Sunrise
Senior Living
April
23 2018
I
spy her in a shapeless dress
but
my eyes are fixed on her hair,
more
white than grey
and
frazzled, neglected, unkempt;
looking
finger-in-socket wild,
or
as if left by itself to dry
in
the close institutional air.
The
awkwardly long stare
before
she recognized her youngest.
Only
later would I notice
the
scrawled reminder
among
the random scraps and cryptic notes
see
Brian Sunday.
An
antique table, I recall from home
littered
with reminders,
its
burnished finish dull
and
the joint of the rim splitting
in
the dry winter heat
of
her cramped rectangular quarters.
80
degrees, the thermostat says,
while
out the narrow window
cars
idle under falling snow
four
stories down.
It
would be kind
to
call her absent-minded,
when
the brain is riddled with holes
and
she knows just enough to know
how
her mind is failing.
The
surprising flashes
of
mental sharpness.
The
essential self, both good and bad
than
seems indelibly her;
both
stubborn and kind
polite,
and paranoid,
her
old familiar impatience
combined
with uncommon grace.
The
loneliness
of
an unbreakable couple
when
you're the one who is left behind,
and
there seems no point to life
except
more of the same.
I
try to travel back with her,
but
even in the distant past
she
seems unsure.
And
I realize
that
as her memory goes
parts
of my life are going as well;
the
matriarch
we
depended on
to
remember for everyone else.
We
counted on her as the glue
— from
curating birth-weights, to cousins-once-removed —
but
now the custodian of our story
barely
navigates these corridors
and
loses track of days.
The
busy foyer
where
residents shuffle by,
and
Filipino women
with
smooth oval faces, and lustrous black hair
dutifully
shadow them.
Where
she sits, purse clutched,
bulging
with stuff
no
one can fathom.
Where
she putters and straightens and neatens-up
with
that politely fixed smile
that
seems both apologetic, and driven,
perhaps
her
sense of order still offended
at
our unmade beds
and
the mess of growing boys.
So
which is tougher?
Getting
older
in
a broken body, with a healthy mind?
Or
in a body that's oddly robust,
only
to be betrayed
when
the mind fails?
I
cannot help
thinking
of myself
when
I see her this way.
Will
my final days
be
filled with rage
or
grace
or
someone to care?
Or
will I, too, end badly,
in
some dreary place, like this,
fingers
fitfully picking
at
dignity's tattered threads
as
the sun descends
in
its steady arc?
A
shadow of herself,
peering
out
with
agitation and doubt
through
the gauze of incomprehension,
confused
by a world
in
which she finds she has lost her place.
Old
age,
where
loss after loss
is
what you learn to live with,
and
memories fade
to
the eternal limbo of now.
For
the first time in a long time, I visited my mother in her senior's
home (yes, Senior Sunrise Living)
in Toronto. And yes, I have been negligent in my filial duty (my
hatred of travel notwithstanding).
My
two examples – birth weight, and the remote relative – are chosen
quite deliberately. Because birth weight is where this started: it's
utterly insignificant, I know, but sometime during this visit the
thought crossed my mind that no one in the world now knows what
weight I was at birth (oh, I suppose it's recorded somewhere; perhaps
surviving as a small paper entry in the dusty recesses of an ancient
medical records department) except her; and she was the one who sent
out cards and kept track of family and remembered every significant
date and anniversary. Now, no one does any of this, and the extended
family atomizes.
She
has deteriorated substantially. Clearly, she will soon need to move
to a higher lever of care. Since the loss of my father and then her
move from home, I get the impression she is waiting out the clock. As
seems to happen with dementia, one's enduring traits and underlying
character are unmasked and sharpened. So she can be both frustrating
and endearing. Her hearing is going, which I know adds to her feeling
of isolation. I can't tell if she is lonely, or if she simply forgets
the social life she leads there. One consoles oneself that forgetting
can be a kind of blessing, but it can also be accompanied by
distress. Especially when I observed how agitated she got in the
early evening, becoming disoriented and demanding: the so-called
“sun-downing” phenomenon, which is a common feature of dementia.
I
owe the third last stanza to my niece Jacqueline, who is a new mother
herself. She commented on how lucky she was that her two grandmothers
are still alive, then added how ironic it is that one is riddled with
infirmity and pain but razor-sharp mentally, while the other is in
good physical health but losing her mind. I had to wonder which I
would chose. My niece's answer was quick and clear: she thought
losing you mind was better, because presumably you wouldn't be aware
of it. Trouble is, you are:
only in the advanced stages of dementia do you lose insight. My
mother will frequently lament how her once incisive memory is now so
poor, and clearly gets frustrated at her disability.
This
is a long poem. There are details and tangents and discursions that
may seem excessive or distracting. But in my writing I've always
taken pleasure in close observation, which I think is the poet's
calling. And I think l these small excursions have purpose: for
example, the table from her past life that is deteriorating from
neglect; the falling snow, adding to the sense of bleakness; the
caregivers' hair, in contrast to my mother's.
And
don't we all wonder how we will end? Who doesn't give in to this very
human solipsism? Is a parent's fate our own destiny? Will the mean
curmudgeon I fear lies just beneath my surface emerge as my mental
faculties and social defences are stripped away?
And
how ironic that some regard the ability to live in the moment as the
highest form of enlightenment, when in the case of my mother the
“eternal now” seems more life sentence than liberation.
