In my stupidity, my lack of foresight, I never thought of how I was returning to the ghosts of happiness past. I just thought 318 miles, 70mph highway, and endless sun. I didn't think about how the last time we were there, Mom was a different person, how I was a different person, how my kids were not from a broken home, or how bereft and isolated we would all suddenly feel.
The hotel was a total shit hole. I can't believe we paid that much money for the displeasure of staying there. The rooms were fine once you were inside. The outside spoke of better times, forty years ago, when perhaps it was cool to stay at a motel. Not a hotel. The desperation of the place only added to my insecurities in myself. Maybe I had just fucked this all up too? Just like my marriage, my life, my children's happiness?
The whole time I was there I felt like I was hiding from my Mom. I didn't want her to see I was sad. I didn't want her to feel responsible in any way or shape or form. I mourned her as she sat beside me. On the long highway stretches I held her hand, she rubbed my knuckles, I squeezed her knee. I had a bit of bronchitis/ strep this past week so I have a cloying cough. She told me to get medicine and to go to the doctor. The lady with a terminal disease, the lady who can't swallow water without choking, is worried about my stupid seasonal cough brought about by being allergic to the state of Georgia.
I asked if she wanted a beach chair. She said yes please. And now I, husbandless, was my own sherpa across the sand. Other husbands actually volunteered to carry my stuff. I know their wives would kill them. So I decline, stubborn, I can do this by myself. I carried an entire carload of things from the hotel to the beach. The children ran ahead of us screaming, their boogie boards floating in the breeze. Mom shuffled slightly behind, me her breathing laborious, her mouth agape, eyes intent on the prize, focus on the sea.
I sat next to her, watching her sapphires sparkle. My mom has the most incredible blue eyes. She is so silent now, that any word from her is like the holy grail. Her tongue is her own worst enemy. Or perhaps it is her vocal cords, her brain riddled by dementia, how to force the meaning into a slur, how to phrase questions when you have lost the desire for answers, how to ask specific things, when no one can understand you. She said "it is so relaxing".... And just sighed... content.... and my heart weeps. My heart breaks. A thousand times through and through, the selfishness of this comes to the surface. I am losing my best friend. I am losing her. The her who filled in all of the gaps in my lonely marriage. The one who taught me how to be a mom. My 7h30am driving in the morning best friend who would worry if I called her a minute late. She. Our mom. Our granny. She doesn't deserve to go so young.
At night in the hotel room I watch her. She cant put the shower on for herself anymore. The first night, in my haste, the haste of an impatient person, you know the one who wants her children to grow up fast and be potty trained and learn to talk so theyre not so much of a chore, that haste, she hopped in the shower and the water was too warm, and fortunately I heard her say "ow". I felt so bad. It didnt burn her, fortunately, just it was uncomfortable. I learnt on the following showers to test the water on my wrist. My mom who had always loved scalding water, now required more tepid water, the water that would be more pleasing to a child.
In so many ways she still is a grown up, autonomous, with dabs of perfume behind her ears. She cares for herself. She has all of her toiletries organized in a striped bag. She packs very, very well. She even brought extra towels. But I brought home her washing to wash for her. I sprayed her stains on her shirts for her. She dribbles when she eats. Or sometimes she sprays when she chokes. In many ways you can sense her frailty.
Her hair is so painfully thin, you can see the pink scalp underneath. Her hair was fine before, as mine has really become of late, but this awful thinness, like that of a person undergoing chemo. Her muscles around her jaw are slacking. The faces she pulls are not her own. She makes "puppy noises" at night, unaware. I didn't mind them. I could hear her breathing and compared to snoring, I was happy to have them. She is physically changing in front of us. She now has a limp. She cant open bottles of water, medicine bottles, or strange packaging. She brought me the zip on her beach coverup, where the pull on the zip had twisted upwards, and had me fix it, akin to one of my daughters.
And inside the turmoil rages.
She herself is blissfully unaware. It is we who are all falling down, broken. My poor dad. My poor poor father. I was watching her comb her whispy-spider-web hair over her pink frail scalp and thinking I wish I had someone to love me the way that he loves her. Virtually toothless and broken. When you are wordless and silent, useless and easy to forget, who will love you yet?
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