Condemned

   The Department of Correction in my state is executing or trying to execute killers this month, and current and former co-workers are journalists-on-the-spot, covering the struggle, experiencing the experience, furthering their careers. Two strong minds sit right beside me, Eric and John, and I hear them on the phone, digging, polite but pressing, and in consultation, energized. Strong. 
   Apart from the awful importance of what's going on, separately and persistently, I brood about ambition and wonder whatever happened to mine. Did I never have any? Was all that yakking about duty to one’s talent back in high school just transient, flimsy self-importance? 
   I think that, yes, it must have been.
   And now here I am in the final third of what will be my lifetime, watching my mother decay in a bed. Her life — big, really, and full of giving and doing — has narrowed down to a rigid but alive carcass incompletely monitored by a mind deprived of facts. Sunday she told me, as though I wasn’t there, “I guess Julia Loyall isn’t ever going to die.” 
   It sounded like regret.
   The Mom I dismissed when I was in high school today hardly exists in my memory. Instead I’m consumed by the image of young mom, Julie Lynch, child of immigrants. Pretty, thwarted, funny and fun-loving.
   My chest twists as I think about that child while looking at today’s puzzled, childlike person who presses her index finger into her mouth and says, “Some of them are gone” — her teeth.

   Last night I dreamed I was surrounded by angry young women. All of them looked like a former co-worker who was a genuine little crusader, always shaking her fist at injustice. All these small women were shaking their fists, at me: “It’s too easy to go on going back and forth in your middle-class comfort, limp as a ragdoll, while we are fighting for a better world. You waste your time.”
   I remember arguing with them/her eloquently. I said something like (and yes, I do have a prissy vocabulary), “We live in a world of pain and surcease of suffering is impossible here. There is darkness everywhere, touching every life. But don't you understand that it’s arrogant to see nothing but the bad and no good life other than marching and arguing all day? It’s naive to dismiss the good world, the light and hope, healing and helping: children, learning, beautiful flowers, dear faces, sweet memories, friends, silliness, jokes, music and joy. If we insist on showing that light to the darkness, we also are fighting the fight. We are. I am.”
   Michael tells me I was snoring lustily when he left for work.

   But I woke up feeling dim and sad anyway.
   I wish poor Mom had not lost her lower teeth. I wish her body was not dissolving.

Thumper

   If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.
   Whatever Bambi’s mother thought she was saying, that sentence doesn’t say, “Say nothing.”
   I’ve worried about that since ... I’m not sure when they first took me to see Bambi. I do know it wasn’t on my fifth birthday, because after that little family gathering — at which Mom gave me a maroon leather and tan straw purse with a domed lid and a dime tucked neatly inside, and a little mirror — we piled into the Hudson and were driven across the late afternoon to a movie theater where the adults discovered to my (I’m sure it was vocal) disappointment that Bambi wasn’t showing. After some discussion (“We should have called ahead”), it was decided we’d see Big Red instead, even though who knew anything about it? 
   All I remember is a dog jumping through a window.
   But later we owned a record album of the original Bambi soundtrack, which etched deep crevices in my brain as surely as brother Joe and I etched through the tracks by playing that disc over and over and over for years.
   “Your mother has gone away. She can’t be with you anymore. You must be strong and learn to live by yourself.”
   Bambi’s father hasn’t delivered the bad news to horrified audiences quite that way for decades. But that is what he said back when I was listening. 

   Mom’s usual spring allergies have filled her lungs with congestion. This is the third spring in the nursing home, the third spring she hasn’t been able to sit up or move around to make the stuff move out of her lungs. And so it makes her cough so hard she might break a rib. Seriously.
   And two of her lower teeth broke off. 
   I knew about the congestion and was feeling OK about how we’d decided to help her — cough syrup and Claritin — but I didn’t know about the teeth. The last few weeks she’d been asleep every time I visited. She was asleep and I sat beside her a while looking at the flowers before going away. So when the hospice nurse called to tell me she’d ordered ground foods for her, I thought it was just because her teeth have been so loose. I didn’t know they were gone. 

   What if Bambi’s father had told the young prince of the forest something like that?
   “Your mother’s teeth have gone away. She will not have them anymore. She misses them. There is nothing you can do.”
   

Upswing

   Mom HAD lost weight but now she has gained weight. She's up 4 pounds since Christmas.
   She did have a UTI but now she doesn't have one.
   The skin tear she gets from sliding in her gerichair is healing. The aides place her back in bed after meals so she's not slipping on that chair so much anymore, and she has an air mattress again.

   Is this improvement ... good? 
   While I understand why part of me asks that question, the answer is yes, it's good. She's not sick, she's  healing her body still. Even when she wasn't, she still was enjoying things and everybody at the home seems to like her very much. She gets a banana with her breakfast every day (loves a banana) and ice cream every day, too (adores that). 
   She's utterly cute and sweet and friendly.
   She's just demented, immobile and helpless.

   I have been imagining how Mom affects her local economy. Her helplessness provides employment for a facility owner, director, business manager, office manager, social worker, contract supervising doctor and his staff and a hospice doctor, a hospice nurse and aide, three shifts of CNAs, a treatment nurse, an LPN, an RN, a kitchen manager, kitchen assistants, a plant manager, a janitor, a laundry worker, a counselor, an activities director, physical therapist, the vendors who supply the food and equipment and ordinary services like phone and cable TV, a pharmacist, Medicare and health insurance clerks, people who own and work at gas stations along my route to see her, floral departments in two Krogers and their vendors who supply the roses and the orchids I buy once or twice a week.
   A lot of people have jobs because my Mom has dementia.

You are me

   The hospice nurse called to report Mom has lost two pounds since last week.
   When I saw her this afternoon, she was quiet, lying flat in the bed with her pink elephant. I had a coffee table book of flower photos to share, and she did study the pictures earnestly, saying sometimes, "All the beautiful roses."
   Sunny was squawking in the restroom, complaining because she wanted an aide to help her and also just yakking. I hung close to Mom's face so it was easier to hear.
    She said, "I love you and you're my mother."
    Cognitive misfiring?
    My hair was hanging down and it brushed her face. I don't imagine Granny as ever wearing her hair loose, but she must have. I remember sneaking into her bedroom and seeing a big thick-bristle hairbrush on her dresser and (I think) a matching comb, with beautiful brown handles. I've never seen another hairbrush like that, so possibly it was a clothing brush. The bristles were thickly packed, like horsehair but soft.
    I was 4 or 5, but it's a clear memory.
   What was Mom's relationship with her? Did Granny lean in, smile to make Mom crinkle her eyes, place a cold hand on her forehead? I think of Granny as a reserved character, not big on the PDA; but of course she would have cuddled little Mom, who would have been adorable, a pretty, funny little girl.
    Mom's room is becoming less like a place and more like a time zone, if that makes sense. A time zone where old time and new time exist side by side and both times refuse to stand still.

Rainy Monday

   "The ice cream is all gone and now everything is terrible."
   And she meant that, too. Over and over, she meant it. Everything was terrible.
   It must have been strawberry ice cream because there was a pink stain on her shirt.
   I leaned in close, searched her eyes and said, "The ice cream is all gone and now everything is terrible?"
   She laughed and laughed.

Getting married

   When the aides park Mom in the hallway, they point her toward the side door, through which she can see a bird feeder I hung up last summer and keep forgetting to refill, a tool shed, a parking lot, distant playground equipment. 
   Large rabbits live under the shed. They nibble around out there, and scratch their ears with their feet.
   She stares at the door and mutters.
   Her tone is endearing, as though she's explaining something to a child. There's a "smile" in her voice. I can make out the words as I approach her from behind. 
   "Julia Loyall and Sunny Darden are getting married.
   "We love each other very much.
   "Father Tom has given his blessing to our union."
   
   Something to know here is that Sunny is Mom's roommate. She was born with a seizure disorder. She uses a wheelchair, and her elderly parents can no longer help her into and out of it. They visit her every day and take her home on Sundays. 

    "Julia Loyall and Sunny Darden are married," Mom says, as though reading, while looking past my head.
   I turn to follow her gaze and see the name card on the wall outside her door. Below the room number, it reads: "Julia Loyall/Sunny Darden."
   Whenever they park her in the hall where she can see that card, she becomes the new and/or prospective Mrs. Darden.
   
   "What is Sunny like?" I ask her one day.
   "Tall. He is very nice. He likes flowers a lot," she says.
   "Really."
   "Julia Loyall and Sunny Darden are getting married and Father Tom has given his blessing, so all we have to do is climb into the big black car. And now, we are married."
   I don't say anything for many seconds. I can feel myself trying to think, but then a clear voice in my head says, "Oh, why not?"
   "OK," I say to her. "Julia Loyall and Sunny Darden are married. Do they have children?"
   "One day, I guess," she says, as though she hasn't considered it before.
   Just then, Sunny propels her chair from the Bistro hallway. 
   "Julia!" she says. "We are not married. I am a girl and so are you. I am your roommate."
   Mom smiles her inane smile and looks past us to the card on the wall.
   "Julia Loyall and Sunny Darden ..." she reads.
   "Yes!" Sunny says. "We are roommates."
   "... are married."
   "No, Julia, no. I love you and I am your friend, but I am not married to you. We are roommates."
   "Have you met Sunny?" Mom asks her, sweetly. "We love each other very much, and one day we will have children."
   Sunny looks at me. I shrug.

These flowers are dead

These are dead flowers.

   Mom consistently works on remembering who the president is. Do you suppose this is because she knows "who is the president" is a question asked of confused people to test how confused they might be?
   Today we had this conversation, over and over. She started it, by the way. She must have been thinking about "who is the president" before I arrived:
Mom: "Obama is the president."
Me: "Yes, we need to enjoy him while he lasts. In two weeks it will be Donald Trump."
Mom: "? ... "
Me: "Obama has to step down. Under the Constitution, he can only have two terms. He had two terms."
Mom: "Obama served two terms?"
Me: "Yes. So we had to elect somebody new, and Trump won the election. He beat Hillary Clinton. So the next president is Donald Trump."
Mom: "How do we spell that?"
Me: "T-r-u-m-p."
Mom: "Obama had two terms. Now we have to learn how to spell Trudeau."
Me: "Now we have to learn to spell Trump. T-r-u-m-p."
Mom: "Obama had two terms. Now we learn to spell ... Garry Trudeau."
Me: "Now we learn to spell Trump."
Mom: "The president is spelled ... ?"
Me: "God help us, it's Trump. T-r-u-m-p. In two weeks."
Mom: "Obama is the president."
Me: "For now. In two weeks we swear in a new president. Donald Trump."
Mom: "And you're sure about that?"
Me: "Yes. It's a done deal. The next president is Trump."
Mom: "Obama had two terms and now we have to learn to spell ... Trudeau."
Me: "Close. It's T-r-u-m-p."
Mom: "And you're sure about that?"
Me: "I'm very sure."
Mom: "Obama is the president."