The worst part of it was me knowing and her not knowing anything. She started to forget our inside jokes, our family stories, and our vacations too. It was almost like everything I was saying was all a dream and I was the only person to experience them. At the time, I didn’t understand how something like this could take someone’s whole life in an instant. I was young at the time but I remember faint things about her; her dog, her smell, and her laugh. As I grow older, I keep forgetting more and more about her. I know those aren’t very detailed descriptions, but they are very potent in my mind.
At the start of this ordeal I couldn’t tell a huge difference in her personality, mood, or even her physical health. Only she knew the real truth as to what was going on. For the longest time she was forgetting things more and more; where she left her keys, glasses, appointments, etc. those were little things that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but when she started having to use sticky notes to remember EVERYTHING, even birthdays and holidays, is when I started to worry.
The doctor’s office became her home. She went for screenings, and tests, and anything one could have done to your body in order to find out what was going on with her. She had gotten the consensus from many doctors that she would start remembering more and more as she took her many bottles of medications. The appointments stopped, and so she forgot to take the pills. Even as a young girl, I was the one taking care of my mother in these hard times of her life.
I woke up at the crack of dawn as to make sure that I would be up before her to make breakfast for two, pick out two outfits, and make two lunches. I had to make sure to get my mother up at the same time everyday because the pills would make her sleep all day if I let her. It crushed my heart to see her face in the morning when all she wanted to do was rest. Her body needed rest, but the family also needed her to go to work and make an income. Even though she struggled at her job during this time, I still thought of her as the most courageous and strong woman ever.
I loved seeing her smile everyday when she dropped me off at school. “Buh-bye, honey!” she would say to me; it was the only thing she remembered to do every day. But, one day, she forgot to, and I had a bad feeling she was having one of her “off” days again. I sulked the whole rest of the day; I knew something was wrong, I could just feel it.
My classroom got a call in the beginning of second period that morning. My mother was in the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me why until I got there. She was on her way to work when she forgot which way to go. She hadn’t taken her medication that morning because I had forgotten to tell her about them. So, she started having an anxiety attack and called the police. They said she was hysterical so they knew they had to come and get her. Before they could figure out where she was, she hung up and got in a crash a mile down the road from where she called the police. She had a broken leg and a concussion.
I couldn’t believe it, it was my fault that she crashed. It was my fault she forgot her pills, it was my fault she started crying, so it was my fault she was hurt. Everything was all my fault. I couldn’t take all the emotions that were running through my head. I curled up in a ball next to my mother on the bed and screamed at the doctors to leave my mother and I alone (which I later apologized for). I cried myself to sleep in my unconscious mother’s arms praying that she would be okay.
My mother was healthy enough to leave the hospital a couple of days later, but she was sentenced to bed and, if she had to move, a wheelchair. I knew I had to stay home from school until she was better because we couldn’t afford an at-home nurse to watch her. My grades would suffer, but I would have done anything to help my mother heal.
I got a call not too long after my mother’s accident from a man that I had not heard before, but he said he was from my mother’s work. He seemed upset and asked to talk to my mother, and I wondered what he could be so mad about. I told him she wasn’t able to come to the phone at the moment which seemed to tick him off even more. He hung up before I could even ask to take a message, but that’s ok because I knew what he was going to say. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true; my mother had just gotten fired.
All was well until we ran out of money for food, clothes, and my mother’s prescriptions. She got worse and worse, and I hadn’t been to school in over a month. Everything changed; she started having seizures and more anxiety attacks like the one from before. I had trained myself to go under my bed whenever one of her attacks happened. I also wrote down everything that happened every day. I didn’t know how long she had, but I knew it wasn’t long.
I was right. I woke up one morning, went to wake her up, but she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to even think about it at first so I ran away. Her cold, dead body had turned gray in the night and she was clutching he blankets as if she was being frightened by something at the time of her death. It was almost like she was having a hallucination of some sort. The only thing I remember regretting was not being able to say that I was sorry. I wanted her to know I was sorry for slowly and painfully killing her.
