The Journey Continues
My husband took Mom to the emergency room yesterday because we were worried about her hydration and weight. She had been supposedly taking an antibiotic for an uncomfortable-but-common infection for days, but she wasn't getting any better. And she continued to refuse to eat.
They bolstered her with IV fluids and medications and began to look for an available bed in a short-term psychiatric facility. For the first time in two weeks, she was calm. So blessedly calm. After work, I sat with her and we watched the hospital's nature channel together. It was the easily the most normal conversation I had had with her in recent memory, although I did not speak much because my throat was thick with tears. We watched footage of waterfalls, crisp green leaves dappled with rain, and smooth waves gently meeting a riverbank. "Look how pretty that beach is," she said. "Wouldn't you just love to have a boat and sail it out there?"
When my father was living, my mother did not drive. Whether it was due to his concern that she might have a seizure behind the wheel or simply his old-fashioned nature, I do not know. After he died in 1989, however, she had no choice, and was forced to learn in order to drive to work and rear her children. She mastered the skill and eventually became fearless enough to go whipping around the interstate highways listening to Nirvana, the Beatles, or whatever other musical acts my sister and I had fervently discovered.
Driving around Cades Cove and Gatlinburg became one of our freshly-reduced family's traditions. We seldom had money to spend; even the few bucks to park behind the Mountain Mall was a splurge. We might take a picnic lunch and sit by the roadside stream. When it was warmer, the three of us would carefully climb down the rocks and dangle our feet in the water. But mostly, Mom would drive us. It soothed her, and me. It was easier to forget the grief of the loss of a parent and the fear of a precarious life of poverty when measured against the quiet majesty of the Smoky Mountains. Sometimes Mom would sing gospel songs as we drove around, but often we concentrated on the sounds of God's handiwork - a peaceful melody of birds, the whoosh of the rushing water - yet a sense of insulation from the world.
But the traveling, the journey itself, was the method of discovery. It allowed us to reflect, daydream, and plan. I thought of our trips over the years as Mom and I watched the TV together last night, connected by the beauty of this world. Past and present journeys - a human vehicle currently parked in a hospital bed, a mother still in the driver's seat, and a daughter trying to read the map.
January 30, 2018
