a very special presentation of a very special film review
the news this week is a movie with beth and opening up
the other day a light came back on in my life that i thought went out.
this year, a lot of lights went out in my world—huge ones that lit up the whole fuckin’ street. and, initially, i couldn’t handle all the sadness (understandably! who could!) so i did what i had to do to protect myself: i shut my little eyes!!! i was not going to accept that the lights went out— instead, i would see nothing, as a choice.
i could see the past on the inside of my eyelids, though. i stared at as it replayed and it was clear as day. i lived in it for awhile because it was comfy. i had never taken it for granted when i was living in it; when it came to my mom, i always knew exactly what i had.
had. had had had had had. had!
why did it have to be “had?” it should be “has.” like, sure, we’re not guaranteed anything, but how on earth did it make sense that it was already gone?
gone gone gone gone. that’s all i focused on for a while. “it was gone.” and i was angry about that, i was sad about it, i would not fully fucking accept that it was only going to be in the past and that it would never ever be the same.
***
two days ago, i got to the memory care place where my mom has lived since april of this year and did my usual evening journey of searching for her as she walked around the hallways. i eventually found her and she was like, “good, you’re here! come here, they’re watching a movie about a shark in the water,” then laughed at her phrasing of “in the water?”
“it would be really interesting if the shark was out of the water,” i said, and she squinted at me like she always did when i joked, pretend-annoyed until we both laughed. she led me to the movie area and we sat down and did something extremely simple we used to do all the time and frankly i never thought we’d do again: we watched a movie together.
here is my special review of that situation.
there are few things i love doing more than watch a movie with/near/generally in the same vicinity as my mom. she is either talking constantly, asking questions literally no one could possibly know, asking questions literally EVERYONE would know, and generally giving her two (extremely entertaining) cents about every single move every character makes.
so i guess i just thought i would never be able to do that with her again. and over the past few months, i have been adjusting to living in this new reality. i have been grieving while staring directly at her. i have been thinking in absolutes HARD, dude. but life isn’t black and white. it’s grey as hell.
it’d be pretty convenient if things could be categorized as one thing or the other, wouldn’t it? bad or good, black or white, gone or not gone, this or fuckin’ that. there would be only two answers, two categories of situations and people! COOL! EASY! SAFE! EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE LOL!
but no, it doesn’t. i nor anyone else will ever have that kind of control. and whenever i realize i’m back in The Imaginary World of Black and White Thinking, i’m like, “AH shit lol,” and the scenery suddenly drops around me and everything is grey again because this is planet earth and i’m an alive person. and when you’re an alive person on planet earth, things can be many things; bitter, sweet, bittersweet.
“things can be many things” - audrey farnsworth
when the lights went out months ago and i needed to shut my eyes, i hadn’t been avoiding anything by plopping my ass down in the past and holding onto it for dear life. i’ve been honoring the person my mom was, facing her former self with my full attention and clapping at it. i watched videos of her being hilarious, looked through photo albums, hung photos of her on the wall, read texts and notes from her, listened to old voicemails she left me.
and all of that is perfectly good. i’ve loved my mom my whole life and i needed to remember all of those memories; they are like a hug. and while all of this is wonderful, it wasn’t a sustainable business model, lol. it was just another step in the process, before the next step, before the step after that which is probably, like, combining all of these steps, i don’t fuckin’ know! i’m not there yet! i am simply wobbling forward. honoring the person my mom was before she got alzheimer’s is important and i’ll do it forever! but i can’t clamp my feet down on the ground and look backwards all the time.
the skeleton manning the ship inside of my brain: well, where the fuck else are we gonna look, hm? it’s all back there!!
me: you got a point, man! i’m gonna listen to you for awhile about that!
and i did! which is okay as hell.
but when i walked in there the other day and my mom sat me down to watch a movie with her and was all beth about it, something shifted for me. suddenly it wasn’t about never doing certain things with my mom ever again—it was, once again, being able to adjust to a new (fucked up!!!!!!) normal. but at the end of the day, she is still here. even if it is different now. she is still here and she is still beth. and i am going to love and accept her as she is while keeping close every other version of her from before.
things are not the same and they never will be. but there’s still time and there will still be surprises and wonderful moments, both familiar and completely new. they will not happen all the time or “be like before,” necessarily. but nothing is ever completely “over” because our love for beth is forever, and hers for us. this disease cannot take her heart. love remains always.
i’m not putting on rose-tinted glasses but i also cannot just stand here with my fucking eyes shut staring at the past in the dark. as i write this right now, in my mom’s little memory care apartment, my eyes are open and my mom is falling asleep to a hallmark movie as my dad sits next to her, like he does every single night until she falls asleep. this is what love looks like.
***
this was way longer than i intended it to be. i was just going to share my jaws 3D movie review and write, like, a paragraph. but, hey man, the night i’m writing this is the night my brother found this note my mom wrote herself in one of her books:
i’ll choose to be open. i will choose to feel out loud, because that’s what i’ve always done. maybe it will touch someone else, but what it certainly will do is keep me from closing up on myself and imploding as i walk through the grey*** that not only is alzheimer’s but life, generally.
(***this is what Seal was talking about in “Kiss From a Rose,” right? fucking? right, dude? do you know what i’m talking about? “on the grey” or whatever? eh, never mind. what else could he fuckin’ be talking about, lol. i’m right about this. i’ll talk to you later. “light hits the gloom on the grey” lmao. ah. good song, good song.)
Oh my heart. Thank you for sharing this lovely piece with us. And hilarious as always! ♥️
Lovely piece, so glad you’ve found your mom and what must have been maddening comments about movies at the time. My daughter does that especially with movies she’s seen but we haven’t. And you’re almost right about shades of grey except that it’s actually in a thousand colours when you take a good look. Thanks for sharing