It is summer, and mango season. She sits staring as I walk in with the mangos. The look is as blank as flat concrete. I steel myself for the sheering force of the shell my mother has become. She may take my hand and say my name. Or she may say, “Who is this? This place isn’t for you. Go home.“ with all the Alzheimer patients I have had in my family practice, you would think I would be prepared for this turmoil.
Having her at our home seemed the right thing to do after her adoring new husband of 3 years could not care for her. She had called me daily at the office saying he was trying to kill her. I had to baby-proof the house as though a toddler lived there. She was up all right wandering around. Medications for sleep made her stagger, those for agitation made her nauseated.
She often thought I was trying to harm her. Once she came at me and grabbed my face with her fingernails, twisting my cheek like a catfight among girls. I screamed for my husband, unwilling to fight my tiny mother. A minute later she hugged me and told me how much she loved me—what blessed forgetfulness. This was my sweet mother who had kissed my forehead when I was a child and who told and retold the story of how I was burning up with fever as I was bundled off to the hospital, aged 4, temperature 106 degrees Fahrenheit. I had typhoid fever when there was no treatment for it. Several children in that mini-epidemic on Miami Beach had died. And she kept saying to my father, “What if she dies? What if she dies?” And every time she told the story, tears would softly stream into her eyes, but she held them back so they never fell onto her cheeks.
These days my mother often looks at me with expressions identical to those of when she was normal. I look into her eyes and can no longer fathom the blankness I know is there. It is the mirror of the piercing stare of a newborn who seems to know what you are thinking. I am learning what the families of my patients come to know while they are suffering: They are doing their grief work in advance.
I bring her mangos, her favorite fruit…mine, too. “Do you know what I brought you, Meemo?” I ask (she was renamed “Meemo” long ago by a grandchild). “Why do you ask such a stupid question?” she says. “I dont’ know, and I don’ care.” She does not recognize the mangos. “Remember how Daddy used to plant fish heads under the mango tree to fertilize it?” I ask. This is one of our favorite family secrets. She pushes the mangos away. I go to the kitchen of the house where she lives and peel a mango, fighting the same tears she always fought. I admonish myself: This is not about you; this is about her. I bring the plate of mangos with a fork. She will not touch them. I force a jolly smile and pierce a piece of mango, bringing it to her lips, as she must have done for me as an infant. She licks it, then opens her mouth like a little bird. She knows the mango! She takes the fork, a smile spreading over her face. She gobbles down the plate of mangos, grinning as the juice runs down her chin.
My mother was a no-nonsense practical lady, but she was sentimental. She was cute and quick and had written a book poetry that the refused to call by that name. She called it verse and said she was a viersifier, not a poet. Some verses were one-liners: “Life is dress rehearsal for which there will never be an opening night.” She could not have known how slowly and painfully the curtain would descend and that the theater would be empty before the stage lights would finally go out.
Until then, I will bring her mangos or whatever else is in season.