As I scrubbed my bathroom floor (a once-in-a-lifetime event), I contemplated the impending end of another year. Everyday, I wonder if I will make it through another day, and everyday, somehow I do. It's silly, I know. I'm not 89 years old and sinking into dementia. Wait, what? Hmmm. When I look in the mirror, I see my mother's vacant eyes staring back at me. It's so unsettling, I have stopped looking in the mirror, which is why I often don't realize that like my mother, I have wiry black hairs sprouting out of my nose.
In the evenings after I visit Mom, I eat dinner and watch the PBS Newshour online. When it is over, my best course of action would be to turn off the computer and do something to relax. However, I'm addicted to the news. Instead of listening to music or reading a book, I listen to the pundits predicting the end of the world and compulsively play Mahjong.
I am reminded of the summer after seventh grade when I picked strawberries for two hellish weeks. I had images of strawberries burned into my retinas. I saw fat luscious strawberries waiting to be picked in every juniper and rhododendron outside my family's front porch. Now, when I close my eyes, instead of strawberries, I see Mahjong tiles. I'm not complaining. I'm sure people in war zones both domestic and foreign see lots worse things when they close their eyes.
Mom has a cough. Her smoking buddy Jane reminded me she had one last year around this time. I had forgotten. That is what living day to day does to me: My linear memory, never great, has evaporated. I went back to the medical records: Sure enough, last January, I took Mom to Urgent Care for a cough. They ruled out pneumonia and diagnosed her with bronchitis. I am guessing the same is happening now. The temperature is finally dipping down to freezing at night, day temps hover in the mid-40s, and nothing stops the maternal parental unit from going outside in the damp dark cold for her after-dinner cigarette.
Last night as we were strolling down the hall, Mom coughed as we passed by the Med-Aide who was standing at her rolling kiosk in the hall peering at a computer screen. The woman looked up and said, “It doesn't help that you are still smoking.” Then she laughed and said, “I know you aren't going to stop,” and gave my Mom a hug, which Mom returned. I said nothing. Mom clearly trusts the woman. I only see Mom for an hour a day. The Med-Aide sees her all day, five days a week. She wins.
At the end of the hall, we do our good-bye ritual: kiss on the forehead (hers, not mine), peace sign, my declaration of love, and her response. Last night, she said, “I don't know what I would do without you. You've kept me going. Without you, I would go downhill in a hand-basket.”
Today as I was scraping years of congealed kitty litter out of the corners of the bathroom floor and bemoaning my nose hair invasion, I thought about her comment. The implication is that by visiting her every day, I am helping keep my mother alive. Argh. Cognitive dissonance strikes again.
