The Thief of Lost Time

Chapter 34: A New Boyfriend

Visiting Mom becomes more and more distressing. I now visit only on the weekends. Talking with her is like lobbing a tennis ball of conversation over the net which Mom is unable to return. I could be an automated server and say anything. By the end of the visit, I lapse into silence. I'm impatient with Mom as if she's deliberately being difficult and then I'm disgusted at my impatience. Kissing her goodbye, I vacate the court, leaving the balls where they lay.

I'm heartbroken when I watch her because nothing can be done. Her mind is failing. She's no longer the mother I've known all my life. I fight against the fear this could be me in thirty years. Leslie worries about this too. She's told me, "If I ever get this bad, shoot me." It's a macabre joke, but it helps distance us from our own dread.

I hold Mom's hand. It's like a bird's claw, all bone and knuckles, the dark veins lying beneath the skin, thin as tracing paper. When I arrive, I doubt she knows who I am. In the past, I'd say, "How about a kiss for your only son," and she'd locate me in her memory. That no longer works. She frowns when I tell her I'm her son as if wondering why this stranger is making such a ridiculous statement. I don't press the point. Doing so agitates her.

She accepts me as someone who visits occasionally, someone who sits beside her and holds her hand. I tell her stories about the past hoping a detail will catch hold. I think she copies my facial expressions to prove she's paying attention.

After two hours, when I tell her I'm leaving, she turns towards me, smiling as if she's surprised I've arrived. I kiss her and rub her back and leave when an aide places her dinner tray in front of her. The meal is a distraction which will sweep me from her mind. Outside in the fresh air and sunshine, I'm lighthearted—and lightheaded—relieved I won't have to visit for another week. How has Dad come here day after day for over four years?

Why do I consider this visit such a burden? She's my mother whether she remembers me or not. Can't I cheerfully spend a couple of hours with her and provide human interaction? Some children care for an ailing parent in their home for years with little help and little complaint. I'm incapable of that. Too selfish and self-absorbed? I'm embarrassed to admit I find visiting more of a burden since she no longer recognizes me. Do I require a medal for my weekly presence from someone who's raised me, sacrificing many of her own dreams? At some point, do we only pretend to act the part of the caring child? What a terrible son I am.

As a teenager, I read how Eskimos treated an elderly parent who became sick and would never recover. The nomadic family would not survive if they fed someone unable to contribute during the yearly migration in search of food. The family left the parent behind to freeze to death.

Reading this shocked me. I imagined myself left behind, listening to the sledge on snow, the crunch of boots, and the panting of dogs growing fainter and fainter. Leaving someone behind must have been a terrible, but necessary, decision if the family were to survive.

It wasn't as heartless as it sounds. Freezing to death must have been a blessing to those exhausted beyond endurance or in unbearable pain who welcomed falling into a peaceful sleep ending it all. I cannot stop thinking about the sound of one's family fading in the distance. We will all meet death and be left behind.

***

I plan my visits for weekend afternoons. Dad won't have doctor's appointments, so I count on his being there. His face lights up when he sees he will have company. We talk with each other, occasionally explaining something to my mother to maintain the falsehood she is part of the conversation. Mom watches us speaking as if waiting for one of us to make sense. She never cared for films with subtitles, so our conversation must be like a never-ending foreign film with actors who talk, talk, talk in a language she can't understand.