Waiting, Seeing

I received a rare gift this week - the chance to see my boyfriend twice in one month, and with it, the opportunity to spend 3 whole days by myself, with no responsibilities and nothing to specifically do.  The days were made all the more sweeter knowing that I would be seeing Matt at the end of the day (and maybe when he came home for lunch too), but it was the first time in the last year and a half where I was finally unfettered, with no one to check in with or check in on, and it has been both liberating and entirely strange.

Although it goes without saying that I cherish the time I've had with my mom, and I consider it an honor to take care of her, at times it feels endless and utterly exhausting. I think because I don't talk about it a ton, people assume there is a staff of hospice nurses, etc., that my step dad and I sort of coordinate to take care of my mom, and while there are those people, they are around four hours a week, and between that and the few days a week her good friends cover for us, the rest of the hours are left to my step dad and me. It is really all day, everyday, unless like today, I happen to be 1,000 miles away.

It is not only the general care taking that takes energy - meals, bathing, dressing, etc. it's that lately, I feel a lack of things to tell her, to update her with, as not much new and exciting is really happening in my life. All of us, including her, are stuck in this pattern of waiting and seeing, waiting to see if she will continue to decline slowly and/or searching for signs that the decline is now, because if it is, then we really have to get prepared, because what if the end comes more quickly than we've anticipated? Last fall, I imagined moving to California sometime this spring, but now that feels too soon - even as I sit here in a cafe, happy in my fantasy that I already live in this town, that I can look forward to seeing Matt every day, that we will find an apartment together, then I'll get a fabulous job writing and teaching or (please, please) miraculously secure a Stegner Fellowship and write full-time for the next two years. I think it's change I'm beginning to crave, but even that change is a fantasy, as coming here will either mean I will have to leave her and somehow reconcile that choice, or it will mean that she is gone, and so then, it will all be an entirely different experience.

Everyone has an opinion about this. My father says, "You've put in your time, when do you get to live your life?"  My father really has no idea what's going on over here, and that has always been the case. He means well, but I sort of want to punch him when he says this. If I were speaking to my sister, I imagine she would say something like, "Yeah, it's time, man. You should go." Not that she's going to show up and help out when I do leave, for reasons too thick to go into here. Not exactly comforting. Friends, strangers and the like also have opinions, ranging from, "Well, if you leave, you'll never get that time back," to "You have done so much, and you deserve to move on and start your life."

Then there is what my mother says again and again, "I love you, and I can't thank you enough for the beautiful job you've done and continue to do." Then she peers down at me over her glasses.  "And you can leave at any time."

On top of feeling a lack of things to say, becoming bored with myself, she is losing more and more speech as the weeks go by.  If I have not said it before (and if I have, it's worth saying again) my mother is nothing short of brilliant, has read more books than I could ever hope to in my lifetime, and used to talk in the rapid-fire way that I still do. I miss the back and forth of our conversations, the speed and dimension of them.  I have adjusted to her inability to get the words out, and have become an automatic sentence finisher for everyone as of late, as used to it as I am spending so many hours with her. I know she just wants my company, my presence, that she doesn't care all that much about what I have to say, just that I am there. And when I remember that, when we are reduced to a few sentences every few minutes, I know that's all I want from her, for her to still be here.  But it's a fight these days, waiting, wanting, thinking, imagining and future dreaming.  I don't think there's any way around it, other than to enjoy this day I have here, alone, unfettered.  And then there will be tomorrow, home again with her.