I have thought of this moment often throughout my life, so when the question was posed it is what surfaced immediately; the day my maternal mother died. Note: I have a maternal mother and a step-mother, both a piece of my being, both guides, both a part of my heart.
My maternal mother was Gail.
Another result of of this disease is the higher risk of heart attack. At age 40, Gail died in her sleep of a heart attack. Doug went in to bring her her morning coffee and found her unmoving, not breathing, obviously dead. I do not recall ambulances or people in the house, but perhaps I blocked those images.
My pivotal memory? My unconscious, though real life turn? My path of human interactions changed the moment I walked into the kitchen that morning.
We lived in a small ranch house on a quiet dead end street in the city of Worcester, MA. The house was separated from the 1 car garage by an open breezeway. The house itself was 3 bedrooms and 1 bath at one end, separate living, dining and kitchen, a 1950s very up to date home. There was a slate patio, a 2 story tree house, 2 swings that could go higher than high, a swimming pool we shared with neighbors and a forest. Idillic... Until the morning I walked into the kitchen.
A bit groggy from sleep and having just gotten up, I wandered into the kitchen, probably barefoot and still in my jammies. There on the floor, crouched in the corner were my two brothers, one older, one younger. They sat, shrunken, one on either side of my father, his arms wrapped around them, all huddled together crying. My memory (probably not theirs) is the three of them a unit, grasping the reality of the moment, lost in grief. My father finally looking up and his anguished words were "your mother died last night". I just stood mute, unmoving, being witness to grief, but not knowing how to express my own. I see that image in my mind and know it was at that moment that I internalized human vulnerability, recognizing reactions vary from person to person. At age 8 I was slammed with the reality the we interpret life differently. Is that why I like to know people's stories, to help me react to their challenges and needs on a more personal level?
As grief comes in waves, flowing from intense to buried to angry to forlorn, so too do our memories. Was that true? Real? At all accurate? Truly, who cares, it is my 8 year old memory.
What I believe is that in that moment, in witness to grief, along with being a middle child, my peace keeping status was engrained. In some subliminal way it dawned my desire to psychoanalyze people and their motives, to understand why they don't think the way I do.
Each person in the scenario responded to my mother's death in a different way. It has certainly helped me all these years later to accept the different ways people respond to Russ' Parkinson's disease. As we say around here, it is what it is...work with it.
An after note to that morning scene:
My grandmother came to stay with us. She sent me to school THE NEXT (!) day. The classroom had a coat room at the back and as I hung my coat, I heard a cluster of girls chatting, one saying "Oh she won't be here, her mother died yesterday."
A few days later was the funeral. I was not allowed to go. Out of sight, out of mind my grandmother thought. Really? Different ages, different ways of responding to death, different...
Do you have an image blazed into your mind that has walked with you through life?