I never thought I’d be so relieved to hear my husband snoring beside me.
For those of you not playing along at Facebook, my mother was admitted to the hospital on April 19th, septic with a ruptured stomach. No one could track down family until the 26th, and on the 27th my brother & his wife and I flew from opposite coasts, met in El Paso Texas, rented a car, and blew into the ICU at a small hospital in Las Cruces New Mexico. Our mother was on a ventilator and had not been conscious since the surgery.
She opened her eyes and gasped when she saw me. Later I would feel guilty about that, like I should have reassured her at that moment that she wasn’t dying, that’s not why she opened her eyes and saw two of her children gathered at her bedside.
I’m just getting home today. For the last several days I camped at her house. As much as I love New Mexico, and wish like hell for a life there-for the last 12 days I saw the same five mile stretch of road between her place and the ICU, where she still fights for her life.
There were feisty days, and long nights of ice chip obsession and wild rants about the hostile vibe of the night shift. There were tears and professions that I was the only one she wanted to help her. There has been incision infection requiring heavy, painful would care intervention. Blood transfusions to deal with anemia, which I diagnosed before they did when I saw the obsessive chewing of ice. Each day another complication, but each day better stats on the monitors and more independent movement from my mother.
I spent 12 days looking for a connection. In her house, in her books, in her clothes and her friends, I found them. It delighted and shocked me to see my books on her shelves, my flowers in her garden. It broke my heart when I saw her and could not make her well. I could not make her well enough to soul search with me, to instruct me or express sadness or relief that I was with her. My complete surrender to the energy of the world, my willing that energy to flow through my hands and into my mother’s body, did not make her well. In the end all I could do was take care of business. I wanted the ducks in a row because ducks in rows relieve my anguish.
She banished me from the room on my last day there. I never left the hospital of course, eventually sneaking back in to sit quietly in a chair until the shift change forced visitors out for a few hours. When I touched her arm and said they’re kicking us out mom, I have to go, she nodded her head without opening her eyes and turned away from me. I am afraid that the last memory I have of her sky blue eyes will be when she was shooting the look of death to me because I wasn’t a proper “ally”.
I wanted to touch her and say “I love you mom, I’ll be back”. No one should exist in that place, locked up in ICU, bedridden and hooked to machines, all alone. How do I split myself up to avoid that for her. How can anyone even afford to.
My family needs their mother. I suppose the best that I can do is be here, do that, and stop looking backward for meaning that just isn’t there.
She seems to be recovering. It’s hard to imagine the magnitude of what her body has been through, what it will go through in the coming months.
As I sign off for tonight, for the first time in a long time, I sign off wondering whether any part of our relationship will recover. What little we’ve built over less than two years. Was it enough? It definitely wasn’t enough to make me understand what she needed in this crisis, and give it to her. Instead I found myself saying things like “You’re getting everything you can get from me. I’m tapped out, and what I have to give you, I’m giving freely. If you want more, I’m sorry. I am who I am.”
I should have read Invisible Acts of Power at the beginning of this trip instead of at the end.