On Sunday mornings, sometimes earlier than people expect, I visit my mother or what remains of her. She is still alive but she has Alzheimer’s disease and she is at Level 6 of a seven-stage illness. Those mornings I wake up early, shower and organize myself. I bring her diapers and goodies, which I no longer know that she enjoys; but I bring them anyway.
We sit beside each other and she talks. She knows she knows me, though she doesn’t know who I am. Sometimes she calls me “Mama.” Other times she says softly, “I saw our mother last night,” and I know she sees me as her sister, and no longer knows me as her daughter. Sometimes she speaks to me in English. Other times in Spanish. Most often in Taglish. Always there are strange words in her language and by now I know I do not understand what she says.
She uses the word “places” a lot. I do not know if she refers to people, real places, things, slippers. I now understand I don’t know what she means. Once she was talking to me about playing with the children. I thought she was imagining little children around. Then a fly alit on her dress. She shooed it away saying to me, “The children,” meaning, the fly. She also calls birds “children.” So I don’t know what she means when she says “places.” One of these days she might explain it to me.
I sit beside her, rubbing her back. It is my gesture of affection. See, this is all I know: I do not understand her and she does not understand me. Sometimes she makes me so sad that I think other thoughts. “Do you believe in euthanasia?” I ask a doctor friend, who says that he does not. I tell him about my doctor in the US who retired to care for his wife when he found out she had cancer. Then he had a heart attack. He recovered, sold his house, moved to a furnished flat.
One Saturday afternoon his lawyer received a letter from him. He wrote that he and his wife had killed themselves, committed euthanasia because he no longer had the strength to care for her and he did not want to leave her suffering so they agreed that this was best. The lawyer rushed to the apartment and found them wrapped in each other’s arms. He was dead. She was still breathing but she passed away in the hospital. The mail service worked too well then. He had mailed the letter on Saturday morning, expecting it to be delivered on Monday morning. It was delivered on Saturday afternoon instead.
I think about euthanasia. It would be the kindest thing for my mother and some of the other patients in the home with her. Alzheimer’s is terribly unkind. It eats at the brain and changes the personality so that what remains is strong but seems a different and unthinking person, an unimagined stranger. It makes patients insane and regresses them back to infancy, to their fetus days. In the end they don’t even speak anymore. They just lie in a fetal position, unless God is kind and takes them earlier by sending another disease — a heart attack or pneumonia but they must wait until God decides. I pray always. I ask Him always. Whose punishment is this? Hers or mine? I think it is mine. I accept it. Please take her kindly.
I remember the old ‘70s movie Soylent Green, where you could check yourself in at a lovely dying place. There they would play whatever background images you wanted to die to — the beach, the mountains, some resort set to spectacular music. You lie down, get injected and have a beautiful death. Of course, the movie should have stopped there but it goes on to say that your corpse was turned into cookies for people to eat because the environment had gotten so polluted and dry.
Oh, Mommy, my dearest Mommy, it grieves me to hear you talk about how much you dislike what they are doing to places, that they are taking them away from you. Sometimes I think maybe you want me to provide you with a place again, with caregivers again; but then, without knowing, it will start the fighting, the firing, the hating, especially of me: the constant disliking of the people and things around you. This is the best place for you, Mommy, I say, again and again. You agree, puzzling me.
I tell you what, Mommy: I will pray that God sends you a trip to heaven. He will send a million butterflies to fetch you and carry you away. You will enjoy that, Mommy? I will pray for it. Until He answers, I will see you again on Sunday morning, earlier than most people expect.
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