Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  A year after this, when I return home from a travel assignment, her face has become immobile and she can’t focus on what I’m saying. When we ask a question, she stares into the distance and doesn’t answer, as if some connecting switch has been turned off. Her lifelong optimism has also been extinguished. ‘You are the only worthwhile thing I ever did,’ she tells me, and when I demur, she says, ‘What else have I ever done in my life?’

  ‘Are you depressed?’ I ask.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I feel depressed? she counters. ‘Look at my life, I can’t walk, I can’t do anything.’ Her hands shake, she can’t cut her meat, it takes all her concentration to feed herself, to stop food from falling off her fork. She is so wobbly on her feet that I can hardly hold her upright when we walk along the street, and once she almost topples over in a cafe.

  She’s become agitated and forgetful. ‘So you’re picking me up at three?’ she asks four or five times, and then calls several times to confirm our arrangement.

  ‘There’s something wrong with my watch,’ she keeps saying, so I give her a watch with a big face and big numbers but she still can’t work out whether it’s five-thirty or six-thirty. She’s confused and depressed; there’s a painful diabetes-induced ulcer on her foot, and her hands shake so much that I have to pencil in her eyebrows for her.

  When I call to pick her up for lunch on Sunday, she is wearing her nightie. ‘What are you doing here so early?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s one o’clock, I’ve come to take you home for lunch.’

  She shakes her head in distress. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me, I’m such a pain in the neck to you.’

  I help her on with her smart red and black check suit, brush her hair and wait while she goes to the bathroom. Ten minutes later I find her standing in the kitchen beside the stove, holding a box of matches in her hand. ‘What are you doing with those?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m just going to make myself some porridge,’ she replies.

  Invisible icy fingers are pinching the back of my neck. When I bring her back home later she says, ‘I’m worried I won’t be able to light the match to warm up my dinner.’

  ‘Of course you will, just keep trying. If you don’t do it the first time, you’ll do it the second or third,’ I say. I don’t want my mother to be in this state and I don’t know what to do. I can’t bear to think how strange and terrifying her world has become.

  To help her, I summon social workers, counsellors, occupational therapists, geriatric psychiatrists. I want someone to wave some magic psychological or medical wand over her so she can revert to what she was. ‘Ring your friends,’ I urge her, ‘get some new interests, go for little walks.’ Michael thinks she’s sliding into this apathy because she doesn’t do anything, and he insists that unless we push her to do the few things she can still manage, she’ll vegetate completely. I want to stop pressuring her but he’s the doctor and I always defer to his judgment in these matters.

  It is the incident with the cake that finally makes us all understand that there is no point pushing her to do things any more. On Friday nights she always used to arrive with a bag full of goodies she’d prepared for our Shabbat dinner: asparagus mornay, braised brisket and the chocolate roll which melted in our mouths. Although she used to love cooking for us, these days she makes excuses. ‘When are you going to make your sugar cake, Nana?’ Jonathan asks. ‘I’ve forgotten how to bake,’ she says. Finally one Friday she bangs a baking tin on the table and tears off the wrapping with a defiant look. ‘Now you’ll see that I can’t bake any more!’

  I can’t meet her eyes. Instead of the usual handsome cake with its crisp sugary crust, there are only bits of crumbled, half-cooked dough.

  But in spite of her decline, she still has a witty Yiddish saying for every occasion. When I suggest that she’ll feel better if she attends a day centre for the aged because she’ll have some company, she gives a sardonic laugh. ‘Es vet helfen vi a toyten bankes.’ ‘That’ll be as useful as putting cupping glasses on a corpse,’ she scoffs. At the centre she meets a woman she hasn’t seen for a long time. ‘So you had a pleasant time?’ I comment. She shrugs. ‘You know the only time a hunchback smiles? When he sees another hunchback!’

  Instead of going to the day centre, she’d like to spend all day with me. ‘The only thing that cheers me up is seeing you,’ she often says. If I say that I can’t see her that day, she says beguilingly, ‘I know you won’t let me down,’ and ensnares me in a silken web of guilt. All my life she always did whatever she could to help me, so how can I refuse her now? Sometimes when I hear her voice on my answering machine, I sigh, anticipating another request. Then I remind myself that the time will come when I’ll wish I could hear her voice again.

  Now when I look back at my mother’s last two years, I see a clear downward progression; but at the time I was only aware of unrelated problems, each one of which shocked me. Life is a huge mosaic, fragmented and incomprehensible from close up. Only distance gives perspective which enables us to take in the whole picture at a glance. But it wasn’t just that I lacked the distance: I didn’t want to see that each scene was leading to the inexorable finale.

  We are never prepared for the roles that life throws at us. This situation reminds me of another of my mother’s poignant Yiddish sayings: when a father gives his son money both laugh, but when a son has to give his father money, both cry. Although looking after my every need was never too much trouble for her, the responsibility and worry of taking care of her weighs me down. ‘You made a big mistake years ago when I asked you if you’d like a brother or sister!’ she chuckles one day. ‘You didn’t want to hear about it, so now you have the burden of looking after me on your own!’ I still remember how outraged I felt at the idea of sharing my parents’ love and attention with another child. Now I am living with the consequences of having had my wish.

  One afternoon, when I call to take her out to her favourite cafe in Double Bay, she doesn’t open the door. The silence makes me panic. My heart is racing as I rush from room to room looking for her. I find her lying in the bath looking at me, as rigid and white as a marble statue. She’d got in to have a bath at night but hadn’t been able to climb out. We can’t tell whether she’s had another small stroke or an acute episode of Parkinsonism.

  Several weeks later, when she doesn’t answer the phone, Michael and I rush over to find her confused and semiconscious. I wonder whether she has mixed up her medication when I hear her mumble, ‘So I’m still here. I thought I’d finish it all. It would have been better if Michael hadn’t got to me in time that night while you were away.’

  As we bundle her up to take her to hospital, the thought that my mother has attempted to end her life paralyses me. At a moment when words are inadequate and unnecessary, and only love counts, I am only able to say, as if she were a troublesome child, ‘You know we love you, how could you do such a thing?’

  After she had recovered sufficiently to go home, it was obvious that she could no longer live alone, and I found a wonderful Polish woman to live with her. Zosia was the embodiment of caring, and if Bronia had been her own mother she couldn’t have treated her with more affection and respect. They played cards together, told each other their life stories and my mother began to smile again.

  But one Sunday several months later, when Zosia was visiting her daughter, my mother didn’t open the door when I came to take her out for lunch. With a sense of foreboding I unlocked the door and found her sprawled out on the floor. She’d fallen over during the night and hadn’t been able to get up.

  A brain scan revealed that she’d had a stroke. She couldn’t stand up, walk or feed herself. When we visited her in hospital, we fed her with chicken soup and tried to help her walk with a frame. All we could elicit in reply was a snarling yes or no, but the anger on her face spoke louder than words. It was a horrible existence for such a proud, independent woman, and we wondered whether she would ever walk or talk again. From St Vincent’s, we transferred h
er to a private hospital. Every morning, long before I reached her little room, I could hear her shouting over and over again in an angry monotone, ‘I’m sick! I’m sick!’ as if a needle had stuck in the groove. Sometimes she shouted the names of the male nurses every few seconds in an expressionless voice. Whenever I came in, she glared and hardly spoke, yet the male nurses told me that when they sat beside her, she used to tell them stories about her life.

  When she finally stopped repeating the same words and began to converse again, communicating with her became a minefield. She started to say something, then lost the words. She would start: ‘Take me…I want you to take me…’ Then her mouth would purse and tremble with the effort, but nothing more came out.

  ‘Take you where?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Don’t make fun!’ she’d rebuke me.

  ‘I wouldn’t make fun of you,’ I’d say, stung by her accusation. ‘I love you, I want to help.’

  ‘Don’t take it so seriously,’ was her response.

  When I asked her how she was feeling, she snapped, ‘Why can’t we talk about normal things?’ When I wheeled her outside into the garden, and stroked her arm, she said, ‘Can’t you touch me the proper way?’

  My mother’s deteriorating condition was painful to see, but the change in her personality was even harder to cope with. I felt hurt and angry, and then I felt guilty for feeling angry. For the first time in my life I went to see a counsellor. Felicity had a soft voice, a kind face, and so much empathy that I couldn’t stop crying as I told her about my mother’s condition and her whole life. ‘You feel bad because you want to make things better for her, but you can’t make this better, can you?’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps she just needs you to acknowledge what she’s going through.’

  We brought her home for Mother’s Day. In her wheelchair she looked like an angry, rigid doll, head down, calling, ‘Orange juice!’ or ‘I’m sick!’ Justine said gently, ‘I know. What can I do for you, Nana?’ Later my mother said, ‘Justine! Hold me!’ Justine put her arm gently around her shoulder. That was the first time I’d ever heard my mother ask for physical affection.

  When I asked Justine how she was coping with her grandmother’s deterioration, she said, ‘At first I couldn’t stand watching her like that. Then I realised that I had to let her be how she was, and not fight it, even though it was distressing. I know she has always loved me and I love her too, but she never really knew who I was. She idolised you, but she didn’t value my ideas. Whatever I said, her response was always: “Ask Mummy.” So I have mixed feelings. Your relationship with me comes into it too. I keep hoping that you can resolve your feelings with her so that we can become really close.’ My mother didn’t always think I was so clever, but the more dependent she became, the wiser I grew in her eyes. In fact, I valued Justine’s ideas far more than my mother ever valued mine when I was young.

  When my mother was ready to leave hospital, Zosia could no longer look after her as her visa had run out. We all cried when that angelic woman came to say goodbye. I had started looking for another woman to take care of my mother when she surprised me by saying that she didn’t want to go home. She didn’t feel secure there any more, even with a companion.

  The problem dominated my every waking thought. While we were trying to figure out what to do, I brought my mother to stay at our place, but she needed attention day and night. I had always promised myself that she would never go into a nursing home and although this now seemed the only option, it felt like betrayal. Every day I went looking at nursing homes and came home depressed. No matter how the nurses’ aides bustled about making cheery comments, they couldn’t disguise the smell of urine and disinfectant, or hide the accusing resignation of people marking time before they died.

  When I found a sparkling, newly built home with sunny rooms, open spaces and a sympathetic Irish matron in whose office I broke down and wept, I was overjoyed and brought my mother to see it. A group of people were sitting on the terrace having a barbecue, while others were about to leave for an excursion. ‘Maybe it will be good to have company,’ my mother mused. I felt a stirring of hope. Perhaps she’d enjoy her life here.

  But the day I brought her there with her little suitcase, she sat stiffly on a chair, not saying a word. I couldn’t bear to leave her, and when I finally did, I cried all the way home. During her stay there my mother never went on any outings and she rarely mixed with the other residents. She kept herself apart, remote and depressed. Every day when I came to see her, instead of being in the lounge room with the others, she was usually sitting in her room, dressed in one of her smart suits, just waiting for me. Whenever I left, she shuffled out to the glass door with me and stood there, waving to me bravely until I drove away, her face a small white triangle which haunted me for the rest of the day.

  Seeing my mother look so beaten, so forlorn, like an abandoned elderly waif, I understood why she thought that it would have been better if Michael hadn’t saved her life, although I never brought up this painful topic again and neither did she. I thought my mother couldn’t cope with the knowledge that her powers were failing, but the one who couldn’t cope with it was me. Throughout this ordeal my sister-in-law Carole often sat beside my mother and listened sympathetically while she spoke about her wish to die, and then she would gently try to help me come to terms with my mother’s feelings and my own.

  It hurt me to see my once dynamic and positive mother become a pale shadow for whom flowers no longer had any perfume and sunshine had no warmth. But whenever I came in, she always greeted me with a smile which, like a lone match struck on a gloomy night, lit up her lovely face for an instant and she invariably said with endearing wonderment, ‘How wonderful that you’re here. I was just thinking about you!’ And then she’d introduce me yet again to the nurses and other residents. ‘This is my daughter, meet my daughter,’ she used to say.

  Although my mother was anxious and unhappy, in the months that followed she seemed to accept her new existence and her condition seemed stable. Ever since she’d become ill, I’d reduced my workload considerably and refused most of the travel assignments I was offered, but now Michael and I felt that it was safe to accept a short trip, although we decided to say nothing about it to my mother until closer to the time.

  Several days before we were due to leave, my mother didn’t smile when I came in or give any sign of recognition. She didn’t even look at me when I spoke. After I’d asked several times why she didn’t answer, she finally turned towards me. She fixed on me a piercing gaze of such intensity that I felt as if I’d been stabbed, even though I couldn’t decipher its meaning.

  Whether it was sorrow, accusation or despair, I cannot know but I’ll take that knowing expression with me to the grave. It was as if I were looking at myself through her eyes and confronting the truth about life. Perhaps she knew that she was fading away, and that’s what her look intended to convey. She’d always told me that I was a wonderful daughter, but maybe now she was thinking that this is how life ends, and that one day I too would learn how painful it is to realise that children have such a limited capacity for loving their parents.

  The look on her face alarmed me so I returned to see her that afternoon and found her lying in bed, asleep. ‘She’s been very tired today,’ the sister told me. As I sat beside her bed, I knew that I couldn’t go overseas. I cancelled the trip.

  On the very morning that we had been due to leave, the matron rang. ‘Your mother’s condition has changed. You should come in.’

  She was lying in bed, but although her eyes were closed and she was barely conscious, she knew that we were there and answered in monosyllables which sounded as if they were coming from far away. Her breathing was laboured. With horror I noticed that her mouth had shrunken—they hadn’t put her teeth in. ‘She would hate that,’ I told the nurse, ‘couldn’t you put them in for her?’

  The nurse and Michael exchanged glances. ‘It’s better like this, it’s more comfortable for her,’ Michael said gently. E
ven then I was telling myself that she was just feeling weak and that it would pass and soon she’d sit up and be appalled at the way she looked.

  We sit beside her, Michael and I, the curtains drawn around us. Occasionally a nurse parts the curtain, checks her pulse and leaves softly. This should be a time of deep thoughts and healing words but I can’t summon up a single coherent thought, or word, or action. I look at the small, thin shape under the blanket and silently stroke my mother’s arm. Only afterwards it occurs to me that she may have preferred me to put my arm around her.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like?’ I ask from time to time.

  ‘No!’ she replies in a surprisingly definite voice.

  ‘Do you like me stroking your arm?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Michael leans forward. ‘Would you like some ice cream?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes!’

  When the nurse brings it in, he spoons her favourite dessert tenderly into her mouth. ‘How is that?’ he asks.

  ‘Beautiful!’ she replies. This is the last word she ever utters.

  When my mother died, people told me that I should be grateful that I’d had her for so long. Others contrasted her past vitality and independence with her recent debility and depression. ‘Her quality of life had gone, you wouldn’t have wanted her to linger on like that,’ they said.

  They didn’t seem to know that the longer you have parents you love, the harder it is to part from them. She was such a big part of my life that, when she died, she took such a big part of mine with her. When I was young I always thought that I was closer to my father, and perhaps at that time I was. But now I was attached to my mother in a thousand different ways, and her death tore me apart in a way that his had not. Perhaps because he had been more self-sufficient, while she had become so vulnerable. For the past few years I’d been convinced that she was dependent on me, but after she died I realised that it was I who had been dependent on her.