1:32 p.m. - 2010-06-24
where is the life that I recognize?
Oh God, here I am, back in the only place I know to go to bare the heart that is there in full view on my sleeve, as always. The heart consistently missed by those closest to me. So, beautiful strangers, here goes. My mother, my precious and complicated mother, has, since Easter, been in steady and torturous decline. First, she fell following steroid injections in her knees. Then she was in the ER for a urinary tract infection. A week later, in the hospital with pneumonia. Coming home, her mind produced waking dreams of fear, abandonment, anxiety, being lost. And she was lost. She could not be convinced that her home was really her home. She could not take comfort in staying in the security of the home my Dad worked all his life to be sure she could enjoy in later years. She would yell at night. Tears were sudden and passionate, an acute flash flood in a raw, shattered psyche. Inconsolable. I watched in horror as she seemed to evaporate before my eyes. Each day, I felt I lost a little more of the mother I almost knew. The mother I dreamed of being known by. Someday. We got a 24 hour csregiver, an angel unawares. My mother likes her and she has endless patience and empathy. I had all but resolved myself to the fact that I would never see my real mother again, when she began to emerge from the hideous waking dream. Her doctor, another certifiable angel, recognized low potassium causing the delirium. Her mind came back. She is telling me the things I have wanted to hear all my life. She is affirming that I am beautiful and wonderful, all the things that, had I known and believed, I may have made different life choices. Or not. No matter, God has woven the frayed pieces into something He can use. He answers my prayers. He sees me. He knows me. He is "especially fond of me" (as I read in The Shack). Yesterday, after finishing my lunch and starting back for work, I got "the call" from Mina, my mother's caregiver. She told me that my mother had stopped breathing and that her lips and skin were white. I have been expecting the call, but could never be prepared. Mina said she had to shake her to rouse her and that my mother admired Mina's lipstick, telling her that that was the lipstick she wanted when she died (matter-of-factly). My stomach churned. I was terrified. No. Let it not be true. All a mistake. And, sure enough, by the time I got home, she was rosy-cheeked and spunky. We watched the Dodgers and I laughed to hear her label her "bums". I have been in this suspense for seven years. Actually, since I was a child. I remember one night realizing that someday my parents would die. I was shocked. I am shocked. I was that kind of kid. I have been trying to forestall the other shoe dropping for as long as I can remember. And, like the nine-life cat, there she was falling on her feet yet again. I am grateful. The Duran Duran song "Ordinary World" says it. "Where is the life that I recognize?" I long to return to my apartment, to exhale. Sometimes I can't make sense of all that's happened. I look at John and think (again, like that song I can't remember who sang or what it's called) "This is not my beautiful (wife) husband!" Who is this man I sleep with every night? How did we all get here in this house where I tried to hold my breath forever so as never to grow up? Sometimes it feels as though I am walking into a house full of strangers. Always, though, I am grateful for the love and companionship found in that difficult house. Natalia is a dream. A dream. Compassionate and genuine. Wise beyond her years, but ever a little girl named "Twinkei". I have fixed the back room into my poustinia. I finally have a real poustinia. I pray and meditate and cry and dream. My room. I realized today that I have never really grieved my father's death, which explains a lot I will get into another day. I have to stop typing now. I am leaving work and the privacy of this diary. I am grateful to be back. What if God was one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make His way home. Thank you for being the stranger whose eyes I can look into and find God. Thank you, stranger.
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