Mom & Me Four Archive

...a curious journal called Other Lights - Journey of the Liminal Being (site has moved; new link will be added later). I discovered it some nights ago when I was wandering the web looking for thoughtful information about the kinds of relationships Ancient Ones (there may be as many takes on this relationship as there are Ancient Ones) develop to death. As you know, if you've read me for awhile, because of my mother's intimate involvement in what I refer to as The Dead Zone, which is where she communes with all those she has known who have died before her, I also am often speculating on her relationship to death. One of my foremost speculations is that she has not yet faced her own mortality, which continues to astound me, considering that, as a species, we consider this not only an important task, but assume that it is something we all, at one time or another (sometimes not until the moment of death), must do. Much has been written about this. This task is even considered typically to be plied during a particular stage in one's life, the late middle years. I have even, at times, considered that part of the reason my mother remains alive is that she hasn't yet faced her own mortality.
    Well, today I strolled over to Other Lights and rambled through more of the posts. One of the posts upon which I lit (pun unintended but appropriate) was about death. Its first sentence attracted me. I savored it as I read, rereading sentences, comparing their contents with my own common thoughts about death evoked by my consideration of my mother's death...suddenly...
    I can't explain the transference. I can't tell you how I came to the following realization, but realize, I did, that she is understanding "the truth": That she is immortal. I am the one who has "not yet faced" something, my immortality. I may think that I have, and may think, as well, that I have moved beyond this to embrace the 'inevitable task' of facing my mortality, but I am mired in the intellectuality of mortality, in the reality of my mortality and hers and, thus, am the one who has it backward. She is the one who has 'moved beyond'.
    Now that I am thinking about this, I am also realizing that this is what I really mean when I write, as I did in What if I told you... that the caregiver to an Ancient One, if not Ancient herself, is always the child to the parent. Because we caregivers, especially those of us who care for those we describe as demented, believe ourselves to not only be adept but more adept than those for whom we care, we think we have something to teach, or reteach, our Ancient care recipients. In a limited way, this may be true, but we magnify this truth into a truncated myth when we also believe and point to evidence that our Ancient care recipients are doing something we call "going backward". We see only the linear, not the circular [Hmmm...no, make that 'the spiral', further, the intra-connected spiral, oh! That's what the mathematical symbol for infinity describes, in its inadequately two dimensional way, isn't it! An intra-connected spiral!] we speak of decline, we mourn our care recipients' former adeptness, we fear the loss of our own and we perceive our task, as I often do, as "taking up slack".
    I'm wondering, now, if what we are really doing (or, attempting to do) is simply disabling distractions, and thus, providing a comfortable, serene environment within which our Ancient Ones, regardless of what we perceive, are able to go forward, in better words, go on.
    I'm considering, now, the complications of thinking this way: Are those in the deeper throes of dementia, in their agitation and their depression, "going on"? Are those who are fetalized and seemingly (perhaps actually) cut off from our reality, which we consider supremely important, by their dementia "going on"? Is this "going on" consideration simply a romantic notion we caregivers employ to deny our care recipients' reality because it is too incoherent, too painful in its implacability and we need to escape the prophecy it seems to contain for our futures in order to continue to deal with our present reality?
    I don't know.
    What I do know is that my realization has brought, on its heels, yet another measure of peace to me in regard to being my mother's companion through her Ancient Years, unto her death. I am grateful for this sense of peace. I'm hoping it will allow me to lessen any disturbances I cause my mother as she continues her journey, reaches her hand out to me and says, "See that? Doesn't that look interesting? I think that's where I'll head. Come on. Since I'm still here and so are you, would you like to go with me, as far as you can? I'd like you to. And, when we must be separated, I assure you, I will continue to feel and treasure the touch of your hand until we are both aware, again, that our hands never stopped touching."
    Later.