After he left, I talked with Mom a little. She didn't recognize me, at all. I said a couple of affectionate "inside-jokes" about this and that ...the kind I guess everyone has with those with whom they have some kind of close relationship ... and none of them registered; she looked at me with complete puzzlement. Yet when I said finally, "Can I give you a coo?" she said, "of course" and something like a ghost of a smile was on her lips. I kissed her on the top of her head and sat back down to watch. She has been sleeping fitfully, and her right hand went up to poke and admust her oxygen, but she hasn't tried to pull it out again, thank God.
Mom has a complicated version of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and I'm told that the hypoxia she's experienced during this latest bout may result in brain damage. The risk of this was said to be low, but it's there. That might not be what's going on tonite. She's acted a bit like this every now and then before over the past, say, 4 or 6 months. That lack of recognition has been rare, but has happened, always in the middle of the night like this. I wonder if she could have Alzheimer's. I'm told she's at risk for it.
Sitting here now I feel so cold, so alone, so empty. I don't feel like crying but I feel very, very sad and very, very hollow. I know God is here; I know Jesus is here; I know that Mary is here and all the Saints and Angels. But I feel like I'm sitting in a bleak and very cold desert ... like the Jebel Nefusa that I can remember sitting on as a Boy Scout in Libya many, many, many years ago. The Jebel was a high, windswept place and I was there with a troop of Scouts and parents, and felt very alone, and very afraid, and very isolated and alienated from everything then. I've felt that feeling every now and then .. I guess we all have at one time or another? Reading Hesse's Steppenwolf and Dostoyevsky's Man Underground I felt the same. That's how it feels now.
I cried almost constantly for hours after she went into the hospital on Saturday. Then the crying stopped and I fellt like this lead weight was on my chest. Then that wasn't there and I wasn't feeling anything at all; almost didn't care. Then the weeping and wailing again. I don't know what's worse, the feelings of horrible misery and sadness, or the not feeling anything at all.
Last night, before we went to sleep, Mom was weak and confused, but she knew me and I knew her. We kissed and held hands ... her hand so weak, so listless, with skin almost paper thin. I thought then that maybe when everything else goes, yet the relationship - mother and son - remains. Tonite even that seems gone.
But "seems" is the operative word isn't it. This life, this world is so full of "seeming". Beyond the "seeming" things in the Here and Now are the other things, the Real Things, the True Things, the Eternal Things. The Seeming things are all, at some level or another, Icons of the Real Things. Not to say that the Seeming things aren't themselves Real as far as they go; but the Things of God that underly the Seeming Things are so much more Concrete, True beyond True and Real beyond Real. Mom and her Seeming are very Real. They are Icons of ... of what? Of Mary, Mother of God and of the Church and of Mankind. Of the Alienation and Forlorness and Pain and Futility of Calvary. The Seeming of my mother and of me in this dark night are Icons of the Way of the Cross of Christ, and of the Dark Night of His Soul, of HIs Being as He cried out to His Father, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"
Tomorrow ... that is today ... is the Feast of St Bernard, who was fond of seeing the Presence of God, and of God's Lessons, in (literally) everything. The Disconnected things, the Things Apart, they partake of Christ's Passion. Mom laying there in the bed, with her lips moving slightly and her expression of pain and worrying, her eyes closed in her fitful sleep ... she is Ikon of the Sorrowful Mother; and of Her Son. The Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, together in this world of pain and suffering.
In this way isn't it a real blessing and privilege that my Mom and I get to enact, in some way, this relationship of Mary and Her Son? Even now I know that inside I am weeping even when I can't feel my own feelings of sorrow. At the same time, Christ is weeping; and His Mother is weeping. All the Church is weeping and sorrowing. And I am not alone, and my mother is not alone, most especially when I feel alone.
Enacting the Way of the Cross ... and the Way of Job who is the Prototype of the Suffering Servant and of Christ Crudfied. What did Job say? "That which I greatly feared has come upon me." Yes; and upon me too, Father Job. "I am exhausted from mine weeping." I too, Father Job. And yet, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the Name of the Lord." This I too can say not in my strength for I have none, but in You O Lord who give to me the same Strength by Your Grace that you gave to Father Job, to all of us in our times or trial.
Well, enough for now. She's stlll sleeping fitfully, but she hasn't pulled away her oxygen aparatus. We too, in this "dream-crossed twilight between birth and dying", in this vale of tears and this place of estrangement, we too, aliens and exiles, may sleep fitfully but we haven't thereby pulled away the Love and Grace of God and His Mother and His Holy Church.
Thank God Himself.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and Blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
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