Journey of Grief
- T. Marie Jacintho
- Dec 16, 2018
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 4, 2020
Eight years ago, my mother’s accident brought about a change that could not be undone, and all normalcy of living ceased. Tucked into a corner room, on the second floor of a nursing facility, my mother lived in a shared space. She had a bed, and a chair, and a window—and, through that window, my mother lived and dreamed of her escape.
For a short time, she was able to travel to the outside grounds several times a day to smoke her cigarettes. Quickly, that small freedom faded; until the ability to walk, even from her bed to a chair five feet away, became too much.
She became root bound like the many plants she tended on her window sill. Starved for light. Rigid and crippled, bent toward a merciless sun, she dreamed of freedom. She dreamed of health.
Five years ago, I planned a trip for the holidays. A trip I jokingly referred to as “Mission Prison Break,” I had tickets to the Providence Performing Arts. I wanted to take her to the biggest fantasy I could conjure. The Nutcracker.
I wanted my mother to be the little girl who went to The Land of Sweets on Christmas Eve. I wanted to dress her in a cornucopia of colors, to see her seated before a feast of dance and lights, and to order her a glass of naughty wine.
Already, at that time, she was going in and out of the hospital with pneumonia. I begged her not to smoke and to thicken her liquids, so she could be robust and weather the car ride to the event.
But when you have so little, its hard to deny immediate pleasure. It’s hard to deny one’s self, especially when trapped in a room with nothing to distract you from the predicament of fading health and absolute boredom.
Four days before The Nutcracker, I received a call. A doctor asking what he should do if it came down to it. Horrified, the next day, I boarded the flight I had already planned—and perhaps, imagining some kind of holiday miracle, I took the tickets with me.
My mother rallied, slowly regaining strength, apologizing a million times. I assured her that I was happy to be with her. I told her that spending time together, at any time, was the greatest gift. But, in my heart, I was saddened by the realization that this window of opportunity had passed. I feared the artificial setting of a hospital was all we had left.
I gambled against the odds that I could deliver one more magical season. Against reason, I invested in the fantasy. Isn’t that what love demands from us? Are we not at the mercy of hope? How else can we carry on?
I gave the tickets away, and instead brought my mother a picture book of the beautiful ballet. We sat in her hospital room and looked at the pictures, reminiscing about the first time we watched it together when I was a little girl. Remembering, Gram was there too. I recounted my fascination when the Arabian Dance played and the sad and beautiful peacock flexed her pointed toes finally released from her gilded cage.
Even as a child, I felt it was the most meaningful three minutes of the entire ballet. My breathing stopped. Suspended, outside my own body, I felt I had fallen into the music. Melancholia: some sad wisdom that lengthens like Winter’s shadow.
Even now, that shadow stretches across the valley of grief. This year, my husband and I will see The Nutcracker. It will be a new tradition for him, and a profound experience for me.
I have yet to cease seeing the world with my mother in mind. Everywhere I go, I think about what she would like or dislike. In a way, I have been attempting to see a world that she could not see, and somehow to see it through her eyes. But since it is impossible to see the world in any other way than my own, I am perhaps experiencing the world anew.
Sometimes, when I’m riding my bicycle, I’m aware that when my mother was my age, she had difficulty walking and climbing stairs. I remember that she was unable to eat the foods she liked without going into a diabetic funk. I remember her hands and feet swelled; and sometimes, her lips got so big, she couldn’t talk.
I remember that when my mother lived with me, she could drink a gallon of milk in a single day, because she was always thirsty and nothing quenched her thirst.
Sometimes, I forget to breathe. And when I remember, I am astounded by the revelation that my mother lived for eight years exiled from nature, starved for breath.
This weekend, after going through my mothers belongings. Four boxes. I found another revelation beneath the lids. I was awakened to the knowledge that we shared the same sentimental feeling for each other. I found every card and postcard I had ever written to her for the last eight years. I found that the language I wrote to her was mirrored back to me in the notes and cards she sent in response.
One undeniable and fundamental truth became apparent: I had lost my oldest and dearest friend.
Going through the boxes, I found a book. A leather-bound edition. The works of Louisa May Alcott. I am positive my mother never read it. She knew the story of Little Women because we had watched it together. At the time, she was confused when I told her that what I wanted for Christmas was a book.
“A book?” she said, “Why would you want that?” My mother gave me the book when I was in high school in 1995. The inscription inside, reads: “Merry Christmas, With Love MOM.”
When I went away to college, I asked my mother to hold onto the book for me. And the book traveled with her from apartment, to group home, and finally to a nursing facility. It lived with her through eight years of exile in the corner pocket of a corner room. It shared in her last hours. It traveled in a box to a friends basement, where I collected it, and took it on a twelve hour car ride home.
Twenty-one years later, the book has been returned. Not one scratch upon its surface. Not one wrinkled page. Not one crumb or stain. —As if my mother made it her mission that the gift should return full circle.
And, she did another unexpected thing.
Sometime ago, I sent her a journal, and in it I wrote, “Your life story is a beautiful gift.” I asked her to tell me about herself. I never knew if she bothered to write in it. I never asked. For a long time, my mother’s mental illness had stripped her of the ability to focus, or to read and write. So, I didn’t expect much.
In the journal, I posed a couple dozen questions. Things I wished to know about my mother: Her favorite color… Her happiest childhood memory… Her memories of her father and mother, and sister…
What I found, inside the pages, was a woman who desperately needed to find meaning in her own life. Within the childish scratches of her penmanship was the simple poetry of her being here.
At the end of the entries, I asked: What makes you happy?
My mother wrote, “To Love Someone.”
I asked: What makes you feel peaceful?
My mother wrote, “A Song in my heart. Musical notes. A natural high. Dancing.”
There can be no doubt, the bird in the cage was always aware. Her awareness was
a gift.
— How I shall miss my sweet Beth.
