Bella Time

"Your attention was just focused elsewhere," my therapist said. "Oh," is that all, I thought. Yup, that's all: not Alzheimer's, no clear symptoms of dementia, not to worry, nothing to fret about. Take a deep cleansing breath; you are not losing your mind. It is not preordained. There's no memo from God guaranteeing my senility. Well, thank goodness for that, because after I forgot a meeting -- clearly marked on my calendar, and for which I was carrying a large folder of papers for -- lost my check book, "I just had it in my hand, where the hell could I have put it?" Lost my keys, "I always put them in the little side pouch thingy inside my purse. Oh, here they are in my hand," I was beginning to worry; worry if I wasn't gong to end up like my mom did.
Ending up like my mom is not how any of us wants to end. Lost and vegetal, yet not totally, still bits of her remained. Those bits and pieces of her, that's where the pain lives. If she'd been completely erased it would have been better. Seeing her sometimes, shining behind her eyes, the wit, the woman, the knowing, the fierce love for me, my little mommy. It makes my throat get hard and knotted now, not the fading, it's the fighting and the glimmers, the reminders of all that is lost, all that is being obliterated that hurts. And so I worry, live in fear of loosing my mind. When I forget things, when I misplace things I panic. It's foreshadowing, but no, it's just that my attention is focused elsewhere. Maybe hers was too: focused on a distant inner shore, she journeyed inside to far off distant planets orbiting in the infinite internal void, that vast blackness inside that goes on forever until the end. Maybe she was there all along, not gone, just focused elsewhere. Still, I feel lonely when friends talk about their mothers, and I miss her, I feel cheated, but not so much as she was -- cheated. Eleven years she suffered. Eleven years of brain surgeries, declines and humiliations. It was a long time to say good-bye. I wonder where she is today. The lost loves don't go they just disappear; you want them but you can't find them. Maybe she's under the bed? In the closet? Come back to me Mommy. You are the thing I lost and can't find, and I want to get back so achingly. Most of the time my attention is just focused elsewhere, but sometimes I remember, and that's when I can't find my coat.