AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mom?” She doesn’t look at me. I sit down in the chair next to her bed and take her hand. “Mom?”
She looks this time, her brow furrowing in confusion. Then there’s a soft smile. “Amelia…” the end of my name is garbled. “When did you get so big?” She blinks a couple of times, then opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
“I don’t know,” I say, emotions bubbling over inside me. There aren’t any walls strong enough to hold them back anymore.
“Did you—are—” She stops and blinks again, and though I try to fight it, a sob creeps into my chest. Miles moves his chair closer and wraps an arm around me.
I squeeze my mother’s hand, then stand up and dig out her hairbrush. Talking is too hard, so this is something else I can do. All my life my mom would brush my hair and maybe pull it back into a braid or just twist it around a bit. Then we’d switch and she’d let me do her hair. When I was little, that meant yanking it into an ugly ponytail. As a teen, it meant experimenting with every type of braid or hairdo I could. Now I’m an adult trying to tame the wild, frizzy rat’s nest her hair has become.
Carefully, I part her hair, then gently brush it, trying to get the knots out. It takes some time, but she smiles up at me and the familiar sound of her humming fills my ears.
This is helping.
We continue like this, her watching TV and humming while I brush her hair. The mood lightens a little, and I lose myself in the simple act of brushing her fine strands. When they’re smoothed out and softer again, she reaches up and grabs my hand, looking blissfully happy as she says, “Thank you.”
The flood of emotions inside me shoots up like lava and tears cloud my vision as I lean down and hug her tightly. “Of course. I love you, Mom.”
She pats my arm. “I love you too.”
I sit back down and she reaches for my hand as I let out a shaky breath. Miles meets my gaze and gives me a soft, encouraging smile as if to remind me of what Noelle said earlier. That I just needed to see her, but seeing her hasn’t made me feel better. Her decline is clear, and though she’s still in there, this is yet another reminder I’m losing her bit by bit.
After the emotional visit at the nursing home, Miles got me cheeseburgers and tucked me into bed while I ate them. The TV is on in the bedroom and though I’m snuggled against him, he’s drifting off. I’m thankful he didn’t push me to talk. He simply reminded me we’d get through this together, but I don’t want to think about getting through it. I don’t want to think about what I’ll have to get through. There’s a wicked storm of emotions swirling inside me. Everything I’ve been through, how much I’ve lost, how much I still have to lose.
I close my eyes and breathe deep, repeating the mantra I’ve lived by for the past few weeks.
Focus on where I am. On the good things.
The problem is, I don’t know how to focus on the joy of life when every time I do, something else gets ripped away. My father. My mother. What comes next? The two other people I love the most in this world are Miles and our baby. What happens if I lose them too?
Everyone always says I’m strong, but what choice did I have in the face of what I went through? How do I face losing my mother now? I don’t feel like I have an ounce of strength left in me. I’ve used it all up and now I’m crawling along, praying for a miracle that won’t come and hoping that I find a way to survive this pain.
Chapter fifteen
Magic Fix
Amelia
“Theevaluationswe’vedonehave shown a cognitive decline and progression of your mom’s Alzheimer’s,” the nurse practitioner says as we sit in the social worker’s office with Noelle, Leann, a speech therapist, and a dietitian.
I swallow hard, wringing my hands beneath the table in the social worker’s office. It took a little over three weeks for all the evaluations to be done, and now we’re having a meeting about my mother’s prognosis and continuing care.
“What does that mean for her going forward? Will it be a more rapid decline?”
“We can’t know that for sure, but based on what we’ve seen the last few weeks, she’s staying steady right now. She could stay like this for another couple of years.”
Or she could decline until she’s nonfunctional, and it’s only a matter of time until she dies.
“Okay.” What a stupid word to say. I can’t come up with anything better, though. What am I supposed to say to information like that? “How will this change her level of care?”
“We’ll increase her aide support. She needs more assistance with dressing and bathing, and we’ll be watching to see if she needs more help with toileting,” Noelle says. She goes through a couple more things, then turns to the speech therapist.
The speech therapist is calm with a kind smile. You have to be a special sort of person to work with people at the end of life. How they remain upbeat when they stare death in the eyes daily, I don’t understand.
“So your mom is still eating well. She does need her food cut up, but so far, we haven’t noticed any major issues with swallowing. She has a little trouble with tougher meats, so we’ll watch that, and we can switch her to ground meats as needed. We’ll continue quarterly evaluations unless there’s a need for more.”
“Thank you.”
The speech therapist smiles and an uncomfortable silence settles over the room.
