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My elbow started it all as it sent a cup full of water plummeting down the counter onto the floor, producing a clattering sound of plastic on ceramic and splattering water all around. The sound reminded me of the tones of my metal mallets hitting the xylophone mother had bought for me when I was young. It never occurred to me the necessity of doing more than hastily wipe the liquid off the kitchen floor with my right foot sock. Nature would do the rest for me, soaking back the water into the air.
Who knew mother would walk into the kitchen without socks exactly four minutes after I had walked out of the kitchen and out of the house, leaving no time for the water to dry off the floor. She let the water slide between her bare feet and ceramic floor and slipped backward headfirst. She hit her head on the floor, hard.
Who knew? I didn’t. But I did realize after my evening walk and a couple of additional days her increasing eerie monotonous attitude. She seemed like a calm zombie, without words, without appetite, without thought.
“Mother, would you like to go for a walk?” I asked with a cautious tone, eyeing her slowly up and down.
“Huh, yeah,” she mumbled without a glimpse at me, her eyes unwavering but unfocused. Yet, she did not stand up. She did not move an inch but maintained her slouched lifeless posture.
“Mother, would you like to go for a walk?” I repeated.
“Huh, yeah,” she mumbled again, staying stagnant in her seat with eyes far into the horizon.
I was a confused statue, frozen in my steps.
I took her to the hospital.
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“I’m sayin’ they ‘r keepin’ me detained ‘er!” mother roared. “They’ve ki-napped me an’ fooled you with lies!”
I stared into my mother’s strange eyes. Her eyes were a blend of greyish madness and confusion, the warmth and joy, gone without a speck. This was her, post brain hemorrhage surgery, with a pipe connected to her half-bald head, shabby hair, madness filled eyes, and slurred speech. She had become a raving zombie from a sluggish zombie overnight. I did not know which was better.
The doctor warned of such aftereffects (hallucination or a distorted memory) but, still, I was unprepared. Mother was not my mother. Her usual warmth, love, and kindness were absent. She now only had dark bags under her eyes, always wore a front of suspicion and distress, bellowing that doctors and nurses were criminals in disguise and that she was kidnapped and we brainwashed.
She was my mother, a woman with whom I shared my deepest darkest secrets, one who was of unimaginable value to me, my mother.
It shattered my heart to see her in such a state where her former self was gone, left an empty body. I consider it worse than death itself.
Feeling indescribable loneliness, I quietly held her hand to let her feel her daughter’s warmth.
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