We didn't disturb Mechanicsville, yesterday.
    She didn't remember that she wanted to visit. I didn't remind her. Today, I'll be gone most of the daylight day (in our household, daylight and dark have almost become the equivalent of two separate days), at MPS's home, helping her out. She dislocated her knee, yesterday. When I am out of shouting distance of my mother (considering her hearing, shouting distance is sometimes very short range) she remains with me. I don't worry about finding her in an emergent situation upon arriving home, although this could very well happen, now. I worry about her looking out at the world and feeling as though something is amiss because I am not around her.
    There are times when it seems as though a separation of a few hours from one another refreshes us both. At other times, I walk in the door and her loneliness engulfs me. Today, I think, may be one of those days. She's been spending a lot of time, lately, focusing through a veil of sugar syrup. On these days, being able to spot off a familiar presence steadies her. I can tell, from the way she is adjusting in her sleep, from her snoring, that today is going to be a sugar syrup day with confused priorities.
- posted by gail rae @ 07:52  0 comments   email...this post

 
To Mechanicsville
    "Tomorrow, I think I'll take you to Mechanicsville, show you around," my mother announced last night. She's been dreaming, lately, about Mechanicsville, Iowa. Night before last, she bought a house, there. "Yes," she tells me, "you were there, too, moving into the house with me."
    She lived in Mechanicsville for many years during her youth. Many of her pivotal moments occurred there; many of her pivotal people come from there; she became a woman there. Some of her family still live there.
    We live, now, in Mesa, Arizona. 2,000 miles west and 500 miles south of Mechanicsville, very approximately. She knows, she tells me, where we live. And, she is sure we can indulge in a daytrip to Mechanicsville. Goday. Return before sunset. Even as she is going back to bed, sleeping off the tail end of her sugary Mother's Day.
    I haven't decided how we're going to do "a daytrip to Mechanicsville". Early this morning I decided we would simply get dressed, get in the car, head out on the road in a general northeasterly direction. We'll run into some nice scenery, a bathroom here and there, we could get lunch at the restaurant at Saguaro Lake. Maybe we'll get about 50 miles out and Mom will probably doze. I'll turn us around and bring us back.
    After two or three mentions of Mechanicsville in the last week, I've been wondering if this is a sign that we're getting close to her death. I've thought this before, though, and been gratefully surprised that she's decided to continue.
    I've noticed, too, that her situational dementia takes a fanciful turn, filled with emotional geography, when she sugars herself up.
    I'm not pushing her, this morning, to arise. She and I were up until 0245 this morning, talking. Sparring, really, about the mechanics of daytripping to Mechanicsville. She's not budging. She has even bet me, "...you're so sure of yourself, let's make it two million..." that she is right. We can check in on Mechanicsville, she swears, without having to make arrangements here, or there, and be back in time for supper.
    I wonder who she thinks she'll see, there.
    We really should write her cousin-in-law, who's a few years older than her and lives in Mechanicsville, on her own since her husband died.
    I would like to figure out a way to get her to Mechanicsville, someday. It is where she lived when The Person She Has Never Been Able to Forgive came into her life. It is where The Unforgivable Act occurred. It is not, though, where The Happiest Time in Her Life unfolded.
- posted by gail rae @ 11:13  0 comments   email...this post