June 17: Admiration and Reverence, Broken Hip, "For My Mother"

Thomas Merton responds to his father's death . . .

The sorry business was all over.  And my mind made nothing of it.  There was nothing I seemed to be able to grasp.  Here was a man with a wonderful mind and a great talent and a great heart: and, what was more, he was the man who had brought me into the world, and had nourished me and cared for me and had shaped my soul and to whom I was bound by every possible kind of bond of affection and attachment and admiration and reverence:  killed by a growth on his brain.

Young Merton seems at a loss in this short passage.  I would have thought he would have gone on for several paragraphs, if not pages, when writing about the passing of his father.  But he sums up his reaction in the space of a few lines, as if even, so much later in his life, he is still unable to express the true measure of his loss.

Woke up again this morning to find a text message from my sister on my phone.  After her Monday middle-of-the-night voicemail about the death of my uncle, I was really anxious about reading the text.  But I did.  She was at the ER with my mother, who fell out of bed last night and was transported by ambulance there.  My mother fractured her hip trying to get out of bed.

My mother is 88 years old.  She'll be 89 on June 25.  She's been struggling with Alzheimer's for the last several years.  Always a force to be reckoned with, my mother's decline has been difficult to watch.  I imagine Thomas Merton felt the same watching his artist father fade away due to a brain tumor.  The mother I remember still emerges at moments, calls me by name, remembers I'm her son.  Those times now are fewer and fewer.  More often than not, I'm just that "nice man" who stops by to talk to her every once in a while.

I visited my mother's hospital room after I was done working this afternoon.  She was sleeping in her bed, curled up peacefully under her blankets.  I didn't wake her.  She'd been agitated and combative all last night and most of the day, according to my sister.  It was good to see that she was comfortable.  Not in pain.

Tomorrow afternoon, she will get a hip replacement.  The bone fractured right at the socket, which, if there is such a thing as a "good" broken hip, is a good one.  Easy to replace, although recovery will be long and hard.  I imagine she will have to go to a nursing home for rehabilitation, which, in the time of Covid-19, will mean there won't be any family allowed to see her.  All of the nursing homes in the area are locked down with visitor restrictions.

So, tonight, I am celebrating my mother's life.  Her strength and determination and love.  She was married to the same man for almost 70 years.  Raised nine children, one with Down's syndrome.  She buried two of those children.  All her life, she suffered with severe rheumatoid arthritis.  Every day she was in pain.  Yet, I never saw her complain.  She has a beautiful soprano voice and forced me to take piano lessons to calm my ADHD brain.  She was in the front row at every play, musical, and poetry reading that I was ever a part of. To me, she is, quite simply, a miracle.

And Saint Marty gives thanks that he's her son.

A poem for my mother . . .

For My Mother

by:  May Sarton

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

September 10: The Principal's Office, Billy Collins, "The Iron Bridge"

It's difficult to watch your parents age.  Even as an adult, I have a sense of security knowing that my parents are still around, in case I fall and skin my knee at the playground.  Or run into some bullies at work.  My mother was always the one who would march into the principal's office and set things right.

Like my sister with Down's syndrome, my mother has problems with her memory.  Most of the time, she just asks the same questions over and over and over.  She straightens and puts things away, but then she doesn't remember what she put away or where.  Last night, I was sitting in her living room, and my fifteen-year-old daughter was across the room, talking to my wife.  My mother leaned over to me and said, "Now, who is that girl over there?"

"That's my daughter, mom," I said.  "Your granddaughter." 

She laughed and nodded.  "Of course she is," she said.  "She's good looking just like her father."

These moments are happening more and more often.  When my sister from Washington state was visiting with her kids last year, our mother acted like Donald Trump at a Mexican border crossing.  She was ready to throw up a wall and deport everybody.  My sister from Washington was "that nice lady" at times and "why don't you leave me alone?" at others.

I've heard Alzheimer's described as "the long goodbye."  I don't think my mother has reached that stage yet.  She still remembers who I am.  But she sees me almost every day.  She also sees my daughter almost every day, as well, and my daughter is "that pretty girl" to her.

My mother is still my mother.  She's still strong and stubborn, rolling her eyes when my dad does something that irritates her.  And she still tries to take care of everybody around her.  One of the first things she always asks me when I come through the front door is "Are you hungry?" or "So how was work?"  She hasn't forgotten those mothering instincts.  And I think she's still prepared to march up to school for me any time I need her.

But Saint Marty hasn't been called to the principal's office in a long time.

The Iron Bridge

by:  Billy Collins

I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat and reflective this morning,
sky-blue and streaked with high clouds,
and the more I look at the water,
which is like a talking picture,
the more I think of 1902
when workmen in shirts and caps
riveted this iron bridge together
across a thin channel joining two lakes
where wildflowers blow along the shore now
and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.

1902--my mother was so tiny
she could have fit into one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,

the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.

And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and while I wait for him to pop up,
I picture him flying underwater with his strange wings,

as I picture you, my tiny mother,
who disappeared last year,
flying somewhere with your strange wings,
your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,
kicking deeper down into a lake
with no end or name, some boundless province of water.

September 10: Locusts, Down's Syndrome, Complex Innocence

In 1921 a Russian naturalist named Uvarov solved the mystery.  Locusts are grasshoppers:  they are the same animal.  Swarms of locusts are ordinary grasshoppers gone berserk.

Grasshoppers gone berserk.  Creatures transformed through drought or other natural calamity into something dangerous.  Great hordes of locusts swarming over farmland and field, pillaging and marauding like shoppers on Black Friday, leaving behind shreds and stalks.  Nature can be cruel.  Locusts and tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

I have a sister with Down's syndrome.  All my life, she was a loving presence.  Everybody loved her.  When I was in high school, the members of the football team loved her.  I never went to a game, whether it was homecoming or playoffs.  My classmates came to my house, picked up my sister, and brought her to the football games.  Like I said, everybody loved her.

As people with Down's syndrome get older, they can sometimes change.  Alzheimer's disease and dementia are fairly common.  There's a genetic link between Down's and Alzheimer's.  Over the last few years, my sister has become a different person.  She asks the same questions over and over.  Although she's always been stubborn, she was never mean about it.  Now, she will become downright physical if things don't go her way.  She's punched me on more than one occasion.

I'm not sure if that means that my sister is developing Alzheimer's.  She's certainly not the girl who went to high school football games with my friends.  It makes me a little sad.  Sometimes she's the sister I remember from my childhood, but, more and more often, she's belligerent and downright mean. 

People who are not around her on a daily basis don't recognize how different she is.  In small doses, she is still sweet and funny, hugging everybody, saying, "You know, I love you."  To those closest to her, however, she is just not the same.  Of course, I know she's still the sister who I grew up with, but I miss the simple innocence.  Her innocence now is more complex.

I love my sister.  It's tough to see her aging and changing.

Saint Marty prefers the grasshopper.

I just needed a good laugh . . .