When my mother had her first stroke thirteen years ago, so much of her personality traits, critical understanding, and innate gifts were forever buried by the brain damage caused by the stroke. When she first came home from the hospital, she was simply a shell of a woman. Well, I should say that she was a shell of the woman I knew. Her idiosyncrasies, vigorous laugh, bold wisdom, and basic understanding of the world around her were snatched away by one tiny, microscopic blood clot that got lodged in her brain.
When she got well enough to be discharged from the hospital to home care, I had to sit down with her each day and remind her that she was a teacher, an American, and a musician. The one thing I didn’t have to remind her was that she was a mom. She didn’t know what planet she lived on, but she did know the names of each of her daughters. That’s how incredibly important we, my sisters and I, were to our newly disabled mom.
Although Mama remembered us, she didn’t respond to us in the same way. She would sit in an almost lifeless manner and just say nothing. Her personality seemed as if it was robbed from her by some weird alien being, who snuck to our planet and zapped her soul away.
I pushed, probed, and nudged at her to laugh, to smile, to remember, to even cry. But despite my best efforts, in the first six months post stroke, she just sat there, not mumbling more than a few words a day. She had no requests, no distinct memories, no likes, no dislikes, no regrets, no aspirations, no real self concept.
I honestly feel that my mother… At least, a great portion of my mother died August 2, 2002 when she had the stroke. I grieved for six months over the death of the woman I knew as mom. I would cry, ache, and wish that I could just have one conversation with her. I wanted to hear her sing, laugh, tell a story, teach a lesson, or even fuss at me.
I didn’t understand how or why I was grieving for her so intensely, yet she was sitting in my living room for most of the day. How was I grieving a woman that was still alive? And even though I didn’t understand it then, I was indeed experiencing real grief. Mama had not died per say. She had absolutely changed so drastically, her new persona was not recognizable.
After my grief began to lift after about six months, I had to learn to love the new woman that had emerged during the year of physical, occupational, and speech therapy. This new woman was temperamental, impatient, sorrowful, depressed, and less amused than mom pre-stroke. But I decided to love her yet and still. I knew that underneath the splash of blood in her brain that had drowned a large portion of her intrinsic traits, the woman I would always know as “mother” was there. She was just hidden.
So, I ended up loving two women: Mom pre-stroke and Mom post-stroke. And I must say it was an honor to love and be loved by both.
I suspect that now I’m grieving two women. Perhaps that’s why I’m hurting so badly. In my psyche, I have memories of two women I called mother. And now, both of those women… Both of those mothers… Both of those loving figures are gone.
I need much prayer and support as I adjust to this new normal.
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