Gifts for Every Season

2-29-20

Nervously fidgeting yet making a conscious effort to breathe in a controlled manner, my husband and I get out of the car in front of an old but still decently kept apartment complex.  We'd had a pleasant trip from St. Louis to Kansas City but with this visit, Mom won’t be there. For her next season of life, she will be residing no longer in this place, but instead, will live in a home for the elderly which also has memory care and physical therapy services.

The door to her apartment was wide open and an insurance restoration company's air mover industrial fans were blasting so loudly we could hardly be heard as we entered, proclaiming our arrival so as not to startle the two women inside. The reason for the deafening noise was the result of a pipe in Mom’s closet which had burst due to cold winter temperatures and no one was home to open the door and let the warm heat prevent the imminent flood. 

We are greeted by the Senior Advocate Mom hired a few years ago to be a liaison for communication between my sister and me and her, since Mom had chosen to completely shut us out from any information about her unless it was something of a serious nature which would then be relayed by this woman. Neither my sister nor I nor the Senior Advocate herself understand why Mom chose this route as there was no threat or anything negative being instigated by my sister or me.   

The Senior Advocate then introduces us to Mom’s Care Giver. We conduct courteous small talk along with thank you’s for caring for Mom and then it’s time to begin what we came here for.

I look around the room, trying to not be overwhelmed because of so many assaults against my senses and my personal need for order and peace in an environment.  I’m also trying to understand how this is my mom’s home, as I clearly got the need for everything clean and in its place from her!  But what I see and smell instead is so far removed from how my mom would have lived that I have to take a minute and refocus. 

Crowded in this tiny space I see a few pieces of furniture, some I recognize, some unidentifiable substitutions since these living quarters she had been moved to would not accommodate all of her personal things.  Plus, most of her belongings had been sold in an estate sale we had no knowledge had occurred until after the fact.  Heart break… get in line with all the others related to my mom.  

I just keep picking up on offensive odors, some of which is due to the flood, some is due to the age of these few belongings which have endured a lifetime of use but some is due to an elder’s body that is no longer cooperating with dignity. 

Before accepting the invitation to walk around and take what I want from the meager few belongings that are left, I self soothe as I sense a tear trigger coming.  So, I stroke my own forehead as a mother who brushes the hair and scary things away from her beloved child’s mind.  Did my mom ever do that to me to bring comfort?  I have no memory of it ever happening. 

I glance over my shoulder to the kitchen as my possible first place to begin and peer through the petite space that barely left room to walk, let alone have items jammed in which had been cleared from other rooms. Suddenly, I detect alarm on the countenance of the Care Giver as our eyes meet and I soon learn why she wore that face of fear.  She is perched at the teeny laminate countertop, hovering over pieces of paper which were squares of sepia, yellow, black and white and other faded, muted colors.  These papers are curled and torn, and I quickly realize those were our childhood pictures.  In trying to salvage them they are being ripped apart from having become stuck together when they got wet in the flood. Attempts to uncurl and separate only led to them snapping right back to attention into a tight roll or removing parts of pictures leaving a blank white piece of paper instead.  This tear trigger is too difficult to hold back, and the mist begins to sting my eyes as I declare out loud, “No, no, no!  Those were the only thing I truly wanted that was left!”  Never having been granted access to possess any of them before, now that they are mine yet I can’t devour every detail on them is just too much! I feel the memories I need to refresh my mind slip through my fingers.

I dab my eyes and decide to explore what I can see.  Is that my brother as a baby?  Here’s me!  There’s my dad holding me!  Here’s all of our family!  That’s my sister, not me.  Who’s that guy?  I show my husband a few of me so he would know what I looked like as a baby, toddler, and little girl and flash back to a few sweet childhood memories.  The tears are now more than a mist, and a few betray my attempts to hold them back and slip over and down my cheeks.

My husband, Kurt, is my gentle yet strong partner in life who now comes to my rescue.  His background in Insurance Restoration for sixteen years kicks in gear and he comforts me with more than his arms.  He reassures by informing us that we need to not try to pull them apart but get them to a freezer and then to a company that can process them in a way that will salvage some.  The ones where faces and other images were already ripped off, unfortunately, even though done with good intention, are beyond restoration.

It’s time to move on so I carefully step, avoiding objects and equipment as I move through each tiny section of this apartment.  This is foreign to me and I believe this would have never been a choice of my mother in her pre-dementia life.  I've been assured by the Senior Advocate that she's done her best with what she had to work with which wasn’t much since a previous Care Giver had stolen not only thousands of dollars and probably other items from my mom, but also stole her opportunity to live in a place of the standards for which mom would have chosen for herself.

Tear triggers come in waves as I see books on shelves that speak volumes of what was going on in my mom’s mind and heart.  I see titles for soul healing, how to get peace, how to get the love you want, how to have joy with stress, why bad things happen to good people.  I see one I gave her back in the 90’s for how to live and not die when she was given only 3 months to live with a death sentence of Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer.  (That’s a story for another time of God’s perfect love, healing and miracles.) There’s another book I gave her of how God sings over us with his beautiful and unimaginable love and I try to remember mom singing.  I don’t have memory of her singing to us but I remember her humming as she would cook.  What a great cook she was and I love that I inherited that from her as does Kurt’s and my kiddo’s tummies!  I see the infamous vintage, red Betty Crocker Cookbook and I grab it, delighted to discover some of her own personal recipes tucked inside. I open it and run my fingers over the food speckled pages of her favorite choices.

I move to furniture with drawers and slowly pull each one open, hesitant, slightly afraid of what I might discover. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to see these hidden things of hers that may have been meant for her eyes only.  More tear triggers as I see her distinctive cursive handwriting on legal pads…she wanted to get Invisalign?  Why didn’t she just go ahead and do it? Again, I see where I got something from her, with my previous misaligned bottom teeth just prior to me getting Invisalign.  Meal plans, doctor appointments and other random reminders lace the pages. I continue to turn in hopes to catch glimpses of notes she had made to herself that would give me more insight into her life since most was private and not conveyed to us kids.  I didn’t discover much more that made sense to me but I caught myself smiling at the realization that she randomly places diagonal notes all over the pages.  I do that too!  I’ve never understood why I do that when note taking, (unless I know someone is going to read them and then I’m more intentional to put them in ordered fashion). I snatch her retro flip open address book, thinking maybe I will discover a distant relative I know nothing about as mom shared very little with me about our family members.

I move to her closet and feel that dreadful distress seizing my soul again. I take a deep breath and boldly look at what remains on the hangers.  These are her clothes.  I smell her too sweet perfume intermingled with the unwelcome odors of the apartment.  I have to stop, and now my head bends with the heaviness of a shoulder shake cry.  This time I don’t even try to block the sobs.  The Care Giver quietly leaves the room to give me space.

I take a bit of time and then look up. In front of me, I see her flashy belts and another smile takes over like the sun’s rays bursting through the clouds.  My mom had her own classic style.  I look at the intricate details of the blingiest belts and I feel joy creeping in.  She didn’t care how old she was, she was gonna wear those belts by golly! 

A little refreshed, I move on to a hall closet and see a flamboyant cane hanging, with its imprints that shimmer like the iridescence of mother of pearl. I choose to look at it not as a crutch for a woman who could no longer support her own weight or move without its assistance but instead welcome the fact that it has its own brand of beauty.  I smile again that my mom selected a cane with that flair.

  

On her wall still hangs the portrait she had made of herself, large and in charge!  I’ll be honest.  I never liked it as to me it represented one of the things I felt defined my mom and our relationship.  I used to glance at it and see a woman who was totally self-absorbed, only caring about her own needs.  I used to see a narcissistic woman who refused to reach out for any reason unless it profited or benefited herself in some way. But today, instead of looking away in disgust, I move closer and instead see a woman who was lovely, energetic, took great care of herself, there’s that classic style, the white frosted nails that were ALWAYS her color of choice, the nose where it’s clear I get mine from, the large brown eyes where again, it’s clear I get mine from. 

And then I see it!  I move in even closer and study that vivacious expression on her face that is relatable to me as well.  That sass is actually proclaiming, “I will go on until I can no longer, and I will face what the world gives me to the best of my ability.”  Although truly it was self-preservation in it’s destructive form, I realize, that although from my perspective it was failure as a mother, I can see from hers, it was the best she could do to keep going in a life that gave her fear and pain.  It was her way to dig down, pull strength from her resolve, ultimately survive from whatever she had to and persevere.

 

This was the graphic on the wall, down the hall a bit from her room:

So although this day was excruciating to me because of decades of emotional abandonment, I can be grateful I was given enough glimpse into my mom’s heart to give me better understanding of her.  This is a gift which also gave me more understanding of myself as well as a place of beauty and peace.  

God is able to turn all things around for our good so in that I am grateful that He is still in control.  I can trust He’s got all this, He’s got my mom and He’s got me.  He’s got all my loved ones, so I can rest in that, giving every tear for him to place in a bottle, (Psalm 56:8).  My heart matters to Him and He is there to catch and heal every wound. Nothing escapes His grasp and I am grateful He brings peace through His sweet and lovely presence; through the heart and arms of my husband, through my incredible children who are my treasure and through others who are so gracious to pray or offer their heart connections as well.  

We will all have life events that we wish we could avoid, but I am so thankful we have the WAY to work through it and process in a healthy manner that eventually leads to freedom and gifts for others when they go through life events they wish they could avoid.  I am thankful for this day with my mom and the few things that were left of hers through which I had the gift of revelatory doors as well as the door to my heart opening wider than ever before.  It is well with my soul.