Lost and Found
The following excerpts are taken from a personal essay I wrote in 2019 at a writing retreat in Taos, New Mexico led by Jennifer Louden. The essay was the end product of six days of focused writing, dancing, running under the midday sun, playing with the imagination and as it turns out, grieving.
This essay is not polished. It’s raw, uncut and honest.
It’s a reflection of a grateful, broken heart of a daughter losing her mother slowly and cruelly to dementia. Three years in the trajectory of dementia is a very, very long time. Mom has become more and more unrecognizable, as I have to her.
I know my story is not unique - sadly far from it. Perhaps in the sharing of it, however, we can all feel just a little less alone.
When does it happen? The moment you become a mother to your mother?
My mother is 81 years old, living in an extended care facility. She has dementia - has had it for many years now. About a year and a half ago, my mother became a flight risk, prompting us to hurriedly transfer her into a secure facility.
I found the answer to my question. The moment I became a mother to my mother is now. I am a mother to my mother who has slowly but surely become more and more dependent on my sister, my brothers and me to care for her, watch out for her, remember for her.
Long before my mother was 81, she had a story. Dementia stole that story away from her. Dementia’s sole objective is to take that story, crumple it up, pitch it into the garbage can, and proceed to burn the contents.
I would like to tell you her story… or rather my story of her, which of course, are two very different things.
My mother (perhaps I can now call her mom) was five foot nothing, strict, religious, and very tightly wound. Today, we would likely use labels like attachment trauma and anxiety disorder to describe her emotional dysregulation. For me in those early days, all I knew was that mom lost her shit easily and often and I was scared to death of her… that unhealed, fearful part of her.
At the same time, I always thought my mom was fragile. She seemed to shatter easily. I became very wary of this shattering and I had to protect her, and in doing so, hopefully myself.
Everyone played a part in keeping her “together.” I did my part. I silenced myself, kept my truth inside, and only made available the parts of me that were by her standards, “very, very good.” As for the rest of it - all my bad and shameful bits: desire, sensuality, sexuality, anger, vulnerability and my fundamental need to feel worthy and good enough were wrapped up with yellow police tape, labeled ‘DO NOT ENTER,’ and cordoned off into the far reaches of my unconsciousness. Temporary fix of course. That tape doesn’t last forever.
Growing up, If ever I doubted my inherent badness, I would just go to church, which I did almost every Sunday. Romans 3:23 summed it up for me: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There it was, in writing. I never quite got to, literally or figuratively, verse 24… “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.” Oh crap… one more verse may have alleviated all these years of trying desperately and obsessively to amend all my shortcomings.
I felt like a towering princess in my first pair of high-heeled shoes. I was in grade nine (I think) and I was stupefied by how the hell they were allowed into the house. They were black-paten, open-toed stilettos with a criss-cross over the top of my foot. They were beautiful, magical and sensual.
I was so excited by my new pair of magic stilettos that I couldn’t fall asleep that first night with them. It was almost like they were begging me to stay awake to party with them. I jumped out of bed over and over again and ran to the closet just to stare into their beautiful black abyss, to feel them, to run my fingers over the smooth, shiny, elevating five inch heels! They were so sexy.
Uh oh…
Suddenly, it came to me. It was bound to come. All that inner conflict flooded over the banks of my fragile psyche in that instant. My black, strappy twins were a messenger of evil. I tossed them all topsy-turvy into the closet and began to repent, beseeching my Father to forgive such a sin.“Forgive such a sinful heart that is as black as those strappy twins.”
The trouble with repentance and beseeching is that you just never know when enough is enough. So to be safe, you err on the side of more repentance than less. I prayed and prayed and prayed for forgiveness for falling in love with something so beautiful and so tempting.
As the dementia makes its way through my mom’s cortex; through cognitive processes; the bundle that bound my mother’s shame, anger, anxiety, and disavowal unravels too. The socialized constriction loosens and a window opens. It’s like the part of the brain where clusters of neurons that hold the “thou shall” and “thou shall not’” effectively disappear and the tyranny that held her desire captive is coming to an end. Don’t get me wrong, there remains familiar, difficult parts of my mom - heightened, in fact. But there is this little window.
The window of the house I grew up in was the signature element of a typical, post-war bungalow design: 1200 sq. ft. (give-or-take), three bedrooms upstairs, a 4x4 landing with three steps up to the kitchen or 10 steps down to the basement.
At this moment, I am sitting in front of that window, I am 5 and 10 and 17. I look out the window and gaze at a familiar towering spruce tree. It’s long and sturdy with branches that barely move in the breeze. When I think of home, the bungalow, the farm, I think of this tree. My sister told me the other day that this spruce tree is still standing. It could very well outlive us all. But today is not the day to look out this window, it is to look in, because in that living room, my mother is dancing.
She is dancing to, The Rivers of Babylon, by Boney M. Yes, this diminutive staunch, German, Lutheran mama is dancing with wild and reckless abandon (in a staunch, German, Lutheran kind of way – it’s all relative after all). There is an audience of three. The bronze bronco, the black panther ceramic figures on the shelf and myself. They are undoubtedly silently cheering her on. I know I am! Something about that song makes her want to move her body.
Joy.
I am filled with tender emotion for my mom with this memory – joy and sadness interwoven. There are two statements we make when we meet our lost selves. First, the exuberant, “hello! There you are! I see you. I feel you.” Next, the anguished dripping with ache, “oh… there you are. Where have you been? I have missed you so…”
Dementia is a fucking asshole. My mother is on antipsychotic medication to abate the torturous delusion that spiders are eating her alive.
But there is this window…
Through this window, my mom reaches out spontaneously for my hand and strokes my arm. Through this window, I reach back beckoning her to hold on to me and to steady herself as we walk. Through this window, she worries if I’ve eaten enough, she thanks me and hugs me and I let her. Through this window, I run my fingers through her thin, white hair – hair so thin now that my fingers are a comb reminding her curls where they should go. I hold her arthritic hands, and kneel at her tiny feet to gently put on her socks and shoes.
One day this window will close. I already see it closing. It is closing. She has forgotten her grandchildren. In time, I will undoubtedly be the nice lady who comes to visit her every week. Soon enough, I will be even less.
For now, there is this window. Through this window my mother reaches out, picks up my shattered pieces and heals me with her sudden presence. In those brief and beautiful moments of connection, together we sing, “I see you, I feel you, there you are, where have you been? I’ve missed you.”
Things give way, don’t they?
If we are lucky, things give way.
Anger and regret and lamenting lost time give way.
Fear and needing to fix absolutely everything gives way…
Peace and acceptance break through.
Gratitude is allowed to sit beside all that remains undone.
I am so grateful. Thank you, mom, for everything.
