The Saint of Lost Things

St. Anthony is my friend, and I’ve come to known him well this past week.  He is the patron saint of lost things, which is almost fitting since the intensive care unit is where many people experience loss.  I haven’t lost my mother exactly, since she was brought in, St. Anthony and modern medicine have been looking out for her.  Stroke and blood clots have been kept at bay.  There’s been a variety of breathing equipment, a CT scan, MRI, an umbrella in an artery, and something about a bubble and her heart, the medical terminology has begun to blur.  While my mother’s stroke was “out of the blue,” the reality is, my mom had started to deteriorate at a frighteningly rapid pace over the past two years.  She had lost interest in things that once made her happy, she struggled to care for the large house she insisted on residing in alone, and I noticed that her ability to simply care for herself had begun to decline.  The two weeks leading up to her stroke had been particularly worrisome.  She missed three flights to Albany on three separate occasions, with each flight missed my anxiety heightened, because deep down I knew two things: something was wrong, and getting my mom to admit and receive the help she needed would be like pulling teeth, it already had been the few times I tried to gently broach the subject. I knew at some point I was going to need to face reality, but I did what most humans do when they aren’t ready to, I avoided it.  My mother is only 64, I’m only 32, and I am not ready for the decent of my mother’s mental and physical health, but like a buried splinter, the truth finally worked its way out.

There are only three things that cannot be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.  I think I saw that on an artsy plaque at Hobby Lobby, it’s a Buddhist quote, and it’s a piece of sagely wisdom that’s been rattling around in my brain since my days have become absorbed by long hospital visits.  Today, after spending a few hours by her bedside, the doctor decided it was time to try taking my mom off life supporting breathing machines and see if she could manage with an oxygen mask.  The procedure was a success and little by little I’m watching this tough lady crawl away from the grim reaper.  As I sat next to her, wiping her face with a damp wash cloth an idea suddenly hit me.  It was more like reality hitting. You see, the esoteric religions believe that we have seven chakras, seven energy points in our body.  They believe that we hold our grief and emotional pain in the solar-plexus chakra in our stomach, and in our heart chakra which corresponds with lungs and chest.  As I gently smoothed back strains of grey hair I suddenly realized that even if my mom pulls through, even if she recovers, she won’t ever be the same and she honestly hasn’t been for a long time.  That sudden revelation was like a punch, and whether you believe in chakras or not, I felt that pain deep in my chest, down in my stomach, deep down to the place where I have stored all my old hurts.  As I literally doubled over, I came to understand that a part of my mother, the part that was with me when I was younger had to some degree died.  There was a point in time when my mother had hit her peak and had begun her decent towards the end of the cycle of life, and I didn’t notice when it had happened.  All of this rocked my damn world. 

Tonight I am having what could be referred to as a “dark night of soul.”  It’s one of those nights when you have to flush out all that buried hurt and grieve your losses and heart breaks.  My boss lost her mom just a few weeks ago, and I know if anyone knows the pain I’m feeling tonight, it’s Maggie.  We text, and I cry, and in the end she leaves me with words that calm me down a little bit.  “The only thing you can do is love her and be here for her journey,” she tells me.  When she says, “you miss the person they were, the person you hoped for them to be longer.” I lose it.  She gets it, and now I understand the pain she was going through herself, the pain every person who loves there parent will also feel.  It’s okay to fall apart sometimes, to hit the bottom, because once you’re there the only other direction to go is up.  Tonight I will grieve the loss of the mom that I loved, and little by little I’ll accept that our journey together is going to come to an end sooner rather than later.  Until that day comes, I’ll dig deep for the grit that lives deep within me, it’s the grit and perseverance that’s been passed down to me from my mom and grandmother, it lives in my DNA, and I know that I’ll get through this, and so will my mom.  “I’m not scared to die,” she told me a few weeks ago when we were having a casual conversation at her favorite Greek diner.  “When it’s time to go to god, it’s time to,” she had said matter of fact while sipping her coffee, and I know she’s right.  When she’s ready, I’ll be ready, and I like to think that maybe St. Anthony, the saint who watched over the sick and poor, will go to my mother’s side when she’s ready. He’ll smile his kind smile and help my mom walk home.