There are many ways to lose your mind.
My mother lost her mind when it blew up one spring day. A vein in her head popped. It just happened as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. The analogy we heard ad nauseam was of an overinflated inner tube that develops a weak spot and bulges out under the pressure. Bulge, it did.
She went to the hospital that day while we were at school. “Just a bad headache” and “They’re running tests” had to sate our curiosity. That night, a phone call interrupted our sleep followed by my dad’s abrupt departure. Updates came with the morning phone calls although they had a different ring. Later that day, the station wagon pulled in followed by another car. Dad and Reverend Stone crunched up the stone walkway and into the house. Even the dog held its breath.
I remember segments of the conversation: inner tube bulging—it burst—8 hours of surgery—cerebral hemorrhage—they cut off her hair—she is alive. She is alive! Finally. Good lord, couldn’t they have said that first?
Years later, I documented the First Visit to the hospital:
First Visit
I do not recall the picture of my age
Rain or wind or the size of leaves
Or the warmth I sported now gone to rags
Memory submerged like sand over reef
Dad tried to prepare us for the formal ward
Sterile to the crannies and full of calm
We came from a healthy, safe, legitimate place
Not this I.C. Unit that held our Mom
Past slick machines through chicken wire glass
A body lay rooted and frail
Terms spun out like “weak” and “loss of memory,”
I suddenly knew what it was to turn pale
And as if a maître d’ to a reservation
We followed the doctor with his chart
And there under wig, underweight, under white
Lay my mother—they had removed her spark
She lay there struggling to brush off clouds
As she gestured through drug weary sighs
Then a fire ignited and moved to life
Once she recognized my father’s eyes
One by one again she fell in love
Husband Art led her mind by hand
Tall solemn Craig bending low
As the rock of Lyn struck up the band
I do not recall my brother’s face
Or the color of my sister’s hair
Nor the youth my father must have been
But I do remember my mother’s stare
She had a face of confusion
And wore a look of chagrin
As slowly, pointing her finger
She admitted, “I don’t know him”
Yeah, that happened. And it sucked. But I knew better than to cry or joke as I silently sucked it up and lost my mind. That afternoon, alone in my bedroom, I reached up into heaven, grabbed God by the collar, looked him in the eye and promised him everything if he would just return her to us. I’m not sure that I ever held up my end of the bargain.
Finally, on one well-documented day with the 40th caring neighbors’ casserole in the oven, she was returned to us (and I think we still have that casserole dish). The dog recognized her and lost his mind. She didn’t recognize him though—just as she didn’t recognize me at the first hospital visit—nor understand the reaction. Okay—at least she was home.
The house did not register either. “Are we going to go home soon?” she would ask. Her mind had lost 10 years and was back in Connecticut with my now teenage siblings imagined as 4 and 6-year olds—and always that funny stare at me. Slowly, her hair grew back, and her strength returned along with her appetite. (Mom would have chuckled at that line.) There was never a light-bulb moment that brought back her memories of me—just a long slow slog through the mind mud. She took to writing her notes every day—her mind on paper. We fell into a pattern and continued more or less; more, in that I grew, went to school and played sports—less in that her guidance was gone, replaced by her disability. It was life with Mom but not Mom. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar.
With many years of reflection, I determined that I did not handle it well—a fact that took a long time to sort out. I didn’t have an act-out moment. I didn’t run away or cry myself to sleep or fall into a deep depression or lose my appetite or become an addict or alcoholic. There was no funeral or flowers or crying relatives. There was no advice or if there was, I didn’t hear it. There was just old life and now, new life. Mom and not Mom… but Mom. And there was no going back.
My dad hung in for about 8 years but he, like the rest of us, woke up one day sharing his life with a different person. Familiar but different. He was a hell-of-a-nice-guy, not that I noticed at the time. Eventually, he had to go his own way and Mom fell to the responsibility of my brother and his wife. Angels indeed but that is a different story.
The fact is, I was embarrassed about my Mom. Those are hard words to say out loud. Unfortunately, it was true. She would tell you something and then 60 seconds later say the same thing. She had difficulty moving around thanks to phlebitis settling in her legs from too much time in the hospital bed. I’d look at my watch 20 times getting her into the car and then sigh at the thought of getting out again when we reached our destination. She used to say her head was swimming, making me anxious that she would fall. Then she would tell you the same thing she did 60 seconds ago.
People knew immediately that she had changed. Old friends engaged, a good deal at first, but in conversation, she would repeatedly say the same things and discomfort ruled. But she tried and moved forward. She churched and played solitaire and cooked a little, but never again drove a car, or worked or took care of us children (or so I thought at the time—especially when she was telling me what she had just said just 60 seconds ago).
I was embarrassed and impatient and scared and adrift. The path of my life down which she had been guiding for 11 years was gone in an instant and now we had to guide her. Maybe that sounds like a bad reflection on my dad, or our pastor or my teachers or my Boy Scout leaders, but I mean no indictment of them. We were all adrift. And with that subtext I became a man and eventually began to sense that maybe Mom wasn’t the embarrassment—I was.
The truth is that Mom improved quite a lot from the completely lost soul who came home to a much older family and a freaked-out dog. The truth is she remembered carrying me and having her appendix out when I was 8 months in her belly and camping for a summer all the way to New Mexico when I was 3 and running campgrounds and church and working at the high school where she would do the morning announcements and once said, “We need more athletic supporters.” Oops.
Yes, she started to remember what she said 60 seconds ago, but probably not 5 minutes later. Then again, maybe she just got good at recognizing that look on our faces. She got better because she tried, but “better” is a relative term, and I always felt like she got a raw deal. I still feel tears coming on when I think of her aging and alone playing King’s Corners at the kitchen table. What I would give for a game right now. What I would give for a hug.
In time, I began to realize that the sum of her illness was the slow reveal of a great gift. It was the resilience of her motherhood. The woman harbored true optimism: human, Godly, self-realized optimism. She had been a 42-year-old vibrant humble soul who may have lost her mind, but she never lost her spirit. As it turned out, they did not remove her spark. She was just set about the difficult task of adapting it to circumstances.
“Grab your coat and get your hat
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Try to direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street”
The song, “On the Sunny Side of the Street” was popularized by many, and Mom had her own special version. The song was never far from her lips. She sang it when I was 12 and 22 and 32 and 42. She sang it every time I saw her. Really. Every time! The nerve of that woman. She lost her mind in her prime, but her mothering spirit persevered. Her ability to manifest her dreams into reality was taken from her and yet she held onto and expressed the very nature of motherhood: strength of purpose, humility, optimism, morality, and love. It’s hard to acknowledge this when your life guide is repeating what she told you 60 seconds ago, but she did it. That song was her duty. The words were her try. The message was her gift. She needed to sing it, and although I didn’t know it at the time, I needed to hear it.
What my Mom taught me with that song and with her strength of character was this: that we should not hide from the difficulties in our lives. That often there is no one at fault for misfortune. That each path must meet its own responsibilities. She had so little left to give and yet every time she saw me, the gift was given. To be clear, I’m not talking about just suggesting we should think more positively. I’m talking about encouraging optimism with action. “TRY to direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.” Because the TRYing is something—maybe everything.
Thanks, Mom. I try. And on this Mother’s Day, I remember the gift.
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