Settled for the night - 2023 04 23

 

On April 23, Sunday morning, Mom had a bad fall.

3:15 am I wake to hear the slap of Mom's slippers on the polished concrete floor. She is walking laps in the kitchen with her walker. I listen for awhile and decide to give her privacy. She is probably having trouble sleeping and needs to exercise to wind down.

7:00 am Mom is still asleep. I empty the commode, prepare her dentures, and leave her glass of juice for when she wakes up.

7:30 am I check in on Mom and she has put in her teeth, drank her juice, and fallen back to sleep.

8:15 am I am sitting on the couch writing and Mom appears from her bedroom. She has put on her dressing gown and a lavender bedazzled knit cap, pushing her walker. As I shut my laptop and rise from the couch to meet her, she sets off into the kitchen to do more laps. I am on my feet, walking toward her as she makes her turn at the end of the kitchen, heading east. She takes one or two steps after making the turn. I am walking toward her, not hurrying, she looks steady and determined. 

Suddenly, with no warning, she collapses backward, her hands flying off the walker and landing on her backside. Her head thudded softly against the kitchen cupboard, protected by her knit cap. There was no sound. No yelp of surprise. As I bend over to help her, I can see her eyes are wide open with surprise. 

I check her head and neck to make sure they are uninjured and gently turn her body so she is lying prone on the floor. I check her hips, arms and shoulders for broken bones and everything is fine. 

At this point, I need help to get Mom off the floor. I run upstairs and call for Matt and he comes down immediately. The two of us are able to get Mom up and sitting on the walker, and then wheel her into her room to lie down. Her only visible injury was a grazed right elbow. The invisible injury was her shaken confidence. She did not know what had happened and I could not explain it from my observations. 

Had she lost consciousness for an instant? Had she lost strength? What had happened?

On her bed, I was checking her head for lumps and she said, "Jenny, what is this lump on my neck?"

This is the crow drawing I started that day. As I stepped back from the finished drawing I was struck by the metaphor of my experience with Mom. The crow is moving from one space to another. The crow is moving toward a distant light horizon. There is this vast liminal space in the middle, where the crow is no longer where it was, moving toward something in the distance. This liminal space is where I live with my Mom. 

We have no idea what is coming next, in the coming days. We have some idea of how this story will end, although we don't have any experience making this journey together.

Sometimes Mom and I have a hearty laugh at some incomprehensible thing she has said. Sometimes I sit down to write about this experience and huge sobs well up from the core of my being. 

We are in this liminal space between eternity and the quotidian realities of cleaning up the floor under the commode.

This drawing helps me understand this state of mystery and housework.

Mom is settled for the night and the house is quiet.