OCTOBER 10, 2023 – Mother, meanwhile, was losing more altitude. On one of my regular visits a while after I’d returned from New Jersey, I was alarmed at the sight of Mother’s bluish, swollen ankles and compared notes with Jenny and Elsa, who shared my concern.
My journal entry for August 24, 2016 captured reflections triggered by Mother’s decline:
Later in the evening while rehearsing the Mendelssohn Piano Trio in d minor, the music reminded me of Mother and how little life she has left and the sadness and regret that I’ll feel when she dies. Each of her kids will react differently, because each of her kids has a different relationship with her. Nina is now quite distant, mainly geographically and because of Mother’s inability to use her phone effectively. I don’t believe they talk very often. Nina has a fondness and deep appreciation for Mother, but Nina has never witnessed her when Mother’s been in psychosis and is not constantly exposed to Mother’s eccentricities, emanating in large part from mental illness and other psychological conditions. Elsa is continually trying to “fix” a relationship that has always been strained. Jenny is highly sentimental about a relationship that was always good. By Mother’s decline I’m made insecure about my own mortality.
Less than two months later, I thought I was at Mother’s death bed. She had pneumonia and was coughing horrifically, non-stop. I didn’t know how her heart could take the stress. Her landing gear was clipping the treetops. And yet . . .
The next day I headed alone to the cabin to take the dock out before the onset of sub-freezing temperatures. On my way out of town, I stopped to check again on Mother. To my relief, Jenny was on hand, talking in earnest with the hospice social worker. Mother’s horrible cough had not abated, and being too weak to navigate to the dining room, she was in her room pushing a small helping of food around her plate. I didn’t stay long, and as I prepared to leave, Jenny said she’d exit with me.
“I have to tell you something that’s utterly bizarre,” said Jenny once we were outside.
“I’ve been reading a book about the Salem witch trials and how horrifically cruel and barbaric the Puritans were. As I read about accusation of witches, I realized how people like Mother would have been suspect because of her mental condition. They would have burned her at the stake,” Jenny said with emotion.
“But do you know what’s totally bizarre, Eric?” she continued. “When I came here to see Mother, she was in one of those crazed phases, where her mind is completely out there. She had a very strange, distant look in her face. Then—are you ready for this?—she looked at me in the most peculiar way and said, ‘bewitched.’”
“Yikes!” I said.
“Uh huh. How totally bizarre is that, Eric? Mother had no idea I was reading that book. I hadn’t said a word about it to her. And I’ve never heard her say the word, ‘bewitched.’”
I agreed with Jenny. Had Mother lived in Salem Massachusetts in 1692, most likely at best she would have been ostracized and at worst, burned at the stake.
That evening I exchanged a series of texts with Elsa and Jenny regarding Mother’s deteriorating condition. Mother had asked for a priest, rector, or minister, and my sisters were scrambling to meet the request. But then Mother insisted that whoever it was must bring a cross.
“What’s with THAT?” Jenny texted. I wondered: was Mother sensing her imminent death or was she simply once again on the edge of psychosis? In the past, her obsession with religious symbolism was a sign her mind was bending to the snapping point.
As I later stepped outside to gaze at the stars over the cabin, I knew Mother was in mortal decline, but at least she wouldn’t be put on trial or burned at the stake because of her brain chemistry.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
