My Mother And The Archbishop

When my sister went to check on my mother at the hospital yesterday evening, she found her sitting in an armchair by the bed, propped up with pillows, knowing who and where she was, and eating dinner on her own.

The last several days had been utterly discouraging, my mother's encephalitis keeping her nailed to the mattress, helpless in every way, oscillating between stupor and delirium. So the sight of my mother out of bed, eating and making sense sent my sister's hopes sky high.

"I had a visitor this afternoon" my mother said.

"Oh yes? Who was it?" Over the last week my mother's visitors had included her long-dead mother, a mysterious male child, and some unidentified but disturbing entities. On this promise-filled day my sister was hoping to hear of some real-live friend who had dropped by.

"The archbishop came."

My sister's spirits plummeted. But she thought she could bring my mother back to rationality by asking precise questions. "And which archbishop was it, the new one or the old one?" (The Mobile diocese had just been assigned a new archbishop.)

"The new one," my mother said, spooning mashed potatoes into her mouth. "He didn't have much to say, but he seemed nice."

Reminding herself that recovery from such a serious illness was bound to take a long time, my sister started getting my mother ready for the night. She went to get a nurse's aide to help with the chair-to-bed transition and asked, "Did my mother have any visitors this afternoon?"

"Yes Ma'am, she sure did," the woman answered. "The archbishop came by."

Buddhism To The Rescue

As my mother careens from lucidity to hallucinations and stupor,
as her family is flung daily from optimism to despair,
as her release from hospital draws near and the decision about continuing care (rehab, nursing home, assisted living, hospice?) grows no clearer,

I try to remember
to tolerate ambiguity,
to not attach to outcomes,
to stay in the present moment,
to cultivate spaciousness of mind.

The Doctors

My 92-year-old mother is in a Mobile, Alabama hospital with encephalitis. She is being attended by: an infectious disease specialist, a neurologist who has been in a wheel chair since age twelve, a GI man who looks like a college sophomore, a GP, and a surgeon who visits because he's a friend. There is also a nutritionist and a physical therapist, and swarms of nurses and aides.

It's the doctors that interest me. Every day, one by one the doctors come to my mother's bedside. If she's alert and speaking English, they chat with her and then walk out of the room with a spring in their step. If she is unresponsive they gaze at her pensively, then turn reluctantly to meet our questioning faces.

I have never seen such concentrated doses of medical humility. They make no bones about it: not one of them has any idea why she can be lucid, witty, reflective, and asking for lipstick before lunch, and completely unresponsive to speech or touch after the food tray is taken away. The rhythms of her struggling brain have got them baffled, and they seem almost as buffeted as we by the swings in her condition.

What is her prognosis, we ask. It's been two weeks since her diagnosis--what should we plan for--rehab, assisted living...a nursing home? We've had affirmative answers to all the above. One doctor, after being instructed by her on the differences between Catalan and Castilian, predicts a complete recovery. Another one, having gotten no response from her two days in a row, advises us to find a nursing home. One specialist says, push the envelope, see if you can get her out of bed. His less optimistic colleague says we're risking a fall, and orders a catheter.

Every afternoon at five the thunderstorms come over Mobile, and wash away the worst of the heat.

I feel no anger towards these doctors. Standing with us around my mother's bed, they look worried and a bit depressed. Like the rest of us, they are waiting to see what the next few hours will bring. I like them this way. In this extremity, they shed their hubris and become good company. Just another presence at the bedside, watching and waiting and there.