by sheila morris
my books
I have signed new copies available of several nonfiction titles of mine that will make great holiday gifts for yourself or someone you love:
Get ’em while they’re not hot for $5. each plus shipping cost of $3.99. You can send $ through paypal.me/SHEILARMORRIS
Pardon the interruption for this shameless self promotion. As my daddy used to say, whosoever tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooteth. That was my dad.
Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.
“I love this book,” my eighty-three-year-old mother says, startling me awake from my nap with her words. I had drifted off while sitting in the dark blue recliner in her room in the memory care unit of the assisted living facility she’d called home for the past two years. She was asleep when I sat down in the recliner.
I open my eyes to see her sitting across from me. She’s in the small wooden chair with the straight back. I can’t believe she’s holding the copy of my book, Deep in the Heart, which I gave her two years ago. I never saw the book since then on any of my visits, and I assumed she either threw it away or lost it. I was also stunned to see how worn it was. The only other book she had that I’d seen in the same condition was The Holy Bible.
“I know all of the people in this book,” she continues. “And so many of the stories, too.”
“Yes, you do,” I agree. “The book is about our family.”
And then with wonder, I hear another reader say my words. My mother reads to me as she rarely did when I was a child. She was always too busy with the tasks of studying when she went to college, preparing for classes when she taught school, cooking, cleaning, ironing, practicing her music for Sunday and choir practice – she couldn’t sit still unless my dad insisted she stop to catch her breath.
But, today, she reads to me. She laughs at the right moments and makes sure to read “with expression” as the teacher in her remembers. Occasionally, she turns a page and already knows what the next words are. I’m amazed and moved. I have to fight the tears that could spoil the moment for us. I think of the costs of dishonesty on my part, and denial on hers. The sense of loss is overwhelming.
The words connect us as she reads. For the first time in a very long while, we’re at ease with each other. Just the two of us in the little room with words that renew a connection severed by a distance not measured by miles. She chooses stories that are not about her and her daughter’s differences. That’s her prerogative, because she’s the reader.
She reads from a place deep within her that has refused to surrender these memories. When she tires, she closes the book and sits back in the chair.
“We’ll read some more another time,” she says.
I lean closer to her.
“Yes, we will. It makes me so happy to know you like the book. It took me two years to write these stories, and I’m glad you enjoy them so much.”
“Two years,” she repeats. “You have a wonderful vocabulary.”
Note this is an excerpt from a chapter called The Dementia Dialogues – Stage 1 from my book:
The mysterious mother – daughter relationship complicated by a thief we call dementia is one of the themes of one of my favorite books. The cover shows a ten-year-old me struggling with gloves I’m sure I didn’t want to wear standing between my hip crew-cut dad and my correctly posed mom, my favorite aunt Lucille standing next to her brother, and my aunt’s daughter Melissa looking somewhat perplexed in an adorable bonnet sure to be the hit of the Easter service at the Richards Baptist Church.
Stay tuned.
I wrote the following story in February, 2012; it was first published in my third book, I’ll Call It Like I See It, and was reprinted with my permission in an anthology entitled Mothers and Other Creatures. I think of these two women, both of whom I loved dearly, especially at Mother’s Day but truly every day…
The Photo Finish
In 1965 when I was a freshman in college my parents bought their first home ever in Rosenberg, Texas, after almost twenty years of marriage. My dad was the assistant superintendent of the local school district and my mother taught second grade in one of the elementary schools in the district. Since I wasn’t living with them, I’m not sure how the decision was made to hire someone to help with cleaning the bigger new house, but when I was home for spring break, my mom introduced me to Viola, who was hired for that purpose. When I returned to stay the summer with my folks, Viola was gone.
I never knew what happened to Viola but was so self- absorbed I didn’t really care. Early in the summer Mom informed me we would have a new woman who was coming to work for us and encouraged me to keep the stereo at a lower volume on the lady’s first visit. I was in a Diana Ross and the Supremes phase and preferred the speakers to vibrate as I sang along but I obligingly lowered the level for our potential new household addition.
I needn’t have bothered. Willie Meta Flora stepped into our house and lives and rocked all of us for more than forty-five years. She became my mother’s truest friend and supported her through the deaths of her mother, brother and two husbands. She nursed my grandmother and my dad and uncle during their respective battles with mental illness, colon cancer and cerebral palsy. She watched over and protected and loved and cared for my family as she did her own, which included five daughters and two sons and an absentee husband. In many ways, we became her second family and she chose to keep us.
Willie and my mom shared a compulsion for honesty and directness that somehow worked to keep them close through the good times and the hard times in both of their lives. They were stubborn strong women and butted heads occasionally, but most of all, they laughed together. Willie’s sense of humor and quick wit kept Mom on her toes and at the top of her game in their talks. They also shared a deep love for the same man, my dad. In her own way, Willie loved my dad as much as Mom did, and my father loved her and loved being with her right back. His death broke both their hearts.
Although Willie kept her own apartment, she and Mom basically lived together in the years following the death of Mom’s second husband. Mom planned her days around the time near dusk when Willie would be there to spend the night with her. Willie became her lifeline to maintaining her independence, and the two of them grew older and crankier as time passed. Willie and I talked on the phone frequently, and she began to tell me she was worried about Mom’s safety and getting lost when she drove around town in her old brown Buick LeSabre. I dismissed her fears and ignored the signs of dementia until Mom’s 80th birthday when it became apparent she had major problems in everyday living.
Not long afterwards, I was forced to make a decision about my mother’s long term care needs and opted to move her to a Memory Care Unit in a facility in Houston which was a thousand miles from my home in South Carolina. Why not move her closer to me? A good question with a complicated answer that included my trying to keep her available to Willie and her family who could drive Willie to see Mom. If my mother could choose between visiting with me or seeing Willie, there was no contest. I would always come in second.
Mom will be 85 next month and struggles with the ongoing physical and mental battles associated with Alzheimer’s in her ultimate race towards death. This past fall I moved her again to a different residence that is still in Texas but much closer to my second home which is also now in Texas. Alas, she’s two hours farther from Willie, and Willie has only been able to visit her once since her move.
Willie will be 81 next month. She and Mom have the same birthday month, and now they have the same dementia. We don’t talk on the phone now because she can’t form words I can understand. When I visited her yesterday, she didn’t recognize me and was uncomfortable with getting up out of her bed, just as Mom is sometimes when I go to see her. Willie’s five daughters and three of her granddaughters are coping with the same problems I’ve faced with Mom–trying to keep her comfortable in a safe environment.
When I consider the strength of these two women and their determination to rise above their inauspicious beginnings in an era when women weren’t valued for their strong wills, I feel a sense of admiration and respect and gratitude for the examples they’ve been for me and for Willie’s daughters, too. We are the children of our mothers and we reflect their strengths and weaknesses in black and white. Theirs was a mysterious bond that we may never fully understand, but the similarity of their physical and mental conditions in these last days is surreal and takes irony to a new dimension. Leora, one of Willie’s daughters, told me recently she thought Mom and Willie just might end their race toward death in a tie. I think it will be a photo finish.
Willie M. Flora died Saturday April 14, 2012. Selma L. Meadows died Wednesday April 25, 2012.
It was a photo finish.
Warmest wishes to all of our friends in cyberspace from Pretty and me for a wonderful weekend. If possible, spend time with your mother. If impossible, cherish your memories.
Until next time…
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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