Remembering Mary
This is Mary’s Flower. A plate-sized red hibiscus that bloomed and stood guard in front of her front door the day she left us. I took this photo to commemorate her home-going and it will remain my phone’s screensaver as a reminder of the beauty and grace that was my mom.
The force of Mary’s personality could be felt in any room, and in death she left no flower unfurled. Her radiant spirit freed at last had brushed past this bud on her way out for the last time, and her boundless energy burst it into bloom.
It stood like a faithful centurion on the bush for over a week, way past the normal life of a hibiscus in bloom. I could feel a human-like emotion and a sweet sadness in that face like an old friend grieving our loss along with us. If it had arms it would have enveloped us in a warm embrace like a soft red cashmere sweater.
But my mother was not a hugger. She showed her love through sacrifice and most of all through cooking. I miss her everyday. I miss that I won’t have her home cooked dinners any longer. No family gatherings to look forward to at her condo in Alhambra; no more holiday outings to schedule with her. Most of all I miss her strength, and her stubborn insistence on being right.
Sadly, it was her loss of certainty that ultimately undid her. As her mind began to unravel she was diagnosed with dementia because of her age — she was 78 when it started — but we her children knew better. She had been an undiagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar all of her life. And now, our mother was having a full-blown psychotic mental breakdown unlike anything we’d ever experienced.
We watched in horror and helplessness as she grew irrationally angry and delusional over several months. It was a slow downhill spiral that started with forgetfulness and disintegrated into confusion paranoia and delusion. The phone calls in the night, the ranting out the windows, the bogeymen she heard lurking in the parking lot. Two stints in the psych ward landed her in a lock-down facility which nearly broke her. And us.
She needed care and protection, and ultimately antipsychotic medication. Lots of it to keep her from wandering off in the night or screaming at unseen ghosts. The voices in her head were telling her terrible things and no one could convince her they weren’t real.
Nothing is worse than the pain and guilt of being forced to make that difficult decision to lock someone up you love, or from her perspective, the feeling of betrayed by your own family. Thankfully the meds helped a lot. Mary’s delusions were now manageable, and over two years she learned to keep the voices to herself even though they never truly left.
My oldest sister gave up her independence and moved in with our mom and became daily medication enforcer and night guard. But one morning — Columbus Day no less — she found that the intrepid explorer that was our mother had set sail to a New World. We laid her ashes to rest in a place surrounded by hills and the beautiful roses that she so loved, and hope she found peace at last returning to her homeland in Taiwan — the green green island of heaven?
