Mom is not doing well
I was getting ready to call mom. I kept falling asleep before I could call. We kept having to get ready for visitors even as we’re renovating, doing most of the work ourselves. All the physical work has me tired at the end of the day. I wake thinking I’ll definitely call her today and then then K texts, she has a cold, talking is hard, she’s out of breath.
When I finally do call there is no answer until the text from K comes, I’m taking her to the ER. She cannot catch her breath to get from the parking lot into the hospital so they bring her in on a gurney with oxygen and she stabilizes. K texts me through the night, updating me.
Not COVID, but pneumonia.
Heartbeat irregular, all over the place
Not a heart attack
Will check for blood clots
They take a blood draw and after four hours her heartbeat regulates itself again. After 15 hours lying down she is now coughing a lot. K is frustrated hat the admitting process can take so long.
K texts me, Mom says she told God if it’s time to be reunited with her sweetheart she’s ready. We both cry at that.
Is it that bad, I text. It is, K responds.
When her breathing is stabilized I tell K, Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m sorry for not calling, I’ll talk to her soon.
I write mom an email- I’ve been doing that, since she started sharing some of her family history research with me. I sent her a. Pop up card featuring a tree with fall foliage. Happy fall, I wrote on the insert, picturing the little changes the house will be going through to celebrate autumn, mom’s favorite season. The towels in the guest bathroom will be switched out from summery lemon yellow and lime green to autumnal brown, burnt orange, harvest gold. The pottery vase in the corner will sprout a long peacock tail of branches of fall leaves. Glass jars and bowls in the mantle and counter and end tables will fill with acorns and walnuts . The windows will sprout colorful falling leaf decals. The sidewalk and porch will be full of pumpkins and gourds, real and clay. I love the fall, she’ll say with a self-deprecating little laugh. I love her house most in the fall. I miss dad’s fall yard, though his great bed of orange and yellow daylilies is likely to still be blooming in this hot Indian summer.
I picture mom in her journey toward reading the email - she’ll walk through her door and look around with satisfaction at the lovely fall seasoning on her house. She’ll do up any dishes that need doing up, put them away, pour herself some iced tea. Knowing mom she’ll think about going somewhere or doing something like a little grocery shopping but then will decide it can wait after aa good night’s sleep. She’ll go back to her office and turn on her computer and putter around in her family history files for awhile, then open her emails, which will contain a few from her sisters, who email her daily. Then she’ll see my name and Hi mom subject line.
It’s her first autumn without dad, and i wonder if the beauty is bittersweet this year. They used to take bus trips to New England, the leafpeaker tour with a bunch of 70 and 80 and 90 year olds, my mom and dad conspicuously younger by a couple of decades. Dad hated driving but he liked driving vacations, so the bus tour was a great option. Mom said she wanted to go again, but dad put the kibosh in it when he reminded her how physically rigorous it was, everyone having to wake up and be packed early to keep the bus on schedule. We don’t want to eat breakfast at 6 in the morning, my goodness, she said.
Looking around themselves on those geroncratic tour busses, they probably saw an expected version of their future selves. That’s not the way it worked out though - knee replacements happened, COVID happened, dementia happened. Years they should have spent riding along peeping at leaves and cityscapes became caregiver-patient years.
My husband’s parents stayed with us for a few weeks and it was a real up-close look at the future. B. has a bad hip, P is using a cane, his hearing aids constantly needed recharging, he has neuropathy now in his feet, and vertigo. Somehow they don’t break anything which I think was more luck than anything. We’re all going to get there, as the h says to me.
I wrote the letter to mom as though she’ll soon be home to read it. It is an act of hope and optimism and ordinariness, an act of bargaining, an attempt to seduce and cajole or flat out trick the universe into keeping her around to read it, keep her around to enjoy this, her lovely heartbreaking autumn.