Two of the last three times I’ve gone to visit my mom she’s pulled up her pant leg and shown me her dry skin and the long and kind of squiggly and smushed thin dark hairs growing on her shin. She’s shown me her not-quite white and not-quite yellow unpainted nails, and said: they’re growing like hair and nails on a dead body.
I tried to say, they’re growing like hair and nails on a living body, but she rolls her eyes.
What does it mean to feel like you’re not alive? Like your body is operating without a driver. I think about this sanskrit word for heart, anahata, I learned that it translates to the “unstruck drum.” The idea that while you are living, the heart will keep beating, all on its own, without a player the rhythm of life is kept. The context in which I learned the word though, was a context of embracing the miracles of life - like, what a goddamn miracle that my heart will beat and beat and beat and all I have to do is live.
This is not how my mom understands this idea today. Today, I think a large part of her is wondering why in the world her heart keeps beating because she is not living. Her body continues to operate these biological mechanisms - heart beating, lungs pumping, food digesting (tho she actually would argue this point), sleeping, waking, and so on - but why? And who is this person?
She let me cut her nails on one of these visits. It felt like a kindness for both of us. I asked the facility staff for a nail clipper. Anytime you ask them for anything, everyone disperses and spins around like you’ve just stirred the pot and its about to boil over. They gave me the clipper. I got to hold her hands. Her hands are still so soft. My mom has always applied lotion to her hands with near OCD diligence - after every bathroom hand wash, comes lotion. And boy does it make those hands soft. Her fingers lay over my palm so gently, long, and kind of limp. Her nails have always been healthy and tough, unlike mine which are bitten and chewed, at the ends of strong and toughened hands.
I told her I wanted to be her friend through this. I didn’t want to keep fighting, arguing with, or pushing her. It gets no one nowhere. But I worry a good friend would never stop fighting or pushing. There is no map here. It feels like dead ends only for me. I decided not to visit last weekend and felt guilt and guilt and guilt instead.
At one point my partner suggested we stop over at her house to collect ourselves, rest, and clean up before the next part of the day - we were nearby. I immediately felt like I might throw up. We drove the 90 minutes to our house instead, where I put my head down at 4pm and fell asleep.