… this.

Yesterday, Saturday, 12/30, twenty-four hours after the visit to my mother that left me in a sleepless fog, the phone rang. I had just gotten out of the shower. The caller ID displayed the name of the hospital.  My gut was alarmed. I answered. It was my mother. She has my number perfectly memorized, even with the addition of the nine before the number to get a line out.

“Hi, it’s mommy.” Her voice sounded stronger. How are you? What are you doing?

“I just got out of the shower, I’m OK.”

“Oh then don’t let me keep you.” But as usual, she just kept on talking as my damp hair was debating whether it should be standing straight up, on end. As we spoke I noted that she was more subdued, less angry, more grounded, different yet familiar. Where was this change coming from? Were these moments of clarity? Now what?

After we hung up, I was relieved and more hopeful but puzzled. I had witnessed this kind of stuff before where a mood passes and then my mother is back. Where there is some kind of darkness and then light.

I sat down to dinner after 7:00 pm and my watch buzzed, alerting me to a call. It was my mother’s doctor calling. I answered my wrist. “Hello, Dr. B.,” I said, feeling like Dick Tracy. “What’s going on?” At once I felt sick wondering why my mother’s physician was calling on a Saturday night.

And then, I could hear my mother in the background, talking. The doctor was calling from my mother’s room. He gave her the phone and she picked up where we left off: how was my hair?

“Um, I dried it.”

“Weren’t you curling it?”

“No, it was wet.” Like  this was really important.

Then she went on to ask about family members…she was the connected, chatty comedian, commenting on how Dr. B gained weight, probably eating too much spaghetti … I witnessed this kind of upbeat stuff when I took her to the ophthalmologist and she told the doctor that she had a great shape and should use it to her advantage and go dancing. (Forget that she is married with grown kids). But that’s my uninhibited mother, on stage doing her entertainment routine.

“I have my wonderful doctor here, I have to talk to him, I’ll say ‘good bye.’ “

Dr. B. said that my mother didn’t recognize him the previous day, the day I was there. He changed the psychiatrist’s directive to reinstate the Aricept and put it back on the med list along with 50 mgs of Seroquel, up from 25.

“She looks and sounds great today,” he sent me in a text. Kind of leaving me baffled and uplifted at the same time, after I spent a few days thinking of all things funeral.

“She’s back,” he said before he hung up.

My dinner was on the table, waiting.

Tonight I could eat.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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