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My mom Sylvia
Goodin having a
smiling contest
with her grandson
Andrew Earley at
Disneyland.
GodBlessYou”
ight little words my mom always said
to us three kids every night as she tucked us
into bed. Words I figure I’ll never hear again,
even though I’m a grown woman, and so is
she.
“Happy dreams, I love you, God bless
you,” she’d say.
I won’t hear them again, not because she
doesn’t want to say them. It’s because she
can’t remember to say them. She’s 63 and has
dementia.
A year and three months ago she was an
autonomous woman, had her own job of 19
years at a non-profit organization, rented an
old house on an island, and had a cat she
loathed, mostly because of the hair she’d
shed. She even drove her own car, a Nissan I
helped her pick out.
Every now and then she’d send an e-mail
with those eight little words, after talking
about her day at work or detailing a
weekend adventure with her boyfriend.
The doctors, all of them, psychologist,
psychiatrist, general physicians all labeled
her as ‘dementia syndrome of depression,’
but I never got the depression part.
Sure, depressed like everyone else I know,
she had the occasional down feeling, the
blues here and there, but it wasn’t nothin’ a
glass of red wine couldn’t cure.
“Joy comes in the morning.” It’s a song
we’d sing in church, only ‘morning’ was
‘mourning.’ The rest of the words went – the
darkest hour, means dawn is just in time.
I’m still waiting for dawn.
My mom’s darkest hour wasn’t an on-going
thing. She had some pretty dark hours in her
past, but certainly none in her present. She
was generally a content woman.
I miss her so much, even though she’s
present in body, she’s absent in mind. She
barely speaks now, but if you stay real close,
every once in awhile she’ll utter a sentence
related to nothing at all. Sort of like those
who talk in their sleep, you can’t make it out,
no matter how hard you try.
“What’s that mom?”
She gives no repeat performance.
The hardest part about it all is that she
doesn’t recognize me, her middle child
with syndrome (as I always say). I want
to believe she knows I’m there, feeding
her soup or rubbing her boney back,
but she gives no outward signs. Her big
brown eyes hold a blank stare. I could be
anyone.
So I just take in her beauty with my
eyes. Her petite frame, her light brown
skin, hardly any wrinkles, and her white
hair taking over the pitch black she’d
been dying all these years.
I always wished I had black hair like
hers, because I had this silly notion that
it would make me look more Mexican
like her. Instead I felt my dark brown
hair was neon for mixed race. Nothing
against my half-Mexican, half-whiteness,
just wanted to be 100% something.
For now, I’m only 100% sure that my
mom is gone - mentally. February last
year marked her decline. Month-by-
month, everyday routines failed her.
She’d drive to work at night and would
go back home, “because no one was
there.” She’d pay for gas and go home,
still on empty.
Her inability to tell time was next.
Anxiety found a home in her in a big
way, so prescribed drugs from her
doctors became protocol. Her sister, just
three years her junior, had to administer
them each night from two or three cities
away. She had to make sure she didn’t
take the wrong amount or forget to take
them at all.
Nothing helped.
She loves to
laugh. And I’m
so thrilled this
part of her brain
remains intact,
because making
her laugh comes
easy for me. It’s
a gift I got from
her first husband,
my bio-dad, a man
I never lived with,
but somehow got his
genes. He was her first
true love.
Mother’s Day was difficult this year. I
wanted to cancel it. Commercialism hyped
it up everywhere, I felt mocked. Can’t count
how many times I’ve cried, “I’m not ready to
lose her yet. She’s too young. Please, I want
my mother back.”
It’s selfish of me, I know. But as a child,
a 43-year-old one, I wish it anyway. If I
say goodbye to hope, I say goodbye to my
mother, and I couldn’t live with that.
I’m glad I spent the day with her. She was
a joy and I didn’t break down in front of
her as usual.
Her spirit is serene and peaceful, even
though she shakes. She’ll say “yah” to just
about any question you ask her. “Are you
comfortable?” “Are you cold?” “Are you
warm?”
She can’t say it anymore, so I say it for
her and to her as often as I can … “Happy
dreams, I love you, God bless you.”
E
by Charleen Earley
Sept. 7, 1944 - Sept. 17, 2007