SECRET BIRD

“No one here has a secret bird, but me.” My mother whispered as we sat at a table in a diner, eating our Thanksgiving meal. I can’t help but think of how far we’ve fallen from the family that gathered around the dining room table set with the good china and laden with serving bowls of steaming lima beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole and a giant turkey carved to perfection by Dad. My dad worked in a butcher shop in his teens. He was the one who cut up our chickens and deboned them. He was the one who would get out the ancient electric knife and carve the turkey. We haven’t gathered as a family around that table in more than twelve years. The family has shrunk from age and deaths, leaving behind a shell of what we used to be.

But Mom was whispering about secret birds.

Whenever my mom starts saying something that sounds fantastical, I lean in. “Ooh, tell me more!” I respond, giddily. It’s almost like I’m about to get some really dishy and juicy gossip. But also, Mom was never the fantastical one when I was growing up. Practical and serious. The silliness was left for Dad. On this day, I lean in and ask more about this secret bird. What kind of bird is it? Where does it sit? As per usual, she doesn’t give me an answer other than it’s “a kind of bird”. Mom was also not one to answer a question. She has always answered around the question. My mother is the bird.

The last time I saw Mom was in August and now I was shocked by the change in her. Just a few months ago, she was still walking and speaking clearly. We sat outside and watched the terrapins roaming around the yard. She even stood up at one point to reach under a table and grab a tiny baby terrapin for us to hold and inspect. In just a few short months, my mother’s mobility has greatly declined, requiring a wheelchair and a chauffeur. She is in a constant state of resistance, always attempting to slide out of her chair, but she lacks the strength to hold her body up for walking. So she crawls. Her voice comes out of her mouth in whispers and slurs, often sticking on a word and repeating it like a skipping record. And she doesn’t remember me.

By order of my birth, I have drawn the short straw of memory.

She was happy to see my face but my name had to be prompted from her mouth. Even then, I am not sure she ever truly grasped our connection to each other. I often caught a look of suspicion in her eyes when she looked at me. It was almost like she was thinking “I think I should know who this person is, but I don’t.” Later, I helped my sister move Mom from her chair to her bed. We’d worn her out with all of our morning activities. Showering and dressing and going out to dinner is a lot for her. My sister and I got her settled in her bed and Mom asked about going to see her dad. “We go see Daddy?” she asked. I wasn’t sure what she meant and asked “Do you mean Pepaw?” She nodded and I said “Yeah, we used to always go and see him this time of year.” We spent so many Thanksgivings in Mississippi with my Mom’s family. I told my mother that we wouldn’t see him this year and then left her sleeping.

There was a moment when I was driving to the diner. Tulsa feels unfamiliar to me now and I followed my brother-in-law. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was playing on the radio, a song that Chris and I would poke fun at. It is disconcerting to be someplace that is no longer familiar, yet so full of memories. It felt like walking through a field of stinging nettle. We stopped at a stop light and the car in front to my left sported a sticker that read “Every thing is going to be okay.” I eyed it suspiciously and wondered if that were true. Some days, I feel like maybe I’m some sort of immortal, stuck at age thirty four while those around me grow old (and or sick) and pass on from this world. I don’t change while every thing around me is shrinking and aging. This isn’t true, but seeing my mother’s rapid decline in a matter of months makes it feel true.

On my drive home, I tried distracting myself form the state that is my mother. I listened to a podcast about salt, attempted a French lesson, and flipped through music. But it’s a long drive and my brain couldn’t help but flick and pick over earlier moments of the day. I kept looping over the moment when my name was prompted and how my mother doesn’t know me. I kept seeing the state of her, shrunken and frail. Unrecognizable. Now I realize that we don’t know each other. She doesn’t know me as her daughter and I no longer know her has my mother. While she’s become a stranger to me, I’ve become some tiny memory that barely tugs at her brain.

Maybe…maybe I’m her secret bird.

THE ARCHIVES

She asked me if I had gotten married. My mother. She has our names and phone numbers written on a piece of paper, taped to her wall above her phone. My sister took away the smart phone months ago, replacing it with a land line. The smart phone became too much to deal with. Mom was answering spam calls, becoming agitated by the telemarketers telling her she owed money. So the phone went away. I was having breakfast with Mom when she asked me about getting married. She didn’t recognize the last name written on her paper. My mother speaks in random riddles and usually I go along with it. I do my best to live in her world when I am with her, but this one threw me off my game. I explained to her that was indeed my married name, with Chris, but that I had not remarried. She seemed to take it well enough, saying something about how she was sure that I would at least tell her I was getting married. Later, as I was leaving, we passed another resident and Mom introduced me as her granddaughter.

This came at the tail end of a long two days. Michael and I along with my siblings and their spouses spent two days clearing garbage from our mother’s house. We sorted through baskets and piles of papers, taking loads and loads out to the dumpster bags. We sorted through trash looking for treasures and deciding what should stay. We’ll have an estate sale at some point, but my goal for this trip was just get rid of the garbage. Michael and I cleared two rooms the evening we arrived. It feels like garbage was the theme. We slept fitfully on mattresses on the floor and ate meals that consisted of shades of brown. We ended each day dehydrated but too tired to lift cup to our dry lips. One night, Michael found me asleep with my book open. I don’t even remember opening the book in the first place.

I brought home two boxes that are sitting in the living room, waiting for me to sort through. The boxes are filled with old photos and newspaper clippings. Among the treasures discovered was a large scroll with a handwritten family tree of my dad’s side of the family. I know close to nothing about his side, the Graham side. The little I know comes from word of mouth, mostly from a grandmother late in her life. We were not close with Dad’s family. Our visits to Mississippi were always centered around my mother’s family with only short visits any one from Dad’s family. My fingers are itching to open the scroll up and pour over the details. Michael joked about having our very own Finding Your Roots moment where we discover some famous relative. To think that scroll was found in a trash pile previously sorted by my mother as if to erase that side of my genetics. One of the items she took with her to the new home is a card, covered with old buttons and her named scrawled at the bottom. As we sat chatting, she pointed it out and said that my father must have made it. She said “I do things right and that was not made right.” while attempting to tie the ribbon that had come loose from the top of the card. Even now, she still finds faults in my dad.

Complicated feelings.

There is nothing simple about these relationships. I want to be forgiving and forgetful. She is not the mother I spent hours with as a child, watching old black and white movies or baking cookies. She’s not the same woman who would lay on the floor of her sewing room while painstakingly attempted to sew a straight seem. She hasn’t been that woman in years. Someone asked me if we were cleaning out her house because she had passed and I had to bite my tongue because as horrible it is to say it, it would be easier it that were the case. The witnessing of her mental decline is torturous. Not remembering my married name stung me more than I would have thought. What else does she not remember about that part of my life? Does she remember attending my wedding in Vegas or the beautiful reception we had at the old house? Does she remember Chris? These are all things I will never ask her.

She’s never been one for silliness or jokes, always playing the straight man to my dad’s goofball shenanigans. There are glimpses of a hint of silly in her now though. She talks about how they never let her out. She’s a flight risk and you can see the delight in her eyes when she says it. I wouldn’t be surprised to get a phone call from my sister frantic because Mom has escaped and gone missing. Just find the nearest junk sale. That’s where she’ll be, rummaging through someone’s yard sale. Yard sales are her heaven.

EVENTS

It started with a series of events. First, my dad’s sister passed away. Then my dad’s dog, Annie passed away and when that happened, Dad’s health took a fast and sloping decline. For years, Dad had been telling us the same old stories over and over. That was Dad. There was nothing that didn’t feel normal about this. But when Annie died, Dad lost his sense of direction. That was not normal and things progressed very quickly after that. Sudden. My dad’s death drug out over a year, but still felt sudden at the ending of it all. I knew it was coming and told myself I was prepared for it.

I’m a terrible liar.

I awoke to a text from my sister: “Button passed away in the night.” Button is my mother’s cat. Mom has always been a cat person. She’s the reason we always had at least one cat roaming around the house. I think about this now and realize my parents had their own familiars, Dad with his dog and Mom with her cat. Button has been around since before we moved Mom into the house she lives in now. When I called Mom with my condolences, my mother broke down into tears and said “She was my constant and only companion.” It was, and now is, my turn to be the comforter. While my mother has comforted me often, most of my tears were from scraped knees and broken bones. Mom being (hopefully) past those stages of scraped knees, I am left to comfort broken hearts.

Her job was easier.

Sometime last year, my mom started telling me “This or next year is probably my last.” She’d say these things whenever I called her to check in. I have never protested her declaration, but instead replying with a simple “Well…okay.” I have learned in the years since my dad passed to not object or try to correct my mother in the things she says. I’ve gotten good at redirecting her stories of ‘whoa is me’ to something from happier times. I’ve slipped up once and lost my patience with her and that was when she said no one would miss her when she’s gone. I realize now that it was a bait, one I fell for. I’ve been asked “Doesn’t it bother you or make you mad when she says she only has a couple of years left?” That doesn’t bother me. We should all get to chose our time, but the idea of not missing her….that was a terrible and hateful thing for her to say. I miss her while she is still living. I miss the mother she was in my toddler memories and in all the times it was just her and me. I miss the mother she was before J died. I miss the mother I took to Ireland and pointed at a large penis someone had drawn into the sand on the beach and asked if it was a picture of a cow.

And when I redirect her from her stories that come from someplace negative, that version of her is still there, but barely.

My mother’s brother passed away a couple of years ago and now her cat. I can’t help but think about Dad and the events leading to his decline. I’m worried that I will disappoint my mother and not spend enough time with her. I’m worried about the mistakes I will inevitably make. I’ve notice that I have a tendency to shut off emotions during a given time frame and proceed as if everything is okay. I wait until I’m completely alone to break down and let the masks fall. I am well aware that from the outside it will look like I’m not even sad for her to go. Even though I have been warned, I will still be surprised by the suddenness of her departure. I’ve heard people say that part of the joys of parenthood is watching your children age into grownups, but not much is said about grownups watching their parents age into decline.

Frankly, it is not a joy for me to witness but it is turning into lessons on patience and kindness, lessons on caring for my own body and how to prepare for my own age into decline.