Early Morning Thoughts on Ma

I have been laying here for an hour or so, fighting the words in my head because I want to sleep. I don't know why I just don't get up and write the minute they start coming, because they never let me rest until I put them somewhere else and give them life outside of my brain.

Today, I woke up around 4 a.m. to the sound of my mother's snoring; a magnificently loud thing that reverberates throughout the house. I don't know if she has always snored this way or if this is something new, but the walls in this house are thin, the floors even more so and sleeping right underneath my parent's bedroom ensures that I don't miss much of what goes on up there. I can hear them laughing, the soft murmurings of conversation, every squeak and shift of the furniture and bed springs. Sometimes, when she snores late at night I listen for awhile, fighting sleep as the sheer continuity of the sound is comforting; However, her sleep apnea can be alarming, and often scares the crap out of me as the snores will stop mid-breath and there will be nothing for one, two, three seconds, until I am almost ready to take the stairs two at a time and shake the life back into her. But before I can panic, there is that sweet sound again and no matter how loud it is, usually I can fall asleep again. Yesterday was a hard day, however, full of too much reality of what's happening here and hence, my brain won't let me rest.

Before my mother got sick, I thought I knew what it was to have my heart broken. I wailed my way through my teens and 20s, through a stack of boys that didn't love me enough or simply didn't love me back.  I will admit there was a part of me that sort of reveled in this kind of heartbreak purely for its grandiosity. For weeks, months even, I would curl up in bed for hours and play sad music, moving to the floor occasionally, so I could lay on my back and feel those hot tears roll down my face to my ears, in the hopes that I could shed enough tears to make him come back or barring that, make my hair wet. I thought those boys broke my heart beyond anything I would ever experience.

Ha.

I could never have imagined the way her illness would break it, and yesterday I think it might have been bruised beyond recognition. I had just come back from the gym, and she and my stepfather were sitting in the living room and I could tell something was wrong; she was still in her wheelchair and he was in the chair she usually spends her days in. She was crying and apologized for it, something I always tell her is unnecessary. She has had several small fainting spells as of late, which happened on a fairly regular basis right after surgery (and just before) but hasn't for months. The spells are terrifying for her and disturbing for us, as she loses consciousness for a few seconds when we help her stand, and although her eyes are open and she doesn't go limp, she is entirely gone, out of her body, somewhere else. The last week or so it's happened several times, and she felt like yesterday this meant it was happening, and she palpably felt like she was running out of time.

I'm guessing what's so scary for her is that the feel like a dry run for dying, and she knows this and is afraid it might happen like that -- no warning. Just poof, she's gone.

"I'm not ready," she said as I wrapped myself around her. "I'm not ready."

"None of us are, Ma," I said. "No one is on board for that."

"I don't want to die," she said, and that was it, I felt a snap inside of me. A piece of my heart went missing. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to find it again. She's said this before, but not quite in this way - and while we all know this is the case, that she doesn't want to go - to hear her say it in such a sad and defeated way was a different level of pain for me. We were quiet then, the three of us, crying.

Which brings me to my stepfather and his uncanny ability to move through moments like this with a kind of pragmatic insistence that leaves us all weak with laughter.

"Listen," he said. "It ain't happening today, we know that much, and look (he pointed to her dry erase board where we keep her daily schedule) you are booked through Sunday, so its not happening before then. Get back to me Sunday and I'll give you an update for next week."

We had no choice but to laugh.  My heart is still broken, but he let a sliver of light in. Ma was better by the afternoon and things felt back in place. But sometimes I look at that chair as she sits there, taking everything in and I'm the one left paralyzed by the idea of what this house will feel like when it sits empty.