Intuition

She knows.

I laid in bed with my mom last night. My beautiful, graceful, dignified, emotionally exhausted mom, who did not recognize me when I walked into her room.

“Mommy, it’s me, Cyntie”. She burst into tears. Home. I represent home to her. Something she remembers, something she once controlled. 

I took off my slippers, lifted the covers, and slipped into the bed. Closed my eyes. And exhaled. She represents home to me also.

It’s June 2nd, 2024. Nine years to the day that I lost my father. Who died 2 days before his 74th birthday. We buried him on Father’s Day which felt righteous in the moment. He was the epitome of fatherhood. In hindsight, however, the ache is doubly painful. Why do we have anniversaries for death, again?

But I digress. We were talking about my mom’s intuition. She knows!

I laid in bed with my mom last night and she cried. Deep sobs punctuated by groans. “It’s okay mommy”, I said crying with her.

I have walked into her room repeatedly over the last 11 months, gently reorienting her to person, place, and thing, to minimize her anxiety before sharing space and time with her. But somehow, during this month, around this day, my mom’s sorrow shifts into overdrive. Somehow, even through the dementia, the grief finds her. It’s deep in her marrow. She knows! 

He’s not coming back. It should be him laying next to her. His smell is gone. His laugh is too far away. She will never see him get dressed in a Bush Jack suit again. He will never tease her and call her “nurse”. He loved her with his entire being. She had never been and would never be loved like this again. She knows!

June is the month my father was born. June is the month my brother was born, his namesake. Her first child, who has now joined his father in death. June is the month my brother got married. June is the month my father died. June is the month my father was buried. June is the month that is littered with emotional IEDs making it difficult for me to know exactly where to step. June is a gut punch to a GI system already in distress. I know this, but how does she?

This is the miracle to me. Every year, I watch my beautiful, graceful, dignified, emotionally exhausted mother, with advanced dementia and severe cognitive decline, grieve her lover and her son, intuitively. It’s private. And deeply personal. I cannot share it with her. Nor she with me.

I closed my eyes. Kissed her on the cheek. Squeezed her hand. Then got up from the bed. I have borne witness, once more, to a transcendent love. “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?”

She knows.