I've always wondered what that dream meant. I can't help but correlate that with my current situation now. While the people around me are flourishing with growing families and planning for their future I feel frozen in place, watching my Mom and childhood slip away alone. Granted, I'm not completely alone, I have many wonderful friends and gentleman friend who I know will not hesitate to listen, help and support me if I ever need it from any of them. I am extremely blessed for that but yet, I keep them all at arms length at times. I feel separate and alone in coping with the slow loss of losing my Mom in comparison to their warm, loving and full homes. I would rather take in their warmth than burst the bubble of the compartmentalizing I struggle to manage every day - I swear it is built of thin ice. If I speak of it too often I'm afraid it will collapse.
I watched my brother's wedding video last night to commemorate his 10-year-Anniversary with his wife and was shocked to see the Mom I once knew. In this video she was young, vibrant and constantly smiling. She was playing with my oldest nephew, who was two and a half at the time, and she was glowing. Dare I say stunning. I never realized this about my Mother - that she could glow. That her smile was so bright and full of love. And she was beautiful.
Growing up with my Mom was one of my biggest challenges yet, in hindsight, one of my biggest character builders. She was a complicated woman filled with an overabundance of stress and sensitivity. She was quick to react instead of thinking first. She was quick to get hurtful and irrationally angry. She wanted to be loved so much yet could be quite rude to others. She could be embarrassing. She wanted our family to make memories and be together so much that the weight of her force would cause huge fights usually with her storming away in some fashion, disappointed that her expectations didn't come to fruition. Yet, she also was capable of being so much more. She tried so much to be the woman she was meant to be absent of hurt, fear and stress. I blame her roadblock to self-actualization on her horrendous, loveless childhood. But I digress.
I know now her original design was to be loving, compassionate, humorous, laid-back and joyful. My resentment and hurt from being her daughter growing up prevented me from seeing that and truly appreciating her then. I came to a point in my teenage years that I was sick and tired of carrying the burden of being angry with her so I channeled her quirks into opportunities for humorous situations. Even though our relationship was still strained and difficult I was able to soak up her good moments (and even bad moments) and use them to tell good stories and laugh with her. To develop a dark and twisted humor. To develop sarcasm. To make myself laugh and be happy. My favorite stand-up routine were always my "Mom Stories." Stories that I can no longer tell.
Perhaps a lot of that coping skill now translates into my current job. A descriptive paragraph that I will omit to keep my own promise to myself that I would never talk about my job on the internet. But lemme tell ya, coping skills and compartmentalizing are in overdrive with some days I have at work. There is a lot, a lot of heartache out there that I am helpless to stop and sometimes, by informing them of the truth, only makes their pain worse and me the object of their transference. You laugh or you cry. I am trying to laugh whenever I can. But I digress.
It was only 10 years ago that my Mom was vibrant, happy, talkative and joyful at my brother's wedding. I could not have imagined the place she'd be in just 10 years later. It's like she's aged 25 years in a decade. She is so much older, gray, tired and slipping away now. Growing up she'd ask you an average of 50 questions when you walked in the door, (especially to friends who called for us on the phone) now I'd be overjoyed if she could just complete one question instead of stopping mid-sentence in a stare. I always wonder - is she finishing the question in her head? But I'll never know - dementia can be as mysterious as the sea. Our time together is relegated to mostly sitting in silence or me having mostly one-sided conversations. She does have some auto-responses like "No" (her favorite) or "Why'd you do that for?" Or "are you kidding?" or "Please don't." She struggles to walk. She struggles to eat. There was a time after she suffered from a long bout of pneumonia where her condition plummeted so badly that the staff at her nursing home had a "End of Life Care" meeting with our family. I remember as they were explaining all the life-saving measures that would be incredibly painful, I looked at my Mom, not expecting an answer, and asked "What do you think about that Mom?" She answered quite innocently "I think I'll be OK." I wept after that. Just a few minutes earlier she had asked "Are you sure I have kids?" I immediately thought of the empty car from my dreams. My Mom had disappeared from the driver's seat and I was alone sitting next to it and the world won't stop when I need it to.
Watching her slip away feels like watching my childhood slip away. My memories of growing up are disappearing with her. I find myself looking at old pictures more and more now trying to regenerate the memories that I can no longer share with my Mom. I can no longer hear about those cute and funny stories from my childhood and my family that only she knows best. Or only that she knows at all. If only I knew earlier in my life how much I'd miss talking with her and having these conversations that I could only have with her. I find myself watching my nephews and my friends' children now and watching how lucky they are that their parents are loving them, making their moments special and documenting it all. I try my hardest to fill myself up with the sweetness and joy of their childhoods instead of mourning mine.
I feel as though my safety net of self is disappearing with her. I feel the vulnerability and sense of feeling lost losing my Mom. When I would get lost in a department store at a young age I always remembered the relief when my Mom somehow found me. She always somehow found me. And now she's disappeared. And I am alone in the car again, with no one driving and no one else in sight just like my childhood dream. There is no waking up; I have no choice but to see where this road takes me.
