The buzzing broke the predawn silence.
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The screen lit up: “Dad Cell.” It was 4 a.m.
“I can’t find your mother,” he told me, worriedly. “I’ve been calling and calling. Is she at your house?”
I have always been a light sleeper so I immediately braced for the pain.
My mother died 11 years ago after a long battle with a gall bladder infection that morphed into MRSA, and then, cancer. She was so weakened by the infection that it only took one round of chemo to do her in.
Though she’d died within months of the cancer diagnosis, she’d already logged nearly two years of struggle before chemo had even begun. During that time, she’d been in and out of hospitals and rehab centers. My father was there for every day of her suffering, even the day his car was towed from the street during a snowstorm. He bummed a ride.
I stopped in as often as I could — before work, after work, on an extended lunch, every weekend — and he was already there.
He called me whenever the doctors called him, to recite exactly what they’d said so I could interpret or perhaps work some magic. He called me when there was a breakthrough or a setback. He often called asking me to stop what I was doing and come there. One day, I drove from my house to the hospital and back three times to just be there.
I chronicled my mother’s journey through notes and photos. I know how much she suffered and I know how much he suffered by association.
Once, while hospitalized, my mother told him she had a taste for peanut butter. He hurried out and returned with a jar of Jif, only to find out she’d changed her mind and really wanted grapes. When he presented the fruit, she frowned and said she couldn’t stomach them.
My mother’s end of life journey was long and filled with heartbreak.
For years after her death, my father recounted the misery, repeating that rhetorical question we all ask, “Why did she have to suffer?”
But now, a decade later, for some reason, his brain had deleted the memory.
Dementia strikes in mysterious, frustrating ways. As the brain atrophies, I’m told, certain senses can be heightened or diminished. And memories can melt like ice cubes on the driveway in August.
For years, my mother watched my kids while I went to work. She was at my house several days a week. She became a part of our community and our culture. She came to the local pool with us. We often brought her and my dad on vacation with us. We took her along whenever we went into the city to visit a museum or a restaurant.
It was reasonable that my dad would think she babysitting at my house — except that my girls are now grown with houses and children of their own.
I knew this was one of those challenging moments, when I would either do the right thing or I would make a bad situation worse.
If I told him the truth, that his wife of 50-plus years had passed many years ago, he would relive the trauma.
But if I “went with the delusion” and said she’d call him later, who knows how long he’d continue frantically searching?
I tried to deflect the question. “Dad, did you have breakfast?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I’m looking for your mother.”
“Dad, are you watching TV?”
“No, because I’m looking for your mother. I hope nothing happened to her. Where could she be?”
This went on, and on.
Finally, I broke and told him. He cried, first because she’d died and then because he couldn’t remember it.
I felt horrible. But I’m sure he felt worse.
Soon after, I went to his home and sat beside him. He reiterated his shock. He remembered me telling him but he still couldn’t remember her passing.
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I pulled out my phone and began showing him the photos I had taken of her final days, including a very touching one in which they are holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.
They were each other’s world. Married as teenagers, they’d known each other most of their lives. They’d endured all kinds of hardships and survived more than their share of difficulties, before death did them part.
He deserved to remember their final chapter, which may have been their best.
So I told him the truth, that he had been his best self in her final months and weeks, that he had done everything she’d asked and more, that they had laughed, smiled, cried and hugged during those last days, that I wish she could be here now to return the favor.
I told him I was proud of the kind of husband he was for her at her most difficult time.
“I’m glad I was good to her,” he said. “But how come I can’t remember?”
I was honest again. “I don’t know.”
Then I had a thought. Many years ago, I was hit by a car while walking with my husband. I don’t remember being hit or the ambulance or the hospital or even some events that happened months later.
“You were devastated when Mom died. Maybe your brain is trying to spare you that pain,” I offered. I have no idea if I said the right thing or the best thing or even the least hurtful thing.
But it seemed to bring him some peace. Sometimes a little bit of peace is all you can hope for.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.