Being A Mom Without My Mom

Every once in a while, something will happen in my life that instantly channels me to my mom. For example, my twins have recently started loving on Cyndi Lauper and my mom was ridiculously into her. And not “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” Cyndi Lauper, like early-90s obscure Cyndi. Go ahead – try me. I still know every word to Hat Full of Stars. And now my kids are almost there too! 

Nowadays, I often find myself trying to classify where my own mom falls in this whole parenting thing that I’ve been undertaking for the past 4 years. To be clear, she is alive. She lives in Chicago in a house with my dad. And two full-time caregivers. (Also, my elderly grandmother and special needs aunt). Quite a full house.

My mom survived a ruptured brain aneurysm in May of 2009. Almost 9 years ago, she was at work, as a professor of nursing at a well-known university on the south side of Chicago, when she collapsed suddenly during a meeting. Apparently, being in a room full of nurses will get you the medical attention you need, because my mom survived. Most people hear this and breathe a sigh of relief and think, “Oh, so your mom is still around? Great!” Not quite. After spending almost that entire year in a comatose state, rehab and more hospital stays, my mom was sent home, merely a shell of her original self. She had no recollection of what had happened to her. Her long-term memory was wiped from her brain as if someone had hit “delete,” and worst of all, she barely remembered her family, let alone anything else.

I have hundreds of stories about how she isn’t the same, but friends and even some family know that she is alive, so you know, it can’t be that bad. Let me tell you something. Losing my mom in this way is quite possibly worse than the aneurysm having taken her from us completely. A Doctorate in Nursing, my mom was sharp as a tack. She raised four kids while in nursing school, she could drive a stick shift while eating, changing lanes, AND talking on the phone (yea, yea…but this was 10+ years ago before hands-free was a thing). I could write an entire novel on what made her awesome.

Almost nightly, her caregiver will have her call me, and I’ll spend the better part of 45 minutes answering the few questions that her limited short-term memory can hold. Our conversations will usually entail her asking me if I’m married, if I’m ever having kids, and where I live. She has a memorized list of questions, which I’ve been answering faithfully for almost a decade. I’ll never forget when I told her I was pregnant – it was so exciting for her! I must have told her a hundred times over the course of those 9 months, and she was equally excited each time.  

For a long while, I talked with my mom on the phone almost every day, having these same conversations every time. I was (still am) patient and positive. She sure can talk, that lady. She will launch into a nonsensical story that can last for as long as I’ll let it. Recently though, I found myself getting sad again. Getting sad that her memory is getting worse. I consider it a decent conversation if she remembers that I have kids, or that she remembers that she is talking to me and not to one of my sisters.

I want her to have a relationship with not just me, but her granddaughters as well, and deep down, I know that is not possible. It has taken me nearly 10 years to come to terms with this; this is not meant to come across as crass and cold. I have always kept her at arm’s length because I don’t want to be sad and more importantly, I don’t want my kids to see me sad.

My twins have a grandma who lives across the street from us here in Austin, and seeing her brings them pure joy. I struggle with the fact that while I grew up with 4 healthy grandparents, my kids will only know their father’s mother, “Grandma Martha” as their main grandparent. They say Grandma Mary Ann is “a little bit sick” (they’ve always known this. It’s remarkable, really. They came up with this term when they could barely talk). My husband’s father is long passed away and my own father is struggling himself; the stress of caretaking a sick wife for 10 years has taken its evil toll in the form of addiction (a whole other post for another time).

It has been so difficult to come to terms with the fact that I’m winging this without the sage advice of a seasoned mom. I can’t call my parents for help, but I can call my siblings, my mother-in-law and my mom friends. I will probably never stop longingly reading blogs about parent loss, hoping for one that looks similar to my story, but what I can do is accept this as my kids’ normal and my normal. We love each other fiercely and that is all that matters. I will support my twins’ love for Cyndi Lauper and know that maybe somewhere on a subconscious level, my mom put them up to that glorious and strange obsession. It had to have come from somewhere, right?