We sit out on the sundeck sipping coffee and talking, still in our robes though the sun is high in the sky. She just loves it out here. It’s rare to see Mama sitting in one place for so long; rarer still for her to let me wait on her. Even at 95, when we visit her in Arkansas she is usually in motion– slower now, of course, but still fussing around doing dishes, or laundry, or sectioning a grapefruit so she can track us down wherever we are in the house, hand each of us a bowl and spoon with the command to “Eat it– you need your fruit!” So I’m enjoying the fact that since we finally got her out of the house and all the way up here to Nashville to see us, she actually let me fix her breakfast this morning, and she ate the small bowl of steel-cut oatmeal that I doctored up with craisins, walnuts and fresh sliced peaches with relish. “Eat it,” I said with mock sternness. “You need your fiber!”
She looks tiny to me. Mom’s always been small and wiry (Madi’s built just like her), but she barely ate during those last weeks before Daddy died, and it shows. She still moves around with energy, but cautiously and deliberately now, explaining to me as she takes my arm that it’s not because she HAS to– “I’m not really this slow, I’m just being very careful about not falling,” she says, again and again.
She says a lot of things again and again these days. Her short term memory is pretty much shot, though she is still very lucid and, as she says, “with it.” It’s startling to realize how quickly she immediately forgets that she has just said something or asked something, and I’m always torn between faking it and answering her as though it were the first time or gently saying, “Mom, you just said that.” Nine times out of ten I fake it, because I am a weenie. She’s also deaf as a post. With her hearing aids in she can hear enough to carry on a conversation if she sits where she can see you speak, but if you are behind her or if there is much background noise going on in the room, it’s really difficult. It takes a while to figure that out though, because she fakes it, too.
Mom’s increasing physical frailty and limitations are the subject of countless phone calls between my siblings and I. We are walking that fine line of trying to respect Mom’s independence and right to make her own decisions concerning her own life AND dealing with the reality of her current living situation–a small, grieving, forgetful woman who can’t hear well, living all alone for the very first time. Mom raised 6 children, had her own mother living with her for 18 years, tended to her burgeoning crop of grandchildren and then saw to Daddy’s every need as he went through heart surgery, cancer surgery and radiation before he finally passed away in April. Her entire life has been spent taking care of people. It’s what she does, it’s how she defines herself– and now she’s not only lost her companion of 74 years, she’s lost her ‘job’, too. She’s kind of adrift right now, unsure of what to do with herself and more than a little scared. But WOE TO ANY OF US who might dare think of trying to tell her what to do! She’s little and old, but she’s feisty. “Do not treat me like a retarded child,” she has disdainfully and defiantly told us more than once. So we wait, and worry and whisper. And pray a lot.
But here on my sundeck, nestled among the cushions of the glider with her feet up, slowly rocking back and forth, she’s relaxed and engaged. She actually repeats herself a little less often than usual, and her stutter is less pronounced. There are no decisions to be made, no fears to face and no empty rooms where Daddy used to be. We talk about everything and nothing, just chatting aimlessly, enjoying the view of the flowers and the birdfeeders. She quotes the Bible to me, of course, and she also asks questions about Madi’s college plans and comments on how unbelievable it is to think that Charlotte will actually be in high school next year.
It’s tempting to picture a scenario where this could continue indefinitely– Mom, here, surrounded by this family, safe and cared for… But even as I allow myself to imagine it for a moment, I smile and shake my head. Who am I kidding?! Mom does NOT want to move in with me. She does not want to leave her familiar lifelong surroundings. This house would be very difficult for her to navigate, it has too many levels and staircases. We travel extensively, with all four of us gone on a regular basis. The everyday chaos of our active household would be disruptive and stressful, not serene and comforting. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum– there are a million valid reasons that plan would never work, beginning and ending with the fact that Mom quite simply wouldn’t agree to it. So, I shrug and let it go. I’d much rather just fully enjoy this moment with her, right here, right now.
There’s a slight breeze that blows a wisp of Mama’s snow white hair across her glasses, and she absentmindedly brushes it aside. Pip calculates the distance from the floor to the glider and makes the jump, turning around three times before settling in right smack-up against Mama’s leg and happily thumping his skinny flag of a tail as she pets him. The girls are awake now and drift out to join us, sleepy-eyed and yawning, draping themselves around the deck furniture and greeting their Nanno with a smile. I head back into the house to get another cup of coffee and bring a bowl of watermelon from last night’s dinner out to the table for us to snack on. From inside the kitchen I look out the big picture window and see Mom’s face suddenly light up with delight as she spies a brilliant green hummingbird sipping nectar from one of the flowers in a pot only a few feet away. “Look!” I hear her say to the girls. “Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
And it is.
