meanderings

Happy Mother's Day - 2006

i didn't realize it had been such a hiatus since my last blog... it seems appropriate enough to write again on mother's day though, as my life has pretty much been absorbed by my mother these last five months.
we are all dying even as we are living... but for my mother it is more than biological function.... it is her history... it is part of all the things that make us who we are that is dying...
i don't know what alzhiemer's feels like, though i suspect i will someday... when i won't be able to analyze it... but i think it may be something like the drug i took when i had a cystoscope some thirty years ago... there were episodes of clarity in a fast motion of flashes and nothing would stick.... my mother seems like that but in slower motion. sometimes she has days when she has no hallucinations, no confusing the television with reality, no wondering who these people are in her house...
but she doesn't remember what happened yesterday, she rarely remembers what happened an hour ago... the little plastic castles are a surprise every time
but i haven't faced the time when she doesn't recognize me yet...and i rarely see the times when she is irratated by me and opposed to whatever i have to say... something that was much more common when she was more cognizant.
my mother's life was ruled by a lot of fear and that has been the one blessing of this disease. with some exception, she is free of the worry that permeated most of her life... worry over those things she couldn't control... which, let's face it... is most of our lives... certainly the thoughts and actions of others. although even in her fogged state, she has control over my father...
marriage is such an organic thing, as individual as DNA. there were times i didn't even think they liked each other, and yet, he has been so faithful. they are as bound as cloth.
and i understand this. i experience this. i don't think in terms of my life, i think in terms of our life, and i have for 27 years. i think the most selfish urge i have is to die first, one i am afraid i share with my father.. but i fear he has already lost and my mother has won. she delights in every minute of his time, in his picture, in any and every touch... and then she forgets