I was feeding my mom this morning and she was leaning over like a question mark, like a wave crashing down onto the rolling table, and this is new weakness. She put her hand onto the table and was almost resting her head and I kept saying
Mom
Sit up. Time to eat. Don't chew the straw. Mom. Lean back.
Love is so loud and mean. What looks like mean is just me trying to keep her the same trying to keep her upright and still here. She might not know what is going on but she still will try to sit up if I ask. There is still a desire to do right and be right and not let me down. She tries valiantly with hardly any circuits working. All the candles melting, she still is there because I still see her.
My hand is broken so Emma helps me get her back in bed. I never know if it's the medication or just the day or the disease but today and since pneumonia she is changed. She will still laugh if you kiss her. I had my hand on her cheek and she leaned to kiss my finger.
I am baffled by my brothers' ability to not be here, shed themselves, and be here. My kids who are decades younger and with way less history with my mom have shed themselves and stand up for her. They blow me away with their power to not run away, to stand in the middle of a dementia battleground in the middle of a pandemic and say let me help. I want to help you.
Maybe because of working on movies or raising 3 kids, I only know how to do things 1 million percent. Long hours, total immersion. It's the only way I can stay with it and feel it. And now with this horror that landed on my mom, my kids are, speechlessly, resilient as hell. They are unafraid even while being scared or overwhelmed. They barge right in and try and make order and then if all goes well, order pizza.
I would try to write a love letter to my kids for what they've done during this terrible time. I am crying through it because I see and feel and know their immense love. It is holding me solid. Maybe I poured it freely into them as babies and they pour it all back at my feet so I'm a solid gold pillar and can help my hurting mom. I cannot believe the things they're doing in the middle of this. Lilly surviving being isolated at 14. Nathan applying for grad school. Nathan! Who had no interest in school. Emma with her skyrocketing math brain and conversely, her electric couch blanket piloting snuggling ability. Barry cleaning out every toilet and solidly unafraid of the mess of things, people, life, death. Chaos is ok. oss.
I know I am in one million percent and I can see the mommarine is going down depths I can't reach, she's going away. I am shocked partly to find myself alone here without my brothers that shared this simple, young, loving mom with me when we were little in Santa Monica. I am still shocked by their lack of 100%. Of 1%. Because it's their mom, man. What kind of men are you, I think at night in the bunkroom with her sleeping nearby.
Loving someone takes you down these weird skinny tunnels your whole life and funnels you roughly different ways and it expands and then chokes you sometimes and all the while you're making this patchwork of memories and places and food and jokes and back scratches and then you add sickness later and invalidism and here is an intricate challenge but it is still your person. How many people do you get, really, that belong to you. A handful? I don't think you can be done. And maybe it doesn't matter, we all go back to the dirt and the stars so it doesn't matter, there's no scorecard, but love
is the only thing
even gravity knows this
