The Man With No Name

Yesterday, for the first time, my mom didn't know who I am.  And is wrecked me.

I was headed out of town for my annual trip to Sewanee/Bonnaroo - a trip I've taken for six or seven consecutive years with the same group of friends - and I stopped by to see my mom on my way out of town.  It was mid to late afternoon, around 4:30 p.m., not a time I normally see her.  Usually, I'm there in the early morning or early afternoon.  

I thought she might be napping but, instead, she was in reclined in her chair when I walked into her room, eyes wide open, breathing heavily (which is what she does when she is anxious).  She also was absentmindedly and repeatedly scratching the arms of the chair with her fingernails (something else she does when she is anxious).

When she saw me, there was no smile, like there usually is.  She just stared up at me vacantly, breathing hard.  I smiled at her and tried to make a joke, but she just kept looking at me.  I sat down not bed beside her recliner and tried to hold her hand.  She quickly pulled it away from me.  

I'm not sure I've felt that helpless since the beginning of this ordeal.  My mom, in obvious distress, with me unable to do anything to reassure her or calm her down.

She had taken the telephone off the cradle and it was laying in her chair beside her, on top of the Predators' blanket I got for her a few weeks ago.  When I reached for the telephone to hang it up, she actually snarled at me, briefly, before letting me take the telephone.  The look on her face, albeit only for an instant, almost made me audibly gasp as my heart suddenly went ice cold.  It was clear that she was afraid of me, that she didn't know me and, in truth, that I didn't know her.  

It was like she was possessed.

I tried to talk quietly to her but she wouldn't - or couldn't - answer me.  Finally and with great trepidation, I asked her if she knew who I was.  She nodded her head slowly, then said, just as slowly, "Kaitlyn" (my niece).  

Well, fuck, I thought.  This is what rock bottom feels like.  

I stayed for a few more minutes, then asked Carolina - the nurse who was working and who is quite good to mom - to check her vitals and keep an eye on her.  Then, I left and rather than leave for Sewanee/Bonnaroo and the cabin where I had planned to spend a two quiet, solitary days before my friends arrived for the weekend, I drove to J.P.'s baseball practice at Warner Park.

For maybe the first time during my mom's long, hard ride to the end, I preferred the company of others to isolation.  I didn't want to be alone with my own thoughts because, well, they weren't very good or positive ones.  

Sometimes, this whole thing in overwhelming to me.