AT 2 or 3 in the morning, I would be awake. It was better to be awake then because after midnight, my mother would be calling me. By that time, the medicine that had helped her calm down and brought her sleep would have worn off. Before those hours, I would be by myself at the table, writing and, in between, listening to online music. They were old music, old sound —older than my mother’s age. She was 91 then.
In 2016, she was good and healthy. Tall, my mother had a slight stoop by the time she reached 90. She would be grouchy and imperious. She made sure the main door of the house was locked and the window shutters closed. She always checked I was asleep before midnight. By 10 in the evening, her room would be pitch dark.
In 2017, she suffered a fall. It was all different—and difficult—for her and for us then. She lost track of the days and the hours. The 30-minute wait for her orthopedic doctor was already long for her. It was common for me to write on a notebook the time we arrived at the doctor’s clinic so I could tell her it was merely minutes that we were there. But she would not believe my time-keeping.
There was a clock in her mind, and that guided her through the hours of the day. There was a calendar deep inside that head and it was telling her about the distant past but not the present.
When was it she stopped bothering us about the front door, and the window being open, and the porch lighted? When did she begin to spend more time in her room, going out only to eat at the table ahead of us or with us?
The procession of caregivers never stopped in the last two or three years Mama was with us. The first batch of women still passed her scrutiny, although her evaluation never reached them. Gentle and respectful, she would complain to me but warned me not to tell any of these women what she thought of them. By 2017, she did not look at her caregivers anymore. She did not care and I did not care. We did not care what kind of caregivers came our way. We needed assistance and my mother needed constant help from anyone.
She was getting weaker each day. The memories, however, of my grandparents’ home remained constant and vivid to her. “Let us go home, Tit.” She was looking at me, not imploring, just informing. The first time she asked me to travel with her, I told her to eat some more, take the medicine so she would be strong again. Then we would travel. Those words were not assurance but plans for the near future, which never came.
One early morning, she called me from her well-lighted room, in a voice that was urgent and tearful. Let us go home was what I heard. But I felt there were more behind those wishes—a place, a time, a moment that she was seeing…that I was not seeing.
Which home, Mama? I asked her. She just kept looking at me. That night was the beginning of days when words were difficult to say anymore. I supplied the answer: the one behind the Church? She nodded. I told her to sleep already and by morning, we would dress up and take the journey home.
That night, I had gained a pass to the home and memories in Mama’s mind. When nights were difficult and she would insist to go out, I would ask the caregiver to assist her to walk to the porch. My mother had to be shown that it was indeed still night, and dark.
I knew what to say to her when at 3 in the morning, she summoned me to her side because she needed to submit a report to the school supervisor. Without telling her the time of the night, I responded to her request with the promise that I will bring the report myself.
It was in May, a bright day on the 28th of the month, when Mama finally found her way home.
Three years have gone since then. Mama’s room remains unoccupied. Half of it has been converted into storage. My books are there. Her saints and prayer books remain sacred in their spot. Her old aparador stands, locked, with her collection of playing cards.
Julio, a one-year old grandnephew, has developed a fondness for Mama’s room. Whenever I enter that room, Julio would be behind me. The first few times he did this, we enticed him to come out lest he would touch things and hurt himself. Lately, we have allowed him to stay inside. This frisky, good-looking, little boy would stand in the middle of the room with a grin on his face. He is an amusing vision, utterly confident as he looks around and surveys everything.
I like the feeling that this innocent boy feels good in my mother’s room. I believe Julio senses a goodness in the space that she once occupied. In there, time is breathing out memories not anymore of the pains in her last days but of the joys, those remembrances of a life well lived. Of the many loves she had shown to others.
This week of the anniversary of my mother’s passing, I realized I had been listening to music that kept me company in those hours after midnight when my mother was in a world of her childhood and youth, of the sweet and sad wars that had her bidding goodbye forever to friends, and of a town plaza, with a fiesta and the dancing that went on and on and on, and the handsome young man who stole her heart one balmy evening—all this never ending in her soul until she was finally home.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Ed Davad