“I don’t think so, Ma,” I say. “He’s been very busy, getting this thing up there. They shot it up from what used to be Cape Kennedy. You remember we went there once?”
“I’ll write him a letter and tell him I want to go,” Ma says.
The mysteries of the human brain — I am talking about Ma’s now, not Elon Musk’s. Before her stroke three years ago, my mother was an adventurous traveler, going to the Amazon, the Nile, the Galápagos. Now she’s planning on being among the first visitors to Mars, although lately she’s been worrying about the flight taking off without her. My brothers and I tell her that won’t happen, Mars isn’t ready for tourism.
But distinguishing fantasy and reality is harder these days, so here I am at the nursing home, showing Ma the photo of Elon Musk’s red Roadster in space, with a guy who for all she knows could be Buzz Aldrin at the wheel.
“Now remember, this isn’t a real person, Ma,” I say. “It’s a mannequin in a spacesuit. The car isn’t actually going to Mars, it’s going to be circling the sun like Mars and Earth. We’re in the same orbit.”
“I’m going,” Ma says.
This was Mom’s medical condition when I got the call from the nursing home doctor: Bronchitis, the chronic obstructive lung disease getting worse, shortness of breath, and of course her longstanding heart disease and diabetes. There was also a discussion about whether hospice or hospital was preferred.
“Do you believe we’re looking at the beginning of a dying situation here?” I had asked.
“No,” the doctor said. “We’re just looking at a change of status, and it could go either way.”
I do think it’s the beginning of the end for my mother — not this week or even this month, but I do see a sharper downward trajectory. My mother is sleepier these days, more likely to zone out, more anxious. We do not discuss her death, but I know she believes in some sort of afterlife. I do not.
Still there seems to be an image associated with death, of an ascension upward, which many people share. I experienced it years ago myself. I had had an abortion, the psychological aftermath of which was not as simple as I thought it would be, and when I got home, sleeping off the anesthesia, I dreamed of a large cinder, a life that had been snuffed out before it had the opportunity to happen, shooting through space.
Why was that image of a snuffed-out life moving through space? Why wasn’t it buried in the ground? I understand that nobody wants to dwell on the decay and rot that is a certainty, but why does so much death imagery have to do with moving skyward? One could almost believe there was a biological memory dating to the big bang:
Wowza! Did you see that magnificent galactic explosion? I can’t help thinking it’s the beginning of something big. My mother the galaxy. From star stuff I came and to star stuff I shall return. But first, I’d like to grow a face and see Paris.
My mother was active in two synagogues when she lived in Florida, and one of the things she did was prepare bodies for burial. It’s not disturbing, she told me; it’s an honor. You wash them, you dress them in a shroud, you sit with them until they’re buried so they’re not alone. That traditional Jewish burial was what I figured Ma would want for herself.
It occurs to me now, however, with Ma’s Mars fixation, that she might, when the time comes, enjoy being cremated and shot into space. “Enjoy” probably isn’t the word, but you know what I’m saying.
But I can’t see discussing this with Ma. The days are over when she talked about death as another adventure. She is suggestible now, vulnerable to unhappy stories — the other day it was “King Kong.” She didn’t say what upset her, but what could it be other than the tragic, persecuted Kong, furry as the kittens and puppies Ma sometimes thinks sleep with her, in his death spiral off the Empire State Building.
And of course, there’s that problem with dementia; who’s in charge, Pre-Stroke, Adventure Travel Ma or Nursing Home Ma?
Actually, the person who is in charge is me. I am my mother’s medical advocate, I will have the final word about how it will end, in a hospital or hospice: in a nest of tubes or with a hospice musician playing show tunes? With me telling Ma that Mars is not ready for tourism, or saying I got a call from Elon Musk and he has readied a rocket just for her?
I lean toward a journey that will take her toward the stars.
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