From Mindspillage
These come from blog posts I wrote in the days right after my mother died. Annette Walsh, née Corsi, 1958-2002
When I walked into the room, she couldn't tell who I was.
"If you want to see your mother before she dies, you'd better come home this weekend." I don't think I've ever been awakened so fully from a sound sleep before. I had planned to spend part of my spring break out and about, visiting people, coming back halfway through to visit Mom and family. I talked to her just a few days earlier, telling her about the band trip, that I was going to go out-of-town for break, talking about random things. I knew by then that she was having trouble getting out of bed, but she was still talking and eating and having company over as if she'd been merely indisposed with a stomach bug. "Have fun," she said, "and I'll see you when you get here." Thursday morning she asked for the phone when my uncle called, in tears, telling me that I needed to be home as soon as classes ended. I promised her I would be there and hung up, shaken.
It didn't hit me until midday. I had been trying to go to class; I had tests to make up, midterms left to take, so much left to do. At 11 I took off my shift in the orchestra library to go make up a test in Number Theory I'd missed while in Atlanta. There were two others in the little mathematics seminar room taking tests, both of whom I knew; I waved at sat down. Short answers... OK. Did I get the formula right for the Prime Number Theorem? Hm... better plug a few numbers in later and see if they make sense; leave that one blank for now. Now, prove the following...
Blank. Euclid's Lemma is gone and so is my composure. Why am I sitting here doing this? I can't do this now. I can't. I can't. What am I doing here? Oh, no, what am I doing here, how can I sit here, my mother is dying. The other two are still concentrating intently on their tests. I am the closest to the back of the room; I turn to the back wall as if studying the informational grad school posters intently as hot silent tears douse my paper. I can't do this. I can't do this. I have to go home. I can't get up. I can't get up looking red and tearing and splotchy or I'll have to explain myself later to these two people who know me just well enough that they would be expected to inquire. Just breathe a little, I tell myself, rubbing my eyes to mop the tears. It could have been long enough for me to have taken the test, right? It wasn't a very long one... damn it, I'm getting up. I can't do this. My hair shields my face as I cross the hall to the professor's office.
"Hari," I say, walking in after waiting what seemed days while he patiently explained if-then to a struggling CS100 student, "I can't finish this. I've gone blank. Wait, let me explain... it's not that I blanked out, it's why... " He was starting to tell me it was OK right there, that I could finish it later; he knew I hadn't had a chance to meet with him and ask questions since I returned from the band trip, that I was only taking it then because I hadn't any other time before break, but I shook my head and continued. "... Let me explain. I've blanked out. I got a call this morning..." and my voice cracks, and I can't finish.
"It's OK, it's OK, you don't have to explain."
"No, I want to..." And I do -- I don't want to let him down precisely because he wouldn't think I had done anything of the sort. "Let me try again. I got a call this morning, and my uncle said..." Which is as far as I get. A couple more attempts convince me that it's futile. "Wait, let me write it." My hand shakes, but I get the words out: I just found out that I need to go home and see my mother before she dies. It's the first I've said it to anyone. I was trying not to mention it, to just keep going to class until break, because what if I got there and she hung on for months more and I was making a big fuss for nothing? (Yes, I realize how silly this looks when I write it now.) Getting the words out makes it real... if I don't say anything, and no one else says anything, maybe it isn't really happening, but by talking about it I've acknowledged that yes, this is part of my world.
He looks at me for a long second and tells me, "Don't worry about this. Don't worry about your classes. You need to go home."
I nod. "I need to go home. I just blanked out and it just hit me, I got the call this morning and it just hit me, not until now... (sniff)...not until now, and I was trying to go to class because I have so many things to make up and... and I need to go home." You need to go home, he echoes, go on, I understand, don't worry about anything, go home and be with your family. I thank him and head out. Who should I pass in the hall but Carlos, a good friend and "partner in crime" (do remind me to tell you about the trip back from Atlanta, even if I spare you the rest of the travelogue) in the orchestra library. He sees me crying; I debate for a second and decide to tell him, too. I choke up here, too; he can barely understand me, but I suppose I got it out well enough to get the gist across, because he hugs me and sends me off wishing us all the best.
I get back to my room and call my uncle. He says he will pick me up at 5. I tie up a few loose ends and post my quick blog. He arrives at 2:30. I haven’t even had time to pack a bag, much less do laundry; I grab a collection of cleanish clothes, stuff them into a bag, and we’re off.
The last time I saw my mother was the middle of January, at the end of winter vacation. When I walked into the room, she couldn’t even tell who I was.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Her eyes were glassy and bugged-out, her skin white and flecked with sores, her limbs withered and trembling. The last time I saw her, you would never have known she was sick if she hadn’t shaved her head. Thursday it looked like a different person… but the eyes, the face, were hers. They say your life flashes before your eyes when death is near; whatever flashed through my mother’s eyes at that moment was something from her past she’d spent most of her life trying to deal with. Her mother and her therapist were there, holding her hands, assuring her that she was safe, it was OK, everyone there loved her and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. She heard the words, at least, but I don’t think she knew who was saying them, where she was, what was happening.
“Look, it’s Tommy and Kathleen. They’re here to see you.” She looked dazedly in our direction, uncomprehending, and kept on repeating her statement, like a mantra. I told her I was here, that I loved her. I didn’t know what else to say. And then I held on to my uncle and cried.
It figures that I would arrive then. That would be the worst seizure she had; shortly thereafter the nurse upped her dosage of morphine and prescribed Ativan to ease the seizures and anxiety. In a way it was good -- nothing I saw afterward would be worse than that -- but I was shocked. How long had she been like that? Was this how she was going to be until the end? And how were we going to be able to take it when even her therapist looked as if he needed one himself?
(Note of explanation: did I ever mention here that my mother was multiple? I doubt it... She found out about eight years ago that she had multiple personality disorder. Yes, I had an interesting childhood. She might never have known if she hadn’t gone to see a therapist who did hypnosis to help her with weight loss who turned out to be better than she could ever have planned on at helping her work through her mental illness… but for years later she kept teasing him that he must not be very good because she still hadn’t lost any weight.)
I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d died right then. Instead, a few minutes later, she came out of it, lucid, as if it had never happened. A few minutes later, everyone else left the room and gave me some time alone with Mom. She had been waiting for me; one of the few things she talked about having left to look forward to was seeing me again. What do you say? She seemed now alive enough that last words seemed out-of-place... and telling last wishes and last thoughts meant that I thought this would be the last time I ever got to talk to her. Well, maybe it was.
I didn't expect to have to say this so soon... I didn't really have anything prepared to say. But there was nothing much that needed to be said... no longtime grudges, nothing I'd been holding back. I told her how things were going, what my plans for the summer were, what I had been doing in Atlanta. And then: "I'm going to be OK, Mom. I love you."
"One of these days, when you have children of your own, you'll know how much I love you."
That was the last lucid conversation I had with her... there were others, but shortly afterward the pain got worse and she was on so much morphine she couldn't have spoken coherently even if her body wasn't shutting down.
I don't think any of us got much sleep Thursday night, despite the nurse's aide coming to take care of Mom until morning. Friday was a constant stream of relatives and friends coming in, everyone saying their goodbyes, last words. I know she heard it -- you could see comprehension on her face -- but she was too weak and too drugged to respond with more than perhaps a nod, a few slurred phrases. Saturday it was just the family, again... no one wanted to leave her side, to be gone when she passed: we were amazed she'd lasted this long. Early that evening my grandmother calls us in. "She's gasping for breath."
I come in to see her laboring for breath and get one last "I love you." She dies with me holding her hand.
I love you, Mom.
The night Mom died, my friend Maryam came to stay over with me.
The whole night had involved calling friends and relatives who hadn't yet heard. Whenever I thought I had cried myself out, I would break the news to the next person, who would break down in tears, causing me to follow suit. How much fluid does one lose in each good cry? I can't possibly have had that much water that day, that week, can I? I'm amazed the phone wasn't waterlogged by the time she arrived. I'd stopped crying for my own sorrow... but with every call I was crying for the sorrow the person on the other end was feeling as well.
Cue Maryam, my friend for about eight years now. We retreat into the guest room to talk in private while about eight people of various relation to me are gathered in the living room. "I wonder how many little lumps there are on that popcorn ceiling..." The best way to get a good estimate without actually counting, we decide, is to take a sample over a certain area. But should the sample contain a bit of the edge or no? See, the lumps are more closely spaced around the edges, which would throw off the numbers, but then there are no lumps where the ceiling was smoothed over to install the ceiling fan. Does this eventually balance out? We spend half an hour debating the intricacies of popcorn ceiling lump-counting before our interest in it is exhausted.
I feel vaguely guilty about not coming out and joining the family... but Maryam and I are nerding ourselves into hysterics. Not four hours have passed since she died and we have decided between giggles that you cannot have brunch unless you have an even number of meals during the day. It seems almost like sacrilege to be enjoying myself. Shouldn't I be too broken up to do anything but mourn the death of my mother? Strange how guilt invades even when you know it is irrational. For one thing, I had already cried myself out... for another, Mom wouldn't have wanted me to. She would've been there herself, whispering terrible jokes and bits of black humor into my ear, making me giggle at her own funeral...
I wrapped Mom's feather boa—her favorite accessory—around my shoulders. We kept on laughing.