“She got the call today
One out of the gray
And when the smoke cleared
It took her breath away
She said she didn’t believe
It could happen to me
I guess we’re all one phone call
From our knees
We’re gonna get there soon.”
Mat Kearny ~ Closer to Love
My relationship with my mother was a continual work in progress. I loved her with a fierce protectiveness, but she frustrated me to no end. Now that all of my memories of my mother are committed to the past, I wonder if my present time with her was really true? I spent so much time focusing on my frustration with our differences that I guaranteed I’d be sitting here today in a place of longing for second chances.
Momma was somehow gifted with what I deemed to be a miraculous second chance in 2009. She suffered a medical crisis, a ruptured colon, which left her in septic shock in the ICU for months. She survived terrible things, multiple surgeries, infection. I mistakenly believed that she would come out of her shell to take the world by storm, celebrating her second chance and losing her anxieties that caused so much pain. That was me looking through a very stylized selfish lens. I could not change my mother. What I could have and should have done is remove that clouded lens and picked up grace covered glasses.
When she picked up the phone nine years ago, the timer was set on my grieving process.
Call Number One
Monday April 20, 2009 11:55 AM
I pulled up near the preschool about five minutes early. It was a gorgeous shiny day, the kind where you roll down the windows and play a happy to be alive kind of song that triggers good memories, probably Dave Matthews in my case. D never liked me to be too close to the front of the carpool line because he liked to sit on the benches and talk to his friends, so I circled the neighborhood and decided to call Momma before sliding into my place in the middle of the queued up minivans.
I always had a better phone relationship with my mother largely because this is how she handled her relationship with my grandmother. Everything in her life was handled long distance. This was partly by circumstance as geography assignments with the Air Force dictated her distance from home, but largely due to personality and choice. As an extreme introvert, she craved isolation and alone time, but she thrived on information. Enter the daily phone calls. Our phone conversations were safe enough; frequent but clipped reporting sessions, pleasantries and stories about the grandchildren exchanged then ending with a promise to update Daddy. Car phone conversations allowed just enough time and gave a guaranteed “Gotta Go!” moment. She never really asked me about anything, I just reported. So as I rolled my silver Dodge Grand Caravan back into carpool line on that cloudless seemingly perfect day in April 2009, I called Momma to talk at her about the mundane comings and goings of my week.
She picked up the phone on the second crackly ring. The sharp stillness on the line seemed to suck all of the air out of the stifling car. “Momma, are you there?” “Yes,” her voice agitated and trailing into a whimper. “Are you okay?” “NO! NO ! LEIGH I AM NOT!” OKAY. Two things my mother was NOT known for were expressing emotion and admitting a potential medical issue, so I knew I had to hang up and get Daddy home. Momma hung up on me first so I found myself fumbling for the phone number to the Town Hall where Daddy worked, and thanking God for the first time in forever that they lived in a small town; his office was less than five minutes from the house.
After a polite but punctuated hello to the smooth rural Virgina accent that thanked me for calling, I was transferred and Daddy picked up. “Hey, EO!,” the familiar sound of my childhood nickname in Daddy’s soft, Southern accented, love filled voice making me panic like a child. “Daddy, you have to go home. Have you talked to Momma? Something is wrong with her! Please go!” He told me that she had been feeling off for the past two weeks, claiming some stomach pain but she had been self-medicating. She was always a late sleeper, so she was still predictably cradled in her down comforter with the dogs when he left the house for work. He assured me that he would go check and give me a call back as soon as he could confirm that she was okay. That was 11:55 am. She was in the hospital in septic shock by 12:15.
Call Number Two
Friday November 1, 2017 8:20 PM
By this point in time, the grief timer had been running aggressively in the background of my mind for years. Although Momma physically recovered from her hospitalization, she did not ever fully acknowledge the toll that Parkinson’s Disease was taking on her previously ravaged body. She denied the severity of all of her medical issues. We could no longer deny it in May of 2016 when Momma began seeing people who were not there, accusing her loved ones of painful things, and attempting to walk the house unassisted prompting fall after fall. Daddy hung in there for another full year, committed to keeping her safe and loved until the stress began to overwhelm him. She entered memory care in April 2017.
What I have learned over the years is that Daddy has strength and determination beyond measure. I grew closer to my father in our shared grief and my heart aches for his loss every day. He once told me that when he was a young boy he wanted a catcher’s mitt more than he could possibly explain. No money or tolerance for that at his house, but his determination led him to try to craft one out of board and wire. Board and wire. I wish I could rewind and give that little dreamer his gift. Daddy was born a feeler. It may have been dismissed by my mother as a weakness, but it is his legacy to me. He selflessly became Momma’s sole caregiver; her eyes, ears, hands, feet. Parkinson’s dementia wrapped itself around Momma like ivy on a vine, and wrapped itself around her caregiver, my Daddy, like that board and wire.
This is the picture that pops up on my phone screen when Daddy is calling. Today, this image of my wonderful protector, my first love, brings me joy. Over the past two years, however, this picture appearing without expecting it triggered everything in me from anger, to fear, to pain, to panic. On Friday night, November 1, 2017, I knew before I picked it up. I knew it. “Hey Daddy?” ”Momma fell.”
Just Say Momma 