Hill Haven Nursing Home
Rochester, NY
Spring 1999

The Blessing

       I lie next to my mother, my strong sun-browned body facing her frail white one.  She takes up so little space now.  My mother and I have become comfortable with physical intimacy this year.  During forty years of emotional estrangement, we held each other at arm's length, but her Alzheimer's Disease, for all the damage and suffering it has inflicted, changed that.

Usually when I am with my mother, I am the mother, holding her and touching her as if she were my sick child.  Today she has asked me to lie next to her, and I am her child again, filled with odd anticipation.  We lie close together on her bed, our breath warming each other’s faces.  My head shares her pillow and her limp arm drapes over my waist.  Despite all reason, I feel protected by her, cradled by the raised metal bars of her nursing home bed and the thin white curtain drawn around us.  In silence, we float together in the shifting, watery space where her mind dwells, somewhere close to dream.  Ever so quietly and ever so slowly, she speaks. 

"I'm glad you don't have to spend more time with me than you do.  You spend too much now.  As long as I lie quietly, I feel all right." 

I see that we are somewhere I have not been with my mother in many months.  She is speaking in lucid sentences, rather than her usual disconnected ramblings.  Her voice comes again, like some deep and distant oracle. 

"What a nice girl you are, Lanee.  I wish you could have overheard what your dad said about you.  You're basically such a good girl.  I think you're going to have a good career and be successful, and it will turn out well and be worth all the effort.  I'm not young anymore, and I can't live forever.  I want you to have as much happiness as you can." 

She closes her eyes again, and I lightly stroke her bony hip with my left hand.  Her blessing has softened my chest, and I breathe deeply.  "Now you're just like a feather on me," she murmurs.  "It's like a feather.  I feel like a real mother to you and that's because I am.  I'll always remember that and how lucky I am that everything worked out.  It could have been the other way—that nothing worked out." 

She's right.  We are lucky that everything worked out.  I never stopped trying to regain the sweet trust we had when I was a child.  Now, in this nursing home bed, those forty years of repeated attempts and failures have born a ripe fruit.  We rest together in that mysterious union reserved for mothers and daughters, the place where the boundaries between minds and hearts are thin and passable.

She speaks again with great tenderness, her voice resonating low in her belly.  "I love you very much, honey.  I would give you my arms if it would help you." 

My tears are soaking both of us.  I gently kiss her soft mouth, "I don't need your arms, Mom, I'm growing my own." 

She smiles at me.  "I'm a lucky woman.  I'm a lucky woman.  It's important to have someone you trust and really love.  We'll talk before I go to bed about how much we love each other."  She lies silent for a few minutes and then whispers,  "Please, I want to go to sleep now." 

I gently climb over the bars of her bed, tuck the blankets around her, and turn out the light.  Once again, I am her mother, and she is my child.  "I'm leaving now, Mom.  I'm glad you're happy."  

She looks up at me and rests her eyes in mine.  "I am happy, Lanee.  I love you so much, and I won't ever forget this night."

© 2003 Elaine Mansfield