It’s been almost a week since I’ve seen my mother. Her nursing home is in lockup due to the Coronavirus, and I’m doing stay-at-home.
Mama fell out of bed in the nursing home a couple of weeks ago and gashed her head. I got a middle-of-the-night call. Since she’s in hospice, I had to ok sending her to the ER.
When I got to the hospital, they were giving her locals to numb the spot before they put in stitches. My mama has always been a stiff-upper-lip stoic, the daughter of people who grew up on the frontier, a survivor of the Great Depression and a world war.
She was and always has been tough about things that melt me right down. But now that dementia has done its work, she’s easily upset and frightened. I don’t think she had any idea who these people were, why she was there or what they were doing to her.
I could hear her terrified screaming all the way down the hall as I hot-footed it to her room. When I got there, I reached under the doctor’s arms and took her hands in mine and held them.
“It’s alright.” I said. “It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s alright.”
She calmed down immediately and the docs did their work.
After they finished with the stitches, they took her for a cat scan. The results showed that Mama has had a major stroke. I wasn’t surprised by this. In a way, I was relieved to know.
Her downturn a few months ago when she stopped eating and the dementia got so much worse was when I think it happened. The doctor in the hospital clearly thought Mama is a short-timer and so did I.
We got her back to the nursing home and I began what I can only call my vigil. That’s when I told you that I wouldn’t be blogging for a while.
The reason I backed away from blogging wasn’t so much time, even though I was spending a lot of time at the nursing home. It was emotional strength. I just didn’t have enough to deal with the world’s woes and my own simultaneously, at least not for a while.
My mama is 94. She doesn’t know who I am most of the time. But still, I grieved. I had several hard days of grieving.
Then, I gave her to God and His love. Mama isn’t dying. She’s moving toward her rebirth into eternal life. What waits for her on the other side is going to be great.
There were days when she was almost board-like in her lack of response to me. Her eyes were half dead, without the spark of interaction that people normally have. She threw food at the aides, lost down to 85 pounds, screeched and screamed, and talked to her mother and grandmother while looking up as if they were standing in front of her. I began to pray that she would go, that God would take her home.
But still, she lingered. I was baffled. Why wasn’t she going? I told her that she could go, that she didn’t have to stay for me, that I would be ok. I didn’t understand why she was hanging on like this.
I prayed and thought and finally came to the conclusion that God was doing what God does and that it was good even if I couldn’t see the goodness of it right now. Every day we live has purpose. We may not see it, but that’s ok. He sees it and He intends it. We can trust that, which is what I decided to do. I’m going to trust Him and not worry about His timing. He knows what He’s doing.
I guess that was another level of giving her over to Him. Walking Mama home isn’t just a matter of letting go of her, it’s also a matter of accepting that her leave taking is working according to eternal timing and that is good and right and as it should be. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to take care of her and trust as we ride this out together.
I’m not sure why, but God gave us one of His little miracles last week. Mama suddenly, for no reason that I know, roused from her stupor and came back a bit. I don’t mean that she took up tap dancing.
But suddenly, out of the blue, she knew me. I walked in to find Mama watching a 1950s tv western called Gun Smoke. Gun Smoke is an old fav of hers. I sat down next to her and she talked to me about Matt Dillon, Doc and Kitty.
Far more important to me, she recognized me. She was talking to me, not just jabbering meaninglessly. After a few moments, she drifted. She forgot who I was and lapsed off into gibberish.
The second time, I walked into her room late at night, after she was usually asleep. I was just making a quick visit, checking on her.
She was awake. She held out her arms and exclaimed “My baby!”
I got into bed with her that night and cuddled her. I kissed her and talked to her and she sort of purred with happiness.
The next day they closed the nursing home.
I’ve been praying that Mama will not die alone. It bothers me a lot that I can’t be there with her. It’s where I want to be.
But I didn’t make this virus and I don’t make the rules. Even if I’m not there, her angels are with her, and Jesus and His mother are there.
She’s been seeing and talking to her mother and grandmother for a while now. I don’t know, but I believe they are nearby.
She’s not alone.
Back when she was so wooden, so utterly blank, when she looked at me as if I was an object, I realized something that, while it doesn’t matter all that much in the ways of the world, matters a lot to me. It’s not important if she knows who I am. It’s wonderful when she does. But when she doesn’t, my reality doesn’t change. She may not know who I am, but I know who she is.
That, in the final analysis, is all that matters.
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