My mom fainted at church Sunday. Supposedly, it was incredibly graceful. She lowered herself to place her $4 on the communion rail, and felt dizzy. She tried to stand back up, and that’s all she remembers.
Now she ambles about the house heavily, leaning on her walker. When she stands, a black knee brace clings to her right knee, which is pale and poofy without it.
And another day passes where I watch my mom seem more broken and aged than she really is.
And there’s nothing I can do to make it better, or heal her faster.
But on the upswing, her spell was seen by an EMT, and he says she didn’t have a seizure. Given the symptoms and what he saw, he suspects that her blood pressure meds are too high, and her blood pressure’s too low. That means we’ll need to tell the psychiatrist, and the neurologist, and the general practitioner. Then we’ll need to get a second opinion, maybe look at finding another doctor to add to the group.
Which means another trip to Oklahoma, but farther north and more involved this time. We’ll take copies of all the records of what’s happened so far. Copies of all the medicines she takes, her symptoms, the test results from when she was in the hospital, the results from the tests afterwards. We’ll have to pack her CPAP, inhalers, and walker, and clothes for a few days because there’s no way to know how long we’ll be there or where else we might have to go to see whomever we’re sent to see.
But there is hope now because something is different. Because someone saw something we couldn’t show anyone else.
I have seizures, I know seizures. I can say when I am having a seizure, or if someone else is. I can say when what’s happening is not a seizure. But there’s a world of things that are not-seizures; things that are scary, things which leave bruises and that leave the person affected shaken.
My mom is not having seizures, and we’ve said that for almost 8 months now. Now, something is different, and it’s being heard.
Because someone who knows more about the things that cause bodies to fail and falter said what it was not.
I’ve been thinking about what is, and what is not recently; about what is, and about what I think is because I see it that way.
What I know is true is that it hurts to see my mom like this. It hurts in ways I don’t have words for, and scares me. I wake up when I hear her call, scared she’s hurt herself again. I sleep rarely and not deeply, trying to hear if she needs me.
What I know is true is that this is gift. Every day shows me something else I wouldn’t trade knowing or learning about my mom. Things I thought were valuable before pale and fade. Curious things, like the broken figurine from her 16th birthday, have become little jewels. Soft moments, when the dogs sleep guarding her, or the cat buries into blankets, purring like a muscle car, become pictures in my head that get us both through the times when the pain ravages.
What I know is true is that I love my mom. And my mom loves me. The fainting, the weakness, the crazy emotion from the pain, and the presence of time passing with no notable improvement somehow has become a background to this hard story of me becoming an adult responsible, and my mom learning she can trust me to mother her well.
I could talk about what worries me in the future and why, what I might need to prepare for, how all of this could turn out, but this collection of moments seems too weighty and holy for idle commentary. This passage, this season that has come to pass blew through our previous lives as if they were dandelion fluff. There is no returning, but there is much before us.
Yesterday, my mom placed her widow’s mites on a communion rail.
Today, I give thanks for the harder roads that make a virtue of suffering.
Tomorrow, tomorrow is another day, another prayer in the forming.
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