Until about a week ago, I never really took the time to process the fact that I’m living in the house where my mother died. It was a thought that I’d subconsciously pushed deep into the annals of my mind, probably in an attempt to maintain my sanity. As a friend and I spoke about the possibility that my family and I will be moving soon, he mentioned that beyond getting out of a state that I’m not entirely fond of, it would also be good for me to no longer have to live in the home where I lost my mom.
When I returned home two years ago, my family was living in Buffalo, New York, nestled in a cul-de-sac between two other houses. I vividly recall the two front entrances we had, not only because the idea of a “butler’s entry” tickled me, but also because my mother entered her wandering phase in that house, and I constantly found myself running to the doors to catch her before she took off. More often than not, she and I ended up on impromptu walks together, because the repetitive nature of her ventures to the doors wouldn’t end until she actually left the house.
Also in that home, suspended in the midst of a 30-foot vaulted ceiling, was a balcony-style hallway between the upstairs bedrooms. Often she’d wander between them, opening and shutting doors, or venturing inside to rearrange the perpetual messiness of my younger siblings. Along with her wandering phase also arrived an extremely combative phase, and I remember looking up at the balcony from the living room in shock one afternoon as she battled with my father over a sweater—two sizes too small, and belonging to my sister—that she’d stretched over herself. In that same living room, I realized for the first time, while looking at dampened light wash jeans, that my mother had become incontinent. Another afternoon, I called 911 with a shaky voice and bated breath from the partition between the living room and sunroom as she lay motionless and bleeding from the head after her first of many seizures to come.
A move to Alabama gave a fresh start, and allowed me to leave behind the memories of the New York house. But as her decline continued, the house we lived in our first year here began to accumulate its own. There, her wandering and combativeness continued, but carrying over a ritual from New York, I would play her Beyoncé and Earth, Wind & Fire to calm her. The sound of music would change her mood immediately, and we’d dance and smile together. The home had motion sensors, and I lost count of how many times I heard “Fault: Front door” or “Fault: Basement” as she roamed the home. There, too, we took walks brought on by wandering, many of which left her 10-12 angry paces ahead of me as she tried to get away, sometimes even into a car parked along the side of our street. That living room had its own dark moments as well, most memorably the beginning of the end, when my mother was deemed hospice appropriate. A nurse came twice a week for vitals, and a home health provider bathed my mother five days a week.
At the end of the 2012-2013 schoolyear, we moved into our current home. In the two months since her passing, I’ve had random flashes of my experiences with my mother there. In our kitchen, there are four large windows, with a gorgeous view of hills and trees. Sometimes when I cook, I see her sitting at a window in her geri-chair; I’d face her toward them often, because she always loved nature. The master bedroom, where she spent most of her time once it was too hard for her to get up and into the chair, is a place that I tend to avoid. There is an overwhelming emptiness now that her hospital bed is no longer placed next to the one she and my father used to share. And flashes of her laying motionless, breathing shallowly, and hooked to a catheter, in her final days in that room, never evade me.
It was in that room that I held my ear to her mouth, and grasped the tiny wrist on her shrunken frame, refusing to believe that she’d stopped breathing and that her heart had stopped beating. My sisters sat silently on the four poster bed in shock, watching a Fresh Prince marathon on TBS. In the kitchen, I called my father, who was with my brother out of town, and broke down afterward, holding tightly to the countertop. In the living room, I sat with a hospice care provider, church family, and funeral home representatives as all the appropriate information was taken for the death certificate. After she had been prepared and moved from her bed and onto a stretcher to be moved to the hearse, I told the funeral home workers that I was ready for them to take her, only to run after for one final kiss on the forehead, and a “Bye, mommy.” Sometimes when I come into the house, I recall sitting on the front step, inconsolable, talking to the first and only friend I called that night. My own room is not even a place of escape, because it was there that one of my sisters frantically burst into my bathroom as I washed my hair, because she was almost certain that my mother was no longer alive.
It is often said that home is where the heart is, and in the case of the three homes in which I cared for—and eventually lost—my mother, that rings true. By way of heartbreak, and also fond and final memories, there is a piece of my heart in each place. There is also a piece of my heart at her final resting place in Michigan, which I visited two weeks ago. What hurts, though, is that over the years, particularly because I’ve lived so many places (a total of six states now), I have begun to find “home” in people. My mother was home, especially during the time that we created a unique bond, as the caregiving dynamics between us switched. But though I’ve lost that sense of home, I can find peace in the fact that at last, she is at home, and not here suffering. I just miss her so very much.