Love, Mom

"My mother was an engineer."

"My mother has dementia."

I catch these stories to myself, and step back in astonishment. Is my mother really fitting neatly into this polarized projection?

She is actually as unimaginable as myself. She is/not. She is living dreaming. She is "Oh, my god, look at those snowflakes!" Argument, question, confusion, exactly as she is, perfectly herself, can be no other way, in spite of the memory-breadcrumbs leading to...nowhere.

When this body is tired and the TV is too loud, conflict sometimes arises--things are not as peaceful, as clean or easy as this household manager character wants. This makes no difference to the intimate reality, the honest disconnect in Mom's brain, the complete and utter success of the Way It Is, the way I am in the moment. Mental note to self: buy headphones for the box. Mom doesn't like silence, and is quite deaf. Laughter inside.

I notice that her physical pain can be immense, but that her mental suffering is lessening as she sheds more and more of the conditioned "adulthood". Precious. So is this learning that my mother cannot be lost, as she is within me...her horse-and-dog attachments, her beautiful draftsmanship, shaky notes on the refrigerator, long hair needing a trim, story and forgetting. Thank god pain, expectation and memory ends. Thank god S/He is that kind, even when I am not.