Who Am I Anyway?

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Who Am I Anyway? I don't wear makeup anymore. There's no point really. My tears will simply wash it away as soon as I put it on. It won't camouflage the ravages of too little sleep and the numbing grief that marks my face. Makeup is superfluous. It no longer means anything to me. I put off driving to the house as long as I can. I left there at 3:45 a.m. this morning and now that I've gotten the children off on their buses I'm going back down. Heaven help me, I don't want to go back. I yearn to turn off my phone, turn on my electric blanket, crawl under the covers and place a pillow over my head. I want to be unconscious. Please, let me be unconscious. I wander around the house aimlessly, recognizing that the dishes in the sink are from two days ago. The floor needs to be swept and the table wiped up from last night's hastily prepared dinner of Ramen Noodles for the children. I can't seem to focus on any task here at home. It's overwhelming, there's too much to do. So I do nothing. I put on my shoes and walk out the door. As I drive down the freeway my right hand holds the wheel and my left hand lies clenched tightly in my lap. Where are all these people going? I drive slowly and wonder if anyone else besides me on this road is going somewhere they don't want to go. Do they know how much pain passes them in the vehicle beside them? How can everyone be going on with his or her life when my Mother is dying? I pass houses and wonder if closed curtains and blinds shelter other people in pain. Odd that I never wondered about that before. I park my van in the street in front of the house and turn off the ignition. I sit in silence. Maybe if I just sat there long enough I could go to sleep and not have to go inside. I will myself to open the van door and step out into the chill March wind. Walking through the back door seems to get more difficult each time I do it. Nothing is easy anymore. How can I be numb and in pain at the same time? Both feelings shouldn't be able to coexist in me, yet they do. I take the chair by her bedside and slip my hand inside hers. She attempts to bring my hand to her lips and kiss me. "Mom, did you just kiss my hand?” I ask. "I might have", she mumbles, eyes never opening. This is vintage Mom and it makes me smile. She begins to ramble incoherently once again, the moment between us lost in the haze of powerful narcotics and the pain of her disease. I know she is still in there, half in this world, half in the next. I hear her call out to Kathy, the stillborn baby daughter born before me. Her eyes flutter and open for a second before she drifts off to sleep once again. It's a very good thing that I've forsaken makeup. She doesn't really see me now. Her eyes are rarely open, and if they are, they are not focused on this world. I stand by her bed and wipe her face with a cool cloth as she softly mumbles something that I can't make out. This woman that lies before me is no longer the woman that raised me with fire in her eyes and a love in her heart so powerful it was sometimes overwhelming. I watch my Father, gentler than I've ever seen him, leaning over his bride of nearly fifty years, asking her to please try to swallow just a bit more water. He worries because she is drinking less and less with each passing day. I see him stand over the hospital bed in what used to be their dining room and watch her face with eyes so lost that I nearly dissolve in the tears that wait so readily to sweep me away into that river of pain that owns me of late. I wonder how I am able to stand when everything within me has turned to liquid fire and is falling from my eyes. I hurt, oh how I hurt. I feel so wounded, body and soul. So raw. So much pain. How is it possible to live and hurt so much? We have let strangers into our circle now. Nurses, aids, volunteers. Hospice workers come in and join our web of sorrow. They come with smiles on their faces to help us do things for her that we are unable to do on our own. We smile back at them, welcoming them as we both realize that our fragile smiles mask more unshed tears. We smile harder. A new nurse comes today. In her attempt to help, she inadvertently grabs Mother's bad hand. Mom's eyes open wide as she cries out in pain. "Oh my God!" She yells, then quickly mumbles that she's sorry, she didn't mean to say that. "He is my God," she says softly. "He is." Her eyes flutter closed once more. I go home and have prayer with my children. Mommy is crying and they don't understand. My son lays his head on my shoulder and pats my back, comforting me as best a ten year old can. After Daddy says the prayer my three year old crawls over to me and touches the tears running down my face. She asks Daddy why Mommy is crying. Daddy tells her that Mommy is sad because Nanny is very sick and will be going home to heaven soon. With her chubby three year old fingers she wipes at my tears as she says, "Oh Mommy, it's ok. Nanny will be home with Jesus and everything will be ok. She'll be with Jesus Mommy!." Now Daddy is crying. She’s gone now. Who am I without her? I feel so lost now. Where once I was identified as Ellen’s daughter, now what am I? No longer a daughter that can treat her Mother to dinner on Mother’s Day. I am unable to call her to tell her something funny or sad or life altering that happened to me today. I am a mother-less child now. I visit her in a garden of stone and weep as I place flowers upon her grave. I miss her with every beat of my heart. After many months and countless tears it comes to me, who I am and why; I am still my mother’s daughter. I am the sum of all she was and all that she hoped and dreamed for me to be. I am mother to her grandchildren, a sacred duty placed upon me as a living link in the chain binding my children to their past. I am stronger for having been Ellen’s daughter. Much of her lives on in me, as it will live on in my children after me. Wearing makeup is still not important to me, but Mom would have wanted me to wear it again. So I do.
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