The feel of the door knob and the closing sound of the porch door are as familiar to me as my own reflection in a mirror. I step up into a small dark kitchen with the lingering odors from the night's meal still hanging in the air. From the living room I see my older sister get out of a recliner, grab her coat and head toward me.
She says, "She's had a rough day so I won't be gone too long."
I sit down at the kitchen table to remove my shoes. "That's alright, take your time and get everything you need."
As she passes, Linda briefly touches my shoulder, then grabs a set of keys and leaves the house. For a moment, I sit there listening to the ticking of the clock coming from the wall behind me. Despite the low visibility, I know that there are pictures of my nieces and nephews stuck to the refrigerator door and family phone numbers tacked to the cork board next to the phone. A plastic glow-in-the-dark cross sits on a shelf above the sink with the following passage imprinted on its base:
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God."
I slowly rise from my chair and step out of the darkness into the living room, where I took my first steps as a baby nearly fifty-seven years ago. The frail body of the woman who encouraged me to take those first steps -- however small -- now lies quietly on a couch against the room's far wall.
In a soft voice, I say, "Hi, mom. It's Tim."
* * * *
I was ten years old when my appendix nearly burst. It remains the only time I have ever been to the hospital, despite an athletic life that has included more than a few close calls.My memories of that event include lying on my back in a cold, sterile emergency room while the doctor probed my stomach with his finger, searching for an answer to the sharp pain in my lower right side.
It was during my time in the hospital -- specifically July 20, 1969 (after the surgery to remove my appendix)-- that I watched, as a proud American, Neil Armstrong take "one giant leap for mankind" from my hospital bed.
I also remember my mother sitting with me the night before, holding my hand and wondering what was happening to her little boy. I don't know how many times during the night I would pound on the side of my bed letting her know that I was in pain. Moments later she would enter my bedroom, her sleepy but concerned face silhouetted against the glow of a night light behind her. When my pain continued into the early morning, it became obvious that something was happening beyond mom and dad's control, and that a trip to the hospital was needed.
Two nights later, following surgery, I was laying in my hospital bed trying to sleep and I would see her once again sitting in a nearby chair, keeping a watchful eye on me. Despite the unfamiliar surroundings of my hospital room -- with its clinical beeps and clicks, and unfamiliar voices coming from the hallway -- I never felt worried as long as she was close to me.
Today, nearly 47 years later, the tables have turned. As she approaches her 87th birthday, she is the one in need of someone's watchful eye. It's a situation some friends have faced recently as their parents get old. In fact I am one of a few with a parent still living.
My mom was born in La Crosse on March 12, 1929 to Selma and Eric Frick, whose parents had immigrated to America from Germany. She has led what some would call an "uneventful" life -- never having gone to college, spending her honeymoon fishing in northern Wisconsin and living her life in the same house.
She was the youngest of four children, including two brothers and a sister, who grew up during the Great Depression. Her mother died when she was only 16, and she spent much of her time helping her father take care of the house, fixing meals and keeping a watchful eye on her sometimes troublesome siblings. Much of her spare time was spent with her sister -- either swimming in the Mississippi River or ice skating at Pettibone Lagoon .
At age 21, she met Floyd Carlson, from West Salem at a company dance held at La Crosse Glass Company. Having returned from the war, he was working as an accountant when they met and decided to get married. Within a span of eight years, she had given birth to four children -- two boys and two girls. When they were old enough to take care of themselves, she worked as a cook for the La Crosse school district. It was a job she held until she retired many years later.
As a deeply religious woman, my mom made us go to parochial school (a Lutheran grade school -- grades K through 8th), and always seemed bothered when my older brother would skip church because he had been out too late on a Saturday night. She never pushed her religion on any of us, but always made it known that she disapproved of behavior that was not viewed as "Christian" in her eyes. She has belonged to the same church for all of my life, and will be remembered some day as someone who contributed in many ways to its mission on not only Sundays, but the other six days as well.
I eventually left home for college and got married myself. Years have a way of passing by very quickly when you are busy with life, and on the outer fringes of my memory are periodic stops when her brothers and sister died. And my dad. Then relatives and friends. And through it all, she continued along the way in relatively good health for someone firmly entrenched in her seventh and eight decades.
Six months ago, she was walking and talking just as she always had. Then in what seems like the blink of an eye, she started losing her balance -- and more concerning -- her train of thought, unable to even finish a sentence. I noticed it one afternoon when asking her questions about her childhood in La Crosse. Then when I was asking her about Christmas memories, she told a story that included me sitting in the car with her brothers on Christmas Eve -- even though I wouldn't be born for another fifteen years.
The doctor told us later that she had fluid putting pressure on her brain, causing the speech difficulty and loss of balance. It was possible she had had a stroke, but nothing was definitive. The thin frail-looking girl, who had met the challenge of helping her widowed father raise a family -- and later raise four children of her own -- was faced with a new challenge. One she could not meet on her own.
* * * * *
I wheel the chair into the small bedroom, pausing before her bed. Grabbing her hand, I pull her into a standing position, then rotate her body so she can sit on the edge.
"Let me get this wheelchair out of the way Mom, then I'll tuck you in," It never occurred to me that someday I would have to get my mother ready for bed, but here I was lifting her legs and sliding her frail body under the covers. I fluffed the pillow before putting her head down and pulling up the covers to her chest.
"Can you find the chap stick ... on that table next to you?" she asks as she twists and turns, trying to find a comfortable position.
"Yeah, it's right here." I swab a little on my right index finger and gently trace her pale pink lips. As I finish, I notice she is looking at me, a smile on her face that is hard to read. Is she thinking of something funny or trying to understand why I am touching her face?
"I never wanted..." she pauses as her eyebrows scrunch together before her voice trails off.
"You never wanted what?" I am struggling to understand how a thought can be there one second and gone the next. Or does it remain, but she is unable to get it out?
She closes her eyes, then fights to get an arm out from under her covers. With a little help, she reaches for my hand and then relaxes again. "... wanted you kids to do this." It's an effort that leaves her exhausted, but her eyes continue to search my face, as though I am a ghost floating above her bed.
I put my other hand on hers and say, "What do you mean? Don't you remember all the times you sat with me when I wasn't feeling well? Or everything else you did for us kids?" I pause, shifting my weight more firmly on the bed. "It's time for you to let us help you, mom. You know we don't mind."
For a moment I think she is about to respond, but then she smiles and her face relaxes again. "How 'bout we say a prayer and then I turn out the lights? Or do you keep one on at night?"
"Yes," she says. Not knowing if her response applied to the prayer or the light, I begin with a prayer I have said every night of my life.
"Now the light has gone away;
Savior, listen while I pray.
Asking Thee to watch and keep
And to send me quiet sleep.
Jesus Savior wash away
All that has been wrong today.
Help me every day to be
Good and gentle more like thee."
I pause, before closing my eyes and adding silently to myself --
"Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
I stand and step away before sliding the wheelchair up against her bed. Linda had mentioned that sometimes during the night she will find Mom sitting up , trying to get out of bed. With one side of the bed pushed against the wall and the other blocked by her wheelchair, I think she will be ok.
"Good night, mom," I say and walk out into the hallway. I turn on the hall light and with one last look into her semi-dark bedroom, I head into the next room.
* * * * *
 |
As I think about her deteriorating condition, I struggle with the thought that she is no longer able to be the mother of my childhood memories. No more motherly advice, no more chocolate eggnog or egg sandwiches for lunch. No guarantees that she will even remember my birthday, much less the little things that are happening everyday around her.
With things taking a turn for the worse, my brother and sisters and I are facing the reality that she cannot take care of herself anymore. My older sister, Linda -- who has been living with mom since before Dad died more than 10 years ago -- is able to handle the majority of it, but not without the aid of a homecare service during the day when she is working at the greenhouse. Eventually that will change.
Mom has said on occasions that she is ready to die. To see dad again. But am I ready for her to leave? And is it really for me to even have a say in what she wants?
Mom has always been there during different stages of my life -- as a young child crawling under the kitchen table and seeing her preparing supper; as a teenager seeing her in the crowd after our basketball team had won an overtime game against Lincoln Middle School; as an adult walking over to her with a red rose on our wedding day.
Her contributions have been recorded in an imaginary picture book with events, sounds, and colors that have contributed to who I am. It is a book that remains open for now, waiting for me to add more pages.
Soon I will join my wife and friends who have already closed their books on their parents' lives. Whether this year or next, I will be facing the world for the first time on my own without the watchful eye of a parent.
Leaving me with only memories that will visit in the middle of the night.
