Memories

MEMORIES

The first couple of signs weren’t neon. Just bumps I wrote off as a one-off due to the stress of having lost her husband of forty years.

I’d moved to the desert floor in Arizona, next door to my mother and her difficult husband, to reset my life after a bad breakup.

Every morning I’d walk over to the “big house” and share a cup of coffee with my mom. It gave her a chance to rehash the stress of her husband’s cancer diagnosis that had spread to his bones.

Hospice came twice a week to help but his struggle with a death sentence was taking a huge toll on her mental health. She was surviving on a homemade cocktail of Valium and Vicodin.

When he died two years later, she felt guilty for being relieved rather than sad. Their marriage had been a rollercoaster ride from day one. Those last two years had added an extra element of difficulty to the equation. She was slowly sorting through an avalanche of feelings.

It’s hard to love someone yet hate them at the same time.

Our morning coffee together became a bitch session for her to process forty years spent tethered to a man whose sense of self-importance overshadowed all else.

She needed to sift through every tiny detail about their life, and explained that adopting the mantra - just go along to get along - had become her coping mechanism.

I called it the “suck it up” strategy.

One morning while pouring her coffee, she looked at me with sad eyes and said, “When I die, cremate my dogs and bury our ashes together.”

“Wait a minute….you want me to kill three perfectly good dogs so they can be buried with you? Is that what you are telling me?”

“Huh?” She mumbled as if only half awake.

She was stuck in an emotional coma. He had made every big decision for forty years. She had never lived alone a day in her life. The future looked like a dark icy road – slippery and terrifying.

Sadly, she had allowed him to spend most of their money, and losing one Social Security income left her financially vulnerable. I let her stew in the juices of that new reality for six months. It was like she was stuck in slow motion without a gear shift to propel her forward.

Finally, over coffee one day I hit her with the truth.

“Mom, you cannot afford to keep the big house. We have to sell it and move in together.”

I saw a dim light flicker behind her eyes.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

It felt familiar to have someone else take the reins, as if she were just along for the ride.

Tasked with filtering through three garages full of crap he had left behind, I asked her to go through the house and figure out what she couldn’t live without.

She’d never learned to cook so they ate out once a day. I cooked dinner for them a couple of times a week. When I moved in, I filled her pantry with a huge spice collection and my twenty-year-old recipe box filled with old favorites and a cherished, irreplaceable recipe for my great-grandmother’s peach cobbler.

When I opened the pantry door to begin packing, it was empty.

“Mom, where are all my spices?”

“Oh, I threw it all away.”

“What? You threw out all my spices and my recipe box?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.

“You told me only to keep what I thought I needed most.”

Trying to smother my instinct to throttle her, I turned and walked out as smoke poured out of my ears.

After we moved in together, I took her to the bank to update her checking account information. On the way, I asked her about something we had talked about numerous times. She looked at me like I was someone she didn’t know.

“I don’t know. We never discussed it.”

Frustrated, my voice ratcheted up a few octaves. “We have talked about this several times.”

"You don’t need to raise your voice.”

Pulling the car over and gulping for air to calm myself, I turned to face her. “Mom, I need to know if you are not hearing me or not paying attention.”

“Oh. Ummmm…I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

I gave her a hall pass due to the stress of giving up the home she had lived in for thirty years. It was traumatic and disorienting. We were both seeking solid ground.

Six months later, while I was working in Southern California, a man I went out with a few times asked Mom if his son and two dogs could stay with her for a couple of days. No red flags.

I talked to her every day while out of town.

“How is it having them in the house?”

“Oh, it’s so much fun. They take me out to lunch every day. Brian is staying here too, sleeping on the couch.”

“Wait a minute. You mean he is living in our house with his son and two dogs?”

“Yes.”

I wish I’d had the power to transport myself through the telephone line but I was stuck working five hours away while some guy I barely knew was living in my house. His son was sleeping in MY bed.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

“Don’t say anything to upset him. I’m enjoying the company.”

"Mom, they are taking advantage of you – of me.”

“No they aren’t.”

“Yes, they are!”

The next call was to Brian, a man I had dated briefly and broken up with because he was living in a motorhome hopping from one park to another, like a vagrant. His thirty-year old son had a disability that Brian had refused to fix when he was a child. It rankled me to know his father allowed him to grow up disfigured when he could have done something about it.

Brian brushed off my concern. “It was expensive and I didn’t think he needed the surgery.”

“So, now he can barely eat without choking and having the surgery as an adult would be ten times harder. I just don’t get your logic.”

We would never be on the same page so continuing to date him was futile.

He answered on the second ring.

“Brian, I understand you have moved into my house with your son.”

“Yes, your mother loves having us here.”

“My mother isn’t the one who pays the rent. It is my house too and I want you to move out by Friday. I’ll be home Saturday morning.”

“No. I won't do that. Your mother said we can stay.”

“I don’t care what my mother told you. I am her caregiver and power-of-attorney so she doesn’t have the final say about who lives in our house. Be out by Friday.”

“No.”

“Okay, if that is how you want this to play out, I am bringing the Sheriff with me when I get home on Saturday. You decide.”

"You are such a bitch!”

“Yep.”

They were gone when I got home but mom was mad at me.

“Why did you make them move out? I was enjoying their company while you were gone.”

"I understand that, but we don’t have room for guests and already have three dogs. This is not a boarding house for crying out loud.”

She turned to face me defiantly. “Well, I want them here, so what are you going to do about it?”

Momentarily stunned, I took a step back to get my balance. I had never yelled at my mom but this was new territory.

“Mom, if you want them here, then I will move out tomorrow and you can pay the rent, utilities and fix whatever else needs to be done around here.

“If that is what you want, just say the word.”

She shrunk before my eyes. I had let the air out of her balloon.

“Well, I guess it’s okay then.”

Within the year she was diagnosed with mild dementia, and eighteen months later it was re-evaluated as moderate. Her short-term memory is compromised. By noon she cannot remember what we talked about at ten.

Last week while I fixed her morning coffee, she chuckled as if recalling a long-lost memory.

“Remember that guy Brian you dated a long time ago? He was such a jerk!”