My Brain

The human brain is a wonderful and scary thing.  It controls the physical functions of the body as well as thought processes, and everything in between.  It is, perhaps, the most complicated organ we possess--arguably the most studied, and probably the most misunderstood.  Science and medicine, combined, are only now just beginning to understand how it works.  And I, for one, sure wish I understood my own.

My thinking operates on examples and patterns.  It wanders a lot.  One thought leads to another thought, which (to those who don't know me) might seem unrelated, but there is always a logical pattern to what took me from one idea to another.  I believe I had some students who were frustrated with that.  I was never off topic, if they could see my thought patterns; but, since they couldn't, they probably thought I was just a crazy lady trying to teach them something they really didn't think applied to them.  And now that I'm retired from teaching, disabled, and living alone, I find that my mind works just as hard trying to make sense out of the world around me.

This morning, I was up at 4:15 AM, having gone to sleep somewhere around 12:30 AM.  (No, that's not enough sleep, but there isn't a thing I can do about it that I know of. )  I got up and started searching TV channels for something that wasn't an infomercial.  I landed on a show called Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry, which is about a young man/medium who meets with celebrities to give them psychic "readings" that involve their dead relatives.  As he was telling people about their parents or grandparents or significant others, my sleep-deprived-but-wide-awake brain started working overtime about my own dear relatives who have passed.  My thoughts landed on my mother.

My mom died suddenly in 1986.  She was in the hospital for another reason, but was doing well and expected to be released within a couple of days.  Then things suddenly went south...and she passed without any of the family able to get there in time.  I got a call at 10:30 PM from my father saying that Mom was in trouble and was being sent to the ICU.  My husband was gone (long story), so I grabbed my daughter and threw her in the car with a blanket and a pillow, and drove the 25 or so miles to the hospital where Mom was.  When we got there, we were ushered into a waiting room where my father and Mom's sister and brother-in-law awaited our arrival.  Mom was gone.  They told me I could go to see her in her bed.  I was devastated.  Life without my mother?  My best friend in all the world?  Not possible!  As it often does in times of deep shock, my brain went numb.  For months, I simply went through the motions of life, not knowing how to function...but I did.

When there was nothing more to be done at the hospital, I walked down the hall past the funeral director, leaning on my 7-year-old daughter--so young to have to deal with death.  She didn't cry or even talk.  (To this day, I don't know how that experience impacted her.)  We were to head home to the farm homestead.  I wanted to drive my father on those lonely, dark roads, but he insisted on driving himself.  At the farm, Megan and I pulled up to the garage, noting that Dad had gotten there safely.  The hardest thing I ever did was walk into that lonely old farmhouse that would never again have my mother's presence.  Once inside, I had to deal with my daughter's needs, my father's needs, my family's need--all alone.  I was desperate for someone--ANYONE--to come and relieve me of those responsibilities, but they couldn't appear for hours.  I called the family while Dad sat in his chair in total grief.

And where was my young daughter?  By this time, it was midnight.  She didn't have many toys at Grandma and Grandpa's.  No one in the household was hysterical, but based on her behavior that night, she totally understood that this was not the time to be her willful self.  I knew it was useless to try to put her to bed, although I wanted to, for her own good.  And here is the picture of those lonely hours:  Imagine a large room with a recliner (Dad's) next to a couch.  Old farmhouses aren't meant to be alive at that hour, but ours was.  Imagine again, if you will, that there was a spotlight around that recliner.  At the outer edge of what would be the end of the spotlight's distance, my daughter quietly kept herself busy at a safe distance.  She was just out of the imagined circle of light.  She wasn't demanding.  She didn't whine.  She was silent and seemingly distracted, although I was aware that she listening to every word of what was said.

People started arriving in the middle of the night.  My brother first because he was closest.  Then my sister and brother-in-law.  Finally, my husband.  But this time, it was nearly dawn.  We all found places to crash.  Dad stayed in his recliner.  My brother stayed on the couch next to Dad's chair.  My sister and bro-in-law went to the parents' bedroom.  My husband and I stayed in my grandfather's bed, with our daughter on the floor next to us.  No one slept well.  After a couple of hours of sleep, we all got up and launched into what needed to be done to receive visitors and make funeral plans.  It was all a blur.

Sometime during all of that, my daughter wrote a small note to her grandfather and left it on the arm of his chair.  "I'm sorry about what happened to Grandma.  It is not fun."  My brother saw the childlike passion in that and saved the note for himself.  I believe it was probably in his effects when he died, lost to us forever.

Remembering that night and my perceptions of it as I was watching that doggone medium show, I came to wonder about why I loved my grandmother as much as I did.  (I've already told you that my mind is weird!)  My grandmother didn't pass until I was way into my late 20s, and she was very, very sick; but, looking back, I question why she was so important to me.  All of my young life, she was mostly disabled.  It got worse over time.  We didn't really go anywhere together or do too many things together.  She was just a presence of stability in my military childhood.  Wherever we went in the world, we always came home to the farm...and my grandparents were always there, waiting for us to return to the fold.  The rest of the world always changed for me, but my grandparents and their farm was our constant.  My father adored her, even though she was "only" his mother-in-law.  Whatever she wanted, he did.  And she loved him just as much.  I knew without a doubt that she loved me in only a way that a grandmother knows.  I never, ever considered her outdated or out of touch.  She wasn't expected to bend to me; it was my job to bend to her.

And, just this morning, my brain had a revelation.  As I observed my daughter's reactions in the outer edges of the circle the night my mother died in 1986, I saw myself on that same outer circle, but not because of a death.  Kids were in a different place in the family constellation in those days.  My own place at the edge of the circle of light was sitting back and watching how my family all reacted to each other.  When we were with my grandparents, life was good.  There were pinochle or bridge games going on in the living room at night, and happy garden meals during the day.  We ate.  We laughed.  We teased each other.  I was in on some of that, even very young, but the main thing that I took from it was that I wanted some of that for my own life.  My mother and my grandmother were most obviously good friends who would do anything for each other.   In those early years, all I wanted for my future self was, should I have children of my own, to have a relationship like they had.  I worked hard for that with my daughter.  I think there were many times that I parented out of guilt after her father and I divorced.  In fact, I am unmarried to this day because of that, but my kid never, ever had to think that she was unsupported.

Since my mom died so early in my daughter's life, I'm not sure if she had the example of Life With Grandma to pattern her life on.  Doesn't matter.  Although we are from different generations, as the saying goes, "Love is love."  I can die happy now because I've been there for all of her glitches, even though I still don't understand all of them. 

Have you followed this thread of my thinking?  If you did, congratulations.  I'm not totally sure that even I do.  I'm just happy that I can still see beyond my toes to what seems like the real thing.  God...and my brain...works in mysterious ways!