That Woman in the Bed is Not My Mother

NOTE: Dolores Marie Deacy passed away on November 18, 2020. She lived a long, active and full life. Mother to six children and 13 grandchildren, she was a six-time finisher of the NYC Marathon.

There’s a story that my siblings and I tell about our early childhood. The four oldest (there’s six of us in total) went to wake my parents one Saturday morning. It must have been 1964 or ‘65. We creep into their bedroom only to be shocked to find that the woman lying next to my dad has white hair.

“She’s not our mother!” we shout and so it seemed. I suspect we may have been collectively awed by twin stunners: a woman with white hair AND in bed with my dad.

The story quickly unraveled; my mom had gone to the hairdresser and—perhaps seeking the perfect color to fit into our upscale suburban community in New Jersey—her hair became so hopelessly muddled that the stylist had to strip all color out of it. The ordeal took so long that she came home late at night, preparing to return the next day for another whack at it.

In my memory, it’s an uproariously funny moment; my mom—who always had a strong sense of comedic timing—made an unconsciously self-deprecating joke, one that caught us all.

Now, as I see my 85-year-old mom lying prone on a hospital bed in her home, her breathing fitful (but consistent), her eyes barely open—I’m struck by the idea, again, that the woman there is not my mother.

For me, grief, like comedy, is a strange thing. When expected to laugh on cue, I’m often frustrated. I don’t find comedic situations funny because I’m supposed to. Tears are the same. Should I be crying NOW?

In appraising my mother’s precipitous decline, from a strong, vital, outspoken and sharp-elbowed woman to a frail heap of bed linens and tubes and expressive pain, I’m not sure how to react. Should I weep for what’s been lost? Or, is this the natural order of things—should I allow myself to feel relief that her time here among her family will be mercifully short?

Beneath the surface, emotions gather quickly. A seemingly casual conversation with a caretaker brings me to the verge of tears. When one of my brothers’ voice cracks with emotion, a lump wells up in my throat.

There’s no surprise in this but it’s confusing. Am I to grieve now for what’s left of my mom? Or—as she has struggled for the last five years with debilitating health issues—am I merely saying a final goodbye to someone who actually passed some time ago?

Over a month of weekly trips, I’ve witnessed the steady transformation of a person I once knew so well into someone unrecognizable. During a changing of sheets, I spy my mom’s legs, which I haven’t seen in a decade. They are so spindly and frail—not those of the competitive “athalete” (as she called herself) who eagerly embraced the 70’s running boom (George Sheehan, a guru to the jogging masses, was from the area) and completed in numerous marathons, including six in New York City.

Now, she can’t even sit up in bed, her every movement attended to by a home health aide or my father.

Other faculties have failed completely. Her hearing—with aids—was already bad. Now she can’t understand our shouting in her ears. Technically, she has "no light perception” or NLP; in my mind it’s CSS, as in “can’t see shit.” But there are moments when she stares right at me, as if she can, and knows I’m with her. I want to believe that the person I’ve known so long is inside, trapped, waiting to be let out (and why don’t I let her?!).

Then I realize: it’s just reflex. She’s staring into the same space I happen to occupy, no recognition in her gaze.

My only connection to her is touch; she responds to pressure on her hand with a firm grasp (or sometimes a yell—“Too much!”). Just when I’m fooled into believing my mom knows I’m there, she brings forth a garbled rant—one is a trip to New Haven with my dad for a swim meet (in fact, they did go to Yale for the 1958 NCAA Championships, where Steven Clarke, a Bulldog phenom, faced off against the country’s best swimmers).

It’s in the earliest hours of the day that there’s something tangible. I wake up at 4 a.m. and peek in, not sure what I’ll find. She’s awake (it’s hard to tell the difference between states because she sleeps with her eyes open). But I know it because she’s saying “Water, water, water,” over and over again.

My dad, who sleeps with a receiver by his bed to catch her cries for help, doesn’t rouse, so I get her a cup of ice cold water—desperate relief for a parched throat. In that moment as she gulps it down greedily, I say, “Mom, it’s Michael.”

She smiles—my mom is back, she’s there!—and says: “Thank you.”