I recently read some poetry that was very disturbing, more for what it did to me than for what it was itself.
A poet's mother died. She wrote a whole book describing a kind of esoteric connection they had, with unspoken bonds of love, whispers of grief, a surreal kind of connection that made me suspect that it was all in her head, and she was in a way making up for what she didn't have on the more real planes. Maybe mom wasn't there for her in some ways, or was unable to help her in her journey toward physical and emotional womanhood, but she made up for it by doing what she did best: explore the mystical, romantic ethereal world of things we can't see.
What bothered me was its opposition to my own experience. My mother was there for me in almost every way, dressing me, feeding me, taking complete care of me well into adulthood. But toward the end she lost it, and didn't even know who I was. One night I went into her hospice and, night times being bad and disturbing in general, it really upset her and even though I showed her my driver's license, still it didn't make any sense to her that I was her son, not only her son but one who was very close to her for many years. It upset me to feel like I'd lost her, but it upset my dad even more; after all, they'd been married for over fifty years, and now she didn't know who he was either. She talked about a car being right outside, waiting for her, and she had to get dressed and go out and join them in that car; we knew that there was no car, and that she wasn't going anywhere.
In such a hospice space, we could look around and see others who were in close to the same condition. The workers liked her and thought she was sweet; they would come in and do necessary tasks like make sure she could pee and give her a bath, but they totally didn't expect her to have any clue where she was or who they were, and they knew she wasn't coming back; it was all about making her happy and peaceful in her remaining days. They'd simply agree with her about the car but say that she couldn't get dressed right now and would just have to wait and they'd still be there; that was as close to true as you could get and I took their cue to say pretty much the same thing. Perhaps there was a group of people out there waiting for her, ancestors from the other side, old friends, old pets who had crossed over, and she would be welcomed and would know exactly who they were when she got there. But in this world, she was terribly confused, and upset, and just wanted out of that bed.
It gets worse. Before it was over she'd accused me of putting her "in the worst position a woman can be in," and I thought, are you serious? All those years putting a car in front of me on the kitchen floor so I'd be occupied and happy, a young lad growing up at her knee, while she'd have her coffee with the neighbors and do other things to keep from going out of her mind from the drudgery of child-raising. Well, once the children are gone, I guess it catches up to you, but here she was, in front of me, very upset, and probably I was better off just walking off and saying this could all be marked onto an old account. I could surely take it. And, in many ways, I'd already lost her, weeks or months ago, when we suspected her mind was slipping, and she kept asking us the time. Things had gotten mixed up up there. Her fears were mixing in with her realities and just about the only thing that was still even remotely accurate was her distant memories of her own childhood, which were still quite clear and unblemished by the messiness of the world whe was living in.
