It was at the apex of my teenage narcissism that I sat before my mother and father and confessed the latest and greatest disaster of my adolescence. I knew this one was different though. There would be no talking my way out of this problem, indeed, my mother and father and even the rest of my family would this time be effected by my choices. It was going to be bad.
My dad was a big guy and a tough guy and as he silently came to the boil I remember my mother saying to him, “Tom, he needs our forgiveness”. I was stunned, but it was the moment in which I grew up. My mother’s forgiveness changed the course of my life and since that moment I have tried to pay the two of them back by trying to be someone they could be proud of and glad they had forgiven. Strange that I had experienced the power of forgiveness before I understood why it was so powerful. It would take a few years and a Christian conversion to work that out.
Today, my mother has Alzheimer’s disease. If you have watched the movie “The Notebook” you have seen the romantic version of the story. In the movie a great love story is retold and in the telling a woman is released from the prison of her mind to remember her husband and family. It is cruel to see the movie end with mother retreating back into the world of dementia not knowing who is in the room or what that story is about. Gena Rowlands played the mother in the movie and did justice to dilemma of families affected by the disease. The real notebook though is different. My mother waits in a hospital ward with other older women waiting for a place in a care home for those who have the disease. It is a sad Victorian hospital that has seen better days.
I never had a close relationship to my mother. In fact, I often had the thought she was more than slightly mad. I am ashamed of that thought today. Dad worked of course, and being paid by the hour, he worked every hour he could (especially time and a half for Saturdays and double time for Sundays). Mum looked after the house. In that house - one bathroom and about 2o00 square ft. - lived ten people. My grandfather, my older sister and her two kids (married at sixteen and home again by nineteen), my younger brother, two younger sisters, and mum and dad. That, I suppose, is the reason why my mum was slightly mad. I don’t remember her smiling much and don’t really remember her having fun. Always cleaning and cooking and doing “piece work” to help make money for the family. What does live with me though is the memory of my mum and dad taking a mattress out and laying it on the floor of our family room to make their bed up each night. There was just not enough room.
Today, lying in the hospital bed, my mother knows who I am but doesn’t remember my children. Or that I am married. She asked my brother once, “How is your mother?”. My father visits every day and chats with my mother whether she recognises him or not. There is no notebook to read and no magic to make her return to who she once was. And yet “The Notebook” isn’t completely off the mark. For on occasion the disease shows the relationship that was once there between mum and dad. My own formative years were at a time that was full of struggle for my parents as they tried to just make ends meet - I can hardly remember them having fun together. But mum now occasionally seems to regress to a time when it was just her and Tom and sometimes, just sometimes, you see in her eyes the love they had together 50 years ago.
When I write this blog I sometimes wonder, what’s the point. But seeing my mother in the grips of this disease has made me realise that even the most trivial things in life can be glorious and significant. Take away the power to know your spouse or your son or your grandchildren and what is left? Not much. Thinking again about my mother also has made me realise that parenting can all boil down to a moment’s decision. That’s an unforgiving test which my mum passed but I fear I will not. Who knows when that moment will come and if so, will I be ready? Are you ready?
Water Flowed From the Temple
IS THERE A GOD?