Last Monday, I celebrated Mother's Day with my mother and a few other relatives. There was a special meal, cards, flowers, and other gifts.
The "official" Mother's Day was Sunday, but Sunday was one of those days when my mother had trouble waking up. My mother is one hundred years old. Technically, one hundred and a half -- slightly closer to one hundred and one; somehow, the half years seem significant again in the very old, as they are in the very young. She has lived a good, happy, long life, and now her time is drawing to a close. She is weak and frail, both mentally and physically, and is slowly declining.
When anyone asks me about her health, the hardest thing to describe is the dramatic variability in her mental status from day to day. She has several different types of "bad" days. Some days, she is almost comatose, and almost impossible to rouse at all. Very rarely, she does not recognize the people closest to her. On the very worst days, she is agitated and worried, often about things that cannot be defined, or that seem impossible to worry about.
On her best days, she is almost crystal clear, mentally -- though I doubt she is ever one hundred percent clear now. There are also those days when she approaches mania, and finds it almost impossible to stop talking. Those are not horrible days, since she is sometimes able to tell long-forgotten stories or sing long-forgotten songs.
(Music has always been important to Mom, and seems almost more important now. She will often sing a fragment of a song, and then wonder what the rest of the song is. Armed with a certain amount of musical knowledge and the internet, she has yet to stump me.)
Most days, she is somewhere between these various extremes. When people inquire about her condition, and I attempt to tell them, I often feel that they suspect I am being evasive, or sugar-coating the situation, when I tell them her condition constantly changes, but is always declining.
Crucially, she is uncommonly pleasant and happy almost all of the time, except on those few days when she is agitated and worried. Even when she cannot seem to wake up, she will smile when someone speaks to her.
Physically, she grows weaker and thinner each day. She does not eat much, or enough, and is in danger of falling when she walks, even with a cane -- though until recently she has been able to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom without assistance. She also has a "walker" and a wheelchair for different occasions.
Which brings up the fact that she can no longer live without the assistance of others. For now, she lives with family members, though it is altogether possible that she may someday live in an institution of some sort. This gets complicated, as caring for her is simultaneously a blessing and an almost-unbearable burden. Among other things, there are never-ending philosophical questions involving issues of whether to keep her alive or let her go -- such as how hard to try to get her to eat more, and whether to urge her to get out of bed.
Anyone who has cared for her -- that is, who has taken care of her -- in recent years has had the experience of suspecting she would not survive the next few hours, let alone days. So far, she always rallies and bounces back from the edge of life. Logic dictates that she grows closer to death every day, as all of us do. Logic also dictates that her death, when it comes, should not come as a shock to those she leaves behind, but I suspect that it still will.
Personally, I have long realized that one of the ways I cope with difficult situations is by becoming increasingly analytical -- I step back from the situation, mentally, and view it as a scientist would, noting my own responses and emotions, and thinking, "Isn't that interesting!"
Truth is complicated.
