My beautiful mother is losing her memory.
It is difficult to navigate such a topic, wanting both to respect her privacy and still be able to process this anticipatory grief in the best way I know how. What I will say for now is that her longterm memory is much better than mine, but her short term memory is slowly drifting away from the shores of her mind, like an iceberg that breaks away from its parent and is destined to sail the ocean alone.
Ross Gay speaks beautifully of the ways that grief is so deeply interwoven into the fabric of joy that you cannot extricate one from the other1. The colours of these emotions blend together so seamlessly, even as they sit at polar opposite points on a spectrum. I often feel an overwhelming sadness at the thought that one day my mom may not recognize me, but that grief also pushes me to greedily take in all the joy I can, while I still have access to it.
I have never told my mom this, but my primary reason for moving back to Calgary was to help her and spend time with her. I don’t want her to feel any guilt at my leaving Vancouver because the debt I owe her is a joyful one. I like to tell people that I left Vancouver because I want to have a chance at owning property one day (true) and that the cost of living was too high (also true), but the reality underpinning my decision was that I’ve realized that family is at the crux of what is important to me. And when you lose over a decade of your life to an illness (during which you take your family for granted), whatever time you have left becomes a precious commodity.
One day I want to write a longer essay about this. In fact, in grad school I had planned to do a directed study, auto-ethnographic style, with a mini-thesis about memory loss, anticipatory grief, and the practice of record keeping. That is to say, how do we create and archive records when the memories that are the source of those records are disappearing? Sadly, the professor who was going to supervise my project - the one who gave me hope in grad school and helped keep my head above water when I started to get pulled under - was diagnosed with cancer right after I submitted my proposal, so we had to cancel it. I am happy to say that she is now finished her treatment and back to teaching, and undoubtedly giving out the same kindness and hope that she once bestowed upon me.
Mom was 36 when she had me, and she was one of the “oldest” moms arriving to pick me up from elementary school. I was lucky in that my parents both wanted and loved the children that they had, and I hold my childhood memories close as they were a time of great contentment. I was diagnosed with OCD when I was eleven years old, and I owe a large part of my getting a diagnosis to mom. She was a nurse and saw that something was wrong. She first took me to a useless counsellor, one who told me that I was “a bit of a worrywart” and suggested that I would feel better if I wrote letters to my dead grandmother. Undeterred, Mom then had me referred to the children’s hospital where we finally learned the nature of my illness and could treat it properly.
Before I was diagnosed, when I would cry for hours in terror of what would happen to the people I loved if I didn’t repeat an action over and over again, mom would hold me in a kind of sofa chair that went creak-creak, creak-creak as it rocked back and forth. She would do this for what felt like hours, stroking my hair and telling me that everything was going to be okay. The gratitude and love that I have for her is not expressible by any mortal means and now it’s my time to take care of her, just as she once took such good care of me.
This means that I spoil her when I can with the flowers that bring such joy to her life, as well as other trinkets that my “I-show-love-through-gift-giving” self thinks she will enjoy. But mostly, I ask her to tell me stories about her past. She also has a master’s degree and lived in New Zealand while she was earning it, and she regales me with tales of her adventures. I ask her to tell me how she met my dad, and I ask her for advice on the things going on in my life. I ask, ask, ask. And she tells me, and sometimes I write the stories down because my memory, too, has its weak points.
A little while ago, I was sitting with her after dinner and told her about how I kept some of the cards she sent me while I was away doing my undergrad at Bishop’s University. It was a poor decision on my part to go away to school while I was at my lowest, leaving my entire support system behind me. But my parents were supportive because they knew how much that dream meant to me. I would call my mom in floods of tears because I was having suicidal thoughts daily, hourly, and she did everything she could to support me. One part of that support was writing me cards that told me how much she loved me, and I’ve kept them all these years. As I sat with her after dinner that night, I told her how much her support has always meant to me, how I wouldn’t have gotten through my depression without her. I want to tell her all these things I never say out loud because right now she can remember them, and one day she may not.
And although this whole essay makes the situation sound dire, I assure you that it is not. Not yet. Mom is happy and mostly independent. However, since I don’t know how much time we have in this stage I want to savour it like the finest wine, rolling it around in my mouth to bring out all the subtle flavours. I know that I will walk beside my mother down this path to wherever it may lead. I will balance the grief with the joy of her one-liners and mischievous chuckle. We will walk together to the Secret Garden that she used to read about to me and I will point out the cheeky little robin that she loved so much from the story. And one day she will leave me, whether in body or mind or, more likely, both. But I will have had these days with her and will one day carry her memories like they were my own. And that is enough.
Gay, R. (2022). Inciting Joy: Essays. Algonquin.
A beautiful tribute to an amazing woman. You are so lucky to have her as your mother.