time limits

“I’ve got to call my mother now.”

“Blessings on you,” my wife replies.

I call Ma 4,5 times a week. Why so much? Guilt for me, therapy for her. She’s in Connecticut.I only see her twice a year. She doesn’t remember how to answer the phone.  Her aid will answer and hold the phone for her as I begin to talk. It’s hard to get on the same page with my mother. Senile dementia. 

The first couple minutes of each call I’m re-introducing myself. She has glaucoma so we don’t FaceTime. I give her the word picture I think she remembers best: “This is your blue-eyed, blond, curly-haired, pale-faced little boy…Zukie….” She may repeat my name. I tell her I just got back from the river with Val and the dogs. I remind her I’m in Sacramento, where it’s always “…the sunny side of the street.” 

I wait to see if she will say anything. She has become so passive. I try not to ask her questions because she has forgotten how to answer. She gets anxious if she senses she is supposed to say something next. Maybe she didn’t hear. It takes a few minutes for her stripped language gears to shift. It doesn’t matter whether or not she asks me how I am. If she’s said anything, anything at all, I tell her how perky she sounds. She must have had a good night’s sleep. 

My sisters, who call her every day, and I have learned the best way to get mom’s word transmission into first gear—we sing ballads that have been imprinted on her mind since her youth. There’s a couple classics that are so familiar, she just might join in to whisper some lyrics. 

I sing really slowly so the next verses might pop into her mind, and she will sing. I listen slowly for a rise of attention, that she knows I am there, that she knows she is there.

“You must remember this/A kiss is just a kiss/A sigh is just a sigh./The fundamental things a apply/As time goes by.” You remember this I tell her, from Casablanca. Not too long ago she was able to describe the scene at Rick’s Café when Sam plays the piano and sings the song. Turner Classics still live in her mind.

Once after the song ended, she said, “Time takes us all away.” Oh, mama. She knows about time. She’s 100.

I’m 7,8 minutes into our episode. I remind myself not to ask questions. A dialogue isn’t the purpose.   Instead, I suggest—I bet you’ve had a great breakfast. I tell her it sounds like a party is going on there. I know it’s just the TV on in the background. I tell her the name of who is there now and who will be visiting later.  

Next on my agenda is Back in the Good Old Days. I dredge up an event we shared, often from more than a half-century ago. The old folks’ (my grandparents)  held family summer reunions. I describe every detail I can remember—the New York steaks grandpa grilled on the brick fireplace he built under the grapevine in the backyard, the Tom Collinses Aunt Jay mixed, the people who came (all the names of my mother’s aunts and uncles, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews). I describe how old they looked then, how young we were, how coarse some were, how sweet some were. I set the last scene: grandma and grandpa talking in the Sicilian dialect with their brothers and sisters, sitting on the patio until dark, laughing at their stories, reminiscing about the old country.  Once mom told me to “keep the memories clean.” I don’t know why she said that. I always did, I thought, keep the memories clean.  

I have been doing this with her since the pandemic began, and I’m surprised by how often I repeat the same events. I have forgotten what happened at some of the weddings, the Christenings, the Thanksgiving dinners. Never bring up the funerals.

So now I’m into the 10th, 12th minute zone.    

She used to ask for the old folks, her sisters, Jimmie her nephew. She no longer does. They predeceased her so long ago. The other day she asked, “How come no one calls me anymore?”

Sometimes she asks for something, “I want ba,ba,ba,baba…..”  She stutters after the subject and verb, can’t complete sentences. I guess my way through, and say something as if I knew what she wants and tell her the aid will take care of it.

Then, the final song. One that she knew by heart. If I sing slowly enough her language gears might mesh and join mine:  “Don’t you know that it’s worth/Every treasure on earth/To be young at heart./” I encourage her, call her Lady Mama and myself Tony Bennett. Sing slower I remind myself.

Then the song’s conclusion. Something I am not sure I hope for. “And you could survive to 105./Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive./Here is the best part./You’ll have a head start,/If you are among the very young at heart.” My mother has survived two colon cancer surgeries, a thyroid cancer operation, a short impossible marriage, then a very long, difficult one, crippling arthritis a bout with Covid, and last year a bowel obstruction that we all thought was the end.  Through all this, I believe her body has learned how not to die…or simply has forgotten that it is supposed to. 

By the 15th minute, I am tired of the effort and am ready to sign off. I repeat that I love her, and ask her the only question I will hazard, “Do you still love me?” I repeat it until she tells me she does.  I can picture her eyes getting big, a smile lifting her face.  Her voice sounds just like the way I used to hear it… like she means it.

If she seemed to remember some things as we spoke, if she sang a few of the verses, I email my sister in Milwaukee, to let her know that mom’s got some momentum.  I write, “It’s a good time to call if you have the time.”