When I was a four-year-old, my mother had her first brain surgery for a tumor. All I knew at the time was that I had to spend the night (maybe a few nights) with some friends. When I came home, Mama was sitting at the kitchen table in a robe, sporting what looked to me like a crew cut. I had no idea why she had that funny haircut, but that's not unexpected for a child as young as I was. To all appearances, Mama was fine after that.
When I was 9, things started taking a turn for the worse. Mama had to wear a brace on her left leg, and was losing the ability to use her left arm. In fairly short order, she was in a wheelchair. At the age of 10, I was caring for her instead of the other way around, at least during the times I was home and Dad was at work. My brothers were teenagers, so they weren't around the house very much.
My father and Mama's sisters always praise me for how I helped her during that time. Of course, they weren't there, and they don't know about the times I was so horribly, horribly thoughtless. Mama couldn't get out of her wheelchair and onto the toilet, so I had to lift her out of the chair, pull down her underwear and put her on the toilet. Then when she was done, I reversed the process. As you can probably imagine, it wasn't a task I relished. There were times when I took her to the bathroom, then returned to the TV. She would call for me to come get her, and I would put her off. You know, those daytime TV shows in the 60s were just so riveting for a 10-year-old. I can remember screaming at her because she was so unreasonable about wanting me to come get her. Man, I can't believe I was so mean to her.
But she loved me. From that time until she died when I was 13, she wasn't capable of caring for me. She was so incapacitated that she spent the last couple of years of her life in a nursing home. Dad had to work, of course, and we boys were in school, and she couldn't care for herself.
Of course, Dad would spend a lot of time at the nursing home with her, every day. As you can well imagine, that time was very trying for him, too. Between surgeries, physical therapy, nursing home costs and probably others I don't know about, he was struggling mightily to keep our heads above water financially. He has told me that there was a time that if someone had handed him $100,000, he couldn't have paid all his bills. And that was in the 60s in a small town in Texas.
Even while she was in the nursing home, Mama constantly fought against her debilitating condition. She always had a rubber ball that she would try to squeeze to strengthen her left hand. What frustrated her most, though, was the difficulty she had speaking. Since the tumor was on the right side of her brain, she lost control over the left side of her body. In addition to her left arm and leg, she couldn't move the left side of her mouth very well.
It's tough to imagine what this is like. Here we have a well-educated, highly intelligent woman who sounds like she's either drunk or retarded whenever she spoke. Her mind never suffered from her condition. She was as sharp as ever, but she sounded incoherent unless you really worked to understand her. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I recently learned that she was constantly bugging Dad and her doctors about getting speech therapy. Maybe she was confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home, but she wanted to get back her ability to communicate with speed and skill.
During the summer of 1969, a few months before Mama's 44th birthday, Dad took her to visit with her doctors, neurologists I suppose, in Houston. Once again, she asked about getting speech therapy. The doctor told her that speech therapy wasn't an option. Her condition was such that therapy would only serve to drain the family finances, and her ability to speak wouldn't improve.
This was a devastating blow to Mama. More than anything else, she wanted to be able to speak intelligibly. As I recall, she was essentially bedridden within a few months. I don't remember celebrating her birthday that October. We probably didn't do a lot, given Mama's condition.
Thanksgiving Day morning, Dad got a call from the nursing home. After he hung up, he came into the den where I was watching the Macy's parade. Fighting back the tears and the sobs, he said, "Mama just died."
Since Mama had deteriorated over the years, I imagine it wasn't nearly as devastating as it would have been had she been healthy and vibrant the day before Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, losing Mama entirely at 13 was kinda tough. Now that I'm older than she was at her death, I look back and see that I just can't appreciate the value of having your mother around as you grow up and through adulthood. I can imagine it, but that's just it: it's imagination. It's extrapolation from observation. It's wishful thinking.
This experience, and my reflections on it, makes me think about my relationship with my own children, but that's another post.
Mama would be 78 if she were still alive today. Dad's still there at 78, so it's not unreasonable to imagine that, absent the brain tumor, Mama would have still been around today.
What I wouldn't give to be able to give her a hug today, and tell her I love her, and thank her for all she's done for me. Even though it's nearly 35 years on, I still miss her, and probably more than I missed her as a teenager. From this vantage point, I understand what I've missed out on.
