It’s Thursday. I just called the aide to say good morning. I hadn’t spoken directly to my mother for several days. I had been spending so much time on the phone organizing, setting-up, questioning, taking notes, processing, scanning, sending, emailing, that I either was afraid I would wake her or that it was too late to call.

I asked the aide about “how it was going” and her response of “fine, she ate some breakfast” came as a welcome. I asked her to hand the phone to my Mom and after a while of prompting and “it’s your daughter,” my mother spoke.

But it wasn’t my mother. My mother’s voice is strong and clear. The last time I heard it was a few weeks ago. The voice at the other end of the phone was weak and slurred, and hard to understand. She said something like, “listentomorrwIhaveanotherdoctor’sappointment.” Consonants ran into vowels ran into consonants and the soup of speech was virtually unintelligible. There was no conversation. I was just air.

I was jolted back a number of years when my step-mother-in-law was deathly ill with cancer. She and my mother were both from Brooklyn but my mother was older by several years. My mother remembered my step-mother-in-law’s father’s candy store. They both went to Samuel J. Tilden High School.

I believe my step-mother-in-law had lived to a week before her eightieth birthday. She was unrecognizable, had waves of consciousness, could barely talk. When people would visit, the aide would sit her up like a doll and pull a brown wig over her head, rub some blush into her cheeks and present her in a wheel chair like a living corpse. It was startling.

My mother’s voice reminding me of my step-mother-in-law’s hit me like a punch in my gut: I was up most of the night with high-anxiety drowning in the what-if’s of her having enough money to pay for the round the clock care. If she runs out and has to go on Medicaid she loses her apartment and has to either share with someone–which would kill her on the spot, or is shoved into a studio  apartment. That would mean she’d have to lose her view of the lake, her terrace, a room, and a lot of her furniture. That might kill her as well. So nothing here is pretty or kind. Would I be able to move her up to New York to a facility? She seems too fragile, I think her blood pressure issue would compromise plane travel. It seems to me people shouldn’t have to deal with all this or make these decisions.

So most of the time I drown in confusion, worry and doubt; the three stooges of my gut. I worry about the quality of her life, the quality of my life, how this has taken me over, left me with health issues and angst. The only comfort I have is that everyone goes through this; one way or another we all ride the  ship of loss and though we each have a different story, we all end up sinking.

With my mother’s voice haunting me, I can only envision my step-mother-in-law. At the end I would call her from work. Her aide would hold the phone to her ear and I would talk to her from my desk  trying my best not to cry. I told her how wonderful she was (though there were times I truly felt differently) and related stories and memories. I spoke slowly and clearly, I tried to soothe her. She was unable to respond but I believe she heard me. I could hear her breathing in my words and they likely became ghosts of concepts and visions that hopefully were put together into a pleasing, happy moment. I was at work, but this was a much harder job. I was trying to do a mitzvah but it’s hard when you are holding back sobs. Like I am doing now.

Because what I heard earlier was a frightening reminder of what is to come.

The sobs are not only for my mother but for me.

[This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.]

continued here

The series starts here