few nights, but this one was like soup. I texted hospice at like 6 am. Saying I think she might have Covid. Or pneumonia.
We got some antibiotics. I know they take days to start working. It was that whole day, the day after Christmas, getting the oxygen tank out of the dusty garage. Trying to figure out how to use a nebulizer. Watching her glazed eyes and her gurgling breathing and jagged ineffective cough. This is not right.
We gave her all the meds, and the cough syrup that Nathan said after dude this is what rappers use to get wasted. I won't give her that shit again. She looked like a zombie. Hospice is a good racket but you have to really watch the meds. They overmedicate in an attempt to accidentally kill. I mean some of the meds are a little heavy bro. Be careful.
We brought oxygen in and she was so bad I couldn't see putting her in her room. We needed to be right next to her, she needed touch. So I just made a nice spot right where we were in the living room on the couch where she could sit up straight to sleep, and then I slept on the couch with my head near her and Emma, my support animal, slept with her head on my legs. We were a family octopus. I won't say we did a good job sleeping. We'd sleep, jar awake, sleep.
That next morning I had to go to the gyno and I woke up 8 minutes before I had to go. My mom sounded terrible, like the Titanic was sinking in her chest. Her eyes looked drowned. She looked glazed and so sick. Should I even leave the house for a minute? I crushed up all her pills and put it in jam like they said and spooned it in. If she can get two days of antibiotics in... I knew the antibiotics were the key.
No traffic after christmas, no one is in town. At the gyno everything seemed overwhite. Waiting in that little room in a paper gown my mind was so white. My mom might be dying. She's so sick. I did everything and I don't think it worked.
Driving home I was so scared. Having a mother is so ordinary. Hardly anything makes up for the unexplainable ordinary of loving a mom. Important. Ordinary.
Emma and I sat with her on the couch all day. She had to sit completely upright, on oxygen, buried in blankets. Nathan had figured out the nebulizer and kept bringing her treatments, putting on her mask, having her breath in medical fog on her face. By five o'clock that night my mom was suddenly soaking wet with sweat. And then talking. Like magic. Alert. Breathing. Chest clearer. We stared at her.
I think I just had a dress rehearsal for death, I told my friend Kurt. Good party game, he texted back. Death Notice.
I guess she tried it out and decided it wasn't the right way to go. I'm hoping for something less dramatic next time. If I could pick, I want to go out like Sally Field in Forrest Gump. Upstairs in a big farm house with a wraparound porch. Buried under the big tree in the yard by Tom Hanks.
The most vivid part of this whole intense horrible experience was the people who were there. Little Nathan. Little Emma. Barry.
Lifting my sweating mom out of her chair and all 4 of us staring at her shit all the way up her back to her neck. Like it stopped right before her hair. We had never seen anything like that. Nathan and Emma both held her up cause she had no strength, I cleaned it all off, Barry held the bag and we had a system. Emergency teamwork. We peeled off her stuff, we got her fresh stuff, she got all cleaned. It was the shock that made us work in high gear, without complaint. Once we were done, and she was down on the fresh safety of white protective pads on the couch, double diapered, we found it funny couldn't believe the disaster. It took four of us.
Then when she was sleeping there on oxygen on the couch and Emma is with me, and I felt like this might be the end of Moose, and Emma says you can cry momma. You're scary, you're so strong. I don't want to damage anyone, I said. I cry all the time. So I cried some. Because it is so scary and sad.
My little Emma slept right there, not doing anything but just sleeping right there with me and clogging up my legs with her love and her body. Support animal.
You don't know you need people until an emergency happens right in front of you and the people you need just show up and are there.
On Christmas morning, the morning before all this, Nandy came in where no one really comes in except Nathan, she came in to help get mom out of bed. Feed her a little, get her cleaned up and get her into the house. It's not much, it's just a regular day. Wrapping up a wet diaper. Taking some wet laundry. Saying good morning to an invalid who might not remember. It's a huge thing, to me. Such a nice Christmas present. Maybe all of us need more people to just show up and cheer us by walking into our regular routine and saying hey, hi. What can I do.
Especially after the distancing of Covid, all of us flattened and isolated. To see a friendly face is no longer small cheese.
On the way back from the gyno, I thought, scared, oh no I won't get to climb in bed with her at night and kiss her. I won't get to say I love you and hear her say it back. I just did that on Christmas night, one night ago. I didn't know that I would want one more night just like that, a dumb ordinary night.
My mom, who is better today, and now we think oxygen at night is helping her brain, she went to bed just now with the oxygen. I climbed in there and she was laughing. She said she loved me. She is strong as balls to fight pneumonia and win. I know of course dementia will win, it is still stalking her and tightening its noose.
But I learned that the faces I have loved and nurtured do fill you up, in hyper mode during emergencies, and in regular stealth mode during quiet times. Every minute counts, and no love lavished is ever a waste of time.
She says, learning.
