Who The Hell Am I?

Me and Mom on Mother's Day, just before the fall

Today Eden asked: Who The Hell Are You? and invited us to answer.

But today? I don't have an answer.

The I in me is missing.

I have been consumed, subsumed by caregiving.

And at the moment there is no end in sight.

Right now I am a daughter and a mother and truly nothing more.

Just a month ago I was becoming a somebody again. I even said so in The New York Times (online).

And then bully big bear life took a giant paw and swatted me back down. But first he took down my mother.

For a while now we have known that she was one fall away from hell, and our fingers were crossed for so long they grew permanently twisted and entwined like wisteria trunks. But it happened anyway. On a random Friday. (But so un-random: the Friday just before a three-day weekend full of family plans, as it is ever so.)

And though she is technically on the mend, the steel rod in her hip stronger than the bone surrounding it, able to hold her up, she is still falling down. My mother is descending the rabbit hole of despair. She is in a no-win situation and while I hold it together during my visits, I weep in the elevator on the way down to the street, emerge from the hospital's chill air onto the steaming city streets with silent sobs wracking my body, tears streaming down my face.

I have just spent two, three, four, five hours besides my mother who is grimacing and groaning and sharply intaking her breath, in between moments of begging me to let her go home. She is so tired, so discomforted, so without energy or appetite or hope; unmoored in time and space, unsure of where she is or why.

She wants to be allowed nothing more than to sleep; to sleep and sleep and sleep and rest her bone-weary body. But to let her lie in bed now is to let her lie in bed forever; if she doesn't get up on her feet soon, she never will.

So I am letting the rehab folks kindly torture her. And feel the twisting of my guts as she says: "I can't, I can't, I can't." But then does.

And every fresh day I lie in bed at 5:45, alarm braying, saying to myself: "I can't, I can't, I can't." But then I do.

Linking up with lovely Eden of Edenland today. Neigh.