She sits alone in the dark waiting. She is waiting for someone to come. While wandering through what memories she can remember, she sees people who are not there. Sometimes she talks with them, sometimes she is silent. Her hearing is poor, she is blind, and does not have a real good sense of herself. Who am I? Why am I here?
Sometimes she sees ghosts or are they real? I go to visit her and it’s as if the strings are suddenly connected to this marionette, and she comes alive. I don’t go by choice because it brings the “Great Sadness” all over again. I love her, but I hate her. How can such a dichotomy exist?
She chastises me about how I move the wheelchair into the bathroom, as if I worked there. I get mad back and she cries. Am I a monster or an angel? We talk, when her strings are attached, but I don’t always understand what she is saying. So I just agree, to be nice.
What can I bring her to relieve her sorrow? Nothing, as it turns out. How alone she must feel in a world where only a few of her senses are left. She is but a shadow of her previous self. I wonder what it is like in her mind. Does she feel sorry for herself? Has she accepted her plight?
Sometimes it seems as if what I do is never enough. So I feel inadequate. When the truth is … she is just the instrument that brought me into this world. She is my Mother.
