The roller-coaster of life

Originally published Sept. 17, 2007

It has been a long time since I've blogged, despite the fact that a few of you have repeatedly begged for more tales of parenting woe (you know who you are and SHAME on you for wishing these things upon me). My lack of writing has not been due to a lack of material. In fact, the stories pile up so ridiculously fast that I can't even remember them all. Last night, as I was stripping duct tape off of a howling Kellen's (aka Dennis) little butt after he'd giddily let his big brother tape both sides of his cheeks together, I was wondering how many other parents have had similar experiences. I know I am blessed that I have these things to moan about. A lot of things have put that into perspective in my life this year.

At the beginning of the year, my mother (age 57) was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. This has been a huge struggle for me and it is one that is not going to end any time soon. As we get older, we are forced to confront mortality - our own and that of those we love - whether we are ready to or not. My mother lost her own mother a few years ago. Watching her go through this at the time, going through it myself in a different way, made me confront the fact that someday I would be saying goodbye to her, too. I never in a million years thought that I would not even be 40 years old and confronted with this reality. Losing someone to an illness like Alzheimer's or Dementia is not quite the same as losing someone through death or sickness. My dad's mother has lost herself in this illness. 2 years ago, she knew me, even if she couldn't quite remember my name. Now she does not recognize her own children. One of my aunts cares for her every day and she has one of the most beautiful attitudes of acceptance about it that I've ever heard. I'm sure that she went through this initial roller-coaster of emotions, but it is the place she is on the other side that I look at and hold up as a light. My aunt said to me, when talking about it, that even though her mother doesn't know who she is, she is one of the neatest old women she knows and she loves being with her. I can't wait to reach that point, because just thinking of that inevitability - acknowledging that my mother, the woman who holds me always as her child, who knows all the countless hurts and boo boo's, the childhood triumphs, the only person in the world who holds my entire existence in her mind and heart, will look at me one day in the not-to-distant future and not see ME...

This year was the first time in 36 years that my mother forgot my birthday. When I think I have the tears and this grief that lodges itself in my throat like a poorly chewed hunk of meat under control, an inevitable reminder throws itself in my face that this fate is hurtling at me faster than I feel I have the ability to cope with. Losing oneself to an illness like this is like watching a comedic tragedy. It is profoundly sad, but at the same time, one has to be able to laugh at the day-to-day craziness that is a natural result of the process of forgetting. I gather these little follies to myself and laugh until that inevitable sob creeps up and grabs me by the throat again.

The hardest part of all of this is that my mom lives 12 hours from me. When I was a young teenager, my mom and I talked a lot about growing old and I told her that I would always take care of her. And I meant it. Growing up, she was my best friend. I have only ever had one female friend in my life as close to my heart as a friend as my mother and in a way, I've lost her this year, too. My mom was the kind of mom that all my troubled teenaged friends would come to for advice. She was the kind of mom that I can only aspire to be. And to live 12 hours away and not be able to fulfill the promise I made to her is one of the hardest things I've had to live with. I can only hope that sometime soon my dad will decide to bring her up here so that I can do for her what my aunt does for my grandmother. Because of all the people on this earth, I am the one that that task belongs to.

Losing one close to you like this is a constant reminder that we only have the opportunity to do this thing called life once. If we don't tell the people we love how important they are to us, show them every single day, tomorrow we may wake up to find that it is too late and all we are left with is a pile of regrets. I'd like to think that my love for mom, the love that we have for each other, will somehow transcend this disease; that someday I will look in her eyes and, while she may not remember me, maybe she will feel a recognition, somewhere deep inside, of that love I hold for her and she for me. When that time comes, I hope to be able to move through the grief and just see the beautiful person that remains, as my aunt has done. I don't think that this crushing grief will ever go away, but I hope that at some point it hurts less.

And while I have cried so much more this year than I have in the past 10 combined, I have also discovered a newfound desire to live my life to the fullest and not to get to the end of it with a big bag of "wish I had's" and "should'ves." My mom won't have a chance to do all those things she kept putting off for one reason or another. So I'll pull the duct tape off of little butts with gusto (and quite possibly a flourish) and I'll celebrate life in the ways that make me happy. Because life's just too damn short not to.