I sat up late drinking a single-malt, then champagne, then single-malt again, thinking about my mom who we just wheeled into an assisted living facility.
She has dementia, or Alzheimer’s. I don’t know the difference, but whatever it is, it’s taken her.
So I spent late hours of the evening remembering things, not in a reminiscing sort of way but moreso with the principled tenacity of a stenographer.
Mom shoveling snow in her rubber boots
Mom faking a Norwegian accent while reading bedtime stories
Mom slamming a microwavable dish on top of my friend’s head
Mom wearing the sweaters I outgrew
I sifted through memories like old school papers. That’s another memory —
Mom sifting through old school papers upon my leaving for college (and leaving the state)
— I didn’t stay with a memory too long; that was the trick. If you stay too long, you can’t move on to the next one so easily, a nd I was looking for quantity, not quality. I could go back and revisit the memories later once I had them all cataloged for safekeeping.
Mom feigning wonder at my magic tricks
Mom clapping at my trumpet recital
Mom shushing me at church
Mom eating artichoke leaves while we watched the Muppets
It was serious work, a formidable project, like alphabetizing a life.
Mom opening a Christmas present
Mom scolding us for standing on the toilet to drink water out of the faucet
I knew my mom more than anyone else, lived with her longer than anyone else, saw her in all her moods, explained her to my friends, cleaned up the aftermath of her awkward behavior, rounded out her ill-fitting shapes, regained goodwill with humor, stayed with her through the divorce, gave her an adolescence by lending out mine, visited her from college, called her collect from college, waved to her in the graduation video, moved her to Montana, visited her in Montana, went with her to Glacier Park, walked at her pace, walked her routes, met the bank ladies, met the post office people, helped load her empty cranberry juice bottles into the pastor’s hatchback, cleaned her apartment, fetched things on the top shelf, dusted the memorabilia that adorns every surface, went after the scammers, changed her phone number, changed her daily routine (which I regret), bought her the TV she compliments every time I talk with her, sat with her on the deck and drank a beer while watching the sunset and listening to her tell her stories. If these moments were, indeed, files, I would put this one in a gold sparkly folder. She went through the same stories 3 or 4 times and I just sat there, leaning back on the two legs of my folding chair, wishing for the sun to never quite make it all the way over the horizon.
It was hard even then, but I didn’t realize how quickly she’d go downhill. Now, even some of those stories are gone. She walks around wide-eyed, being nice, but only because she’s confused. The doctors and nurses just saw her as a crazy old lady. It’s hard to see people seeing your mom as a crazy old lady.
Crazy or not, she did so much for me.
Mom working on shoe-box dioramas with me
Mom buying my favorite lunch meat
Mom leading the jump-for-heart jump-rope marathon at my school
Mom making sure I got good teachers
Mom making all my Halloween costumes
I worked at a near-frantic pace, sitting on the couch, no TV, no music, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling, closing my eyes.
Mom taking me to Chuck E Cheese
Mom encouraging me to rearrange my room
Mom making powdery dry lamb chops with mint jelly
Mom at Disney World
Mom at Riverside
Mom at Action Park
If these were real files, I’d have a thousand papercuts by now and my eyes would hurt from reading the tiny labels.
Mom making popcorn
Mom dressed as a leprechaun
Mom running down my bus to get me my lunch
I’d long run out of whiskey and champagne, empty glass on the sill.
It got to be about 2 am before I started dozing off between memories. Sadly my dreams didn’t give me anything good, just a dark pause between the images.
Mom making Shrinky Dinks
Mom yelling at my teacher
Mom opening a jar of peanut butter
[———————]
Mom picking us up from art class
Mom standing in line at the bank
[———————]
Mom taking me to the ER when I sliced my hand open
[———————]
Mom buying back-to-school supplies
For so long it was only the two of us. Dad moved out. Al moved out, the neighbors stopped inviting her on long walks, my parents’ friends pulled away.
We’d go get breakfast together. We’d do everything together, at first when I wanted to and then when I didn’t want to.
Those memories hurt the most: all those times in the teenage years when I actively and laboriously avoided her, ignored her, dismissed her, the pockets of time that should have a bunch more memories attached to them. But don’t.
As a college student, I used to drive 2.5 hours back to Connecticut to visit my friends and, though I was 18 houses away, I wouldn’t tell her.
And sometimes when she came home in the morning after working the graveyard shift, she’d come into the room and kiss me on the forehead, unaware that I’d just crawled into bed 5 minutes ago after a night of wildin’ out on the town. I’d concentrate on being as still as possible, hearing the door open, her footsteps, smelling her as she leaned in.
We were two people going through life together, largely without an instruction booklet. (Mom wasn’t one to care about such things.)
And now, only one of us can remember.
I’ve got my arms full of file folders, thousands of them, towering over my head, spilling onto the ground. And as I go to pick up the ones that slipped away, others fall out, they slide under the furniture, and the windows fly open letting in gusts of air, sending files everywhere, all over the room, blowing them open to reveal pages and pages and pages of our sacred duet, a work of art, a collaboration by two figures in lock step, at least for a while.
It is impossible to look at these pages, to look at this room, and not attempt to gather the melody.
So I wish for impossible things: a room big enough, a memory strong enough, and, as selfish as it seems, for the wind to stop blowing.