Mom’s Last Year
An excerpt from my memoir “Your Mother”
I’m visiting Mom in the nursing home today. I had a funny feeling last night, a premonition I should go. It’s been a while, almost three years. She’s in a locked wing for dementia patients. I don’t like visiting her. It makes me mad, and it feels pointless.
“I’ll go with you,” my husband Brian says.
“Okay, you don’t have to…”
“No, it’s ok. I will come.”
“Thank you.” I say, feeling sad and weird and guilty for having problems. For having a sick mother. A sick mother I don’t like to visit. For needing someone to come with me because it’s so unbearable I don’t want to go alone.
Brian remembers Mom. He met her before she got “bad.” Mom used to hang out with me and my friends. She sat with us, had a beer, and shared a smoke. We talked about music and books, and she read our tarot cards. She was fun and silly, always lighthearted, and optimistic. She listened when we talked to her, gave thoughtful feedback, and taught us something new.
I used to bring my kids to see Mom before COVID hit. Back then, she was tolerable, she sat on her bed and stared right through us. Sometimes, she looked like she was concentrating, as if trying to remember who we were. Then she got up and walked around the room. She headed toward the door, and I steered her back to her bed and sat her down.
My son Eddie hated visiting Mom. He walked through the halls with his nose tucked in his shirt.
“Take your face out of your shirt, Eddie. That’s rude.” I said.
“It smells like pee, Mom!”
“Ugh, I know. I’m sorry, honey, but try not to be so obvious. Some of the people that live here can’t help it. How would you feel if someone came into your room and made a face that it smelled?”
We walked down the halls, bombarded by scents of sickness and sterilizer, body odor, and cafeteria food, past the old man drooling in his wheelchair half asleep, past the old lady who gave us a big childlike smile.
Once we arrived at Mom’s room, time began to crawl. Half an hour is reasonable, I told myself, but when I checked the time, only three minutes had passed.
Eddie and I heard people in the hall, patients yelling,
“Help!” and,
“Get me out of here!”
We heard guttural calls and heartbroken wails.
Mom’s neighbor stopped by and told us she was late for the train. She kept asking when the train was coming, worried she might be late for her sister. She sounded happy and excited to see her again.
My younger sister Layann was little when Mom left. She barely remembers her when she was a “good” Mom, but Layann visits her a lot lately. She sent me videos of her visits with Mom during my COVID hiatus.
I told Layann to stop. The videos made me uncomfortable. I was disturbed by how fast Mom was deteriorating. I didn’t think it was right for Mom to be recorded this way, for these moments to be frozen and solidified on her phone, for her demise to be preserved on the internet forever. How could I forget these videos when they were more vivid than my actual visits. My brain protected me from bad memories, I easily forgot them, sometimes. But watching those recordings, knowing there was some tangible evidence out there, even though the cloud was not physically real, made it that much harder to forget. I didn’t want to remember her this way. I had pictures. I was living on memories. I told stories about her to my children, Eddie and Selene, telling them about their Grandmom. I told them happy things, funny things, good things only.
In the videos, Mom sat in a wheelchair making unintelligible noises. She wasn’t there, in her body; she wasn’t herself. She had left her body behind.
I had no desire to visit her. I was mad. I was mad she let it get this bad. I was angry she left without a resolution, without an explanation. I was mad at her for the mother she was and the mother she wasn’t. I was a mother now, and my anger grew by the day. The monotonous tasks I did for my children triggered memories of my childhood, and I relived her chaotic neglect. It made me resentful. I would never leave my children. I could never do what she did.
I did not bring my children to visit today, they were at school. Mom was much worse according to the last video I saw, and I didn’t want to upset the kids.
Brian and I took a ride to the nursing home. He drove, I was too nervous.
As we walked through the halls, I remembered how to get to her room, make a left, then down three hallways, all the way to the locked double doors. The receptionist at the front desk gave me the code *567, but it was the same code they used three years ago. I let myself in and looked in her room, but she wasn’t there.
My first thought was always, What if she’s dead?
We walked down the hall until we saw Didi, Mom’s nurse. An older Jamaican woman who looked like she was the one who should have been sitting down and receiving care. The nursing home was mostly Black women taking care of elderly white people. I always felt guilty Didi was taking care of my mom. She was doing the job I didn’t want to do, feeding her, changing her, and being patient with her tantrums.
Didi called Mom her baby. “Baby Laura,” she said.
“Hi Didi, I’m looking for Laura McCabe.”
“Wow, been too long I don’t see you! Your mom is always asking about her daughters. She is eating now. Come, come with me, come to this room. I will bring her so you can visit.”
Didi always commented on how I never visited, but she didn’t know who Mom was before she got sick. Didi had no idea how Mom ended up here, alone. She probably thought I was another careless, self-centered American letting her parent rot in a nursing home.
Didi walked us to an empty room with two metal folding chairs. I didn’t sit down, neither did Brian. Everything in the nursing home was dusty and dirty; the floors, the chairs, and that smell clung to everything.
Didi wheeled Mom into the room speaking loudly in her ear so she could hear.
“Laura, look who is here to see you! Your daughter is here!”
Didi locked the brakes on Mom’s wheelchair with her foot and left us alone with her. Mom’s body was stiff, her head leaned backward, and she looked around with her mouth open, her breath, her teeth, that smell. Mom made sounds, first happy and high pitched, smiling. Then she started to hum, at first humming steadily.
“Hhmmm hmmm.” Then it changed pitch, sounding like a song.
“Hhmm Hhaaa hhmmm hhhiii hhmmm whoooo.”
She called out, “Ahhh. Ahhhh,” in short loud yells.
Mom was starting to feel pain. I didn’t know if it was physical or emotional.
Her yells turned into wails, and she started to cry. After crying for a minute, she became quiet. Next there was a moment of calm, and the cycle repeated itself.
I opened my hands and prayed for her. I recited Surah Al Ikhlas and Surah Al Fatiha three times each. I rubbed my hands over her head, face, and down her shoulders. I hugged her. It was bittersweet to feel her skin, to hold her body. It had been so long since I visited, and even longer since we gave each other a real hug. Her skin felt the same, her face, so familiar yet so distant. I felt bad for being mad at her for so long. She was the same as she had always been, helpless, childlike, scared, oblivious. I got close to her face and yelled in her ear, hoping she could hear me, sense me, recognize my voice.
“Hi, Mom! Hi, Mom! It’s Leila! Your daughter! I love you! Hi, Mom! It’s Leila! I love you!”
I didn’t know what else to say.
