Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

    By the way, I talked to MPS too and told her on Thursday you were coming out. She told me that Mom called her Wednesday evening (I was out someplace, I guess, probably getting us a fast food dinner) and told her the happy news that I will be moving from Seattle soon to come live with her. I'll be so pleased when I finally get here! I hope I make it before you arrive!

    So on the way back from where ever I was I realized that the reason my mother has episodes of believing that I am still coming here from Seattle may be that some of me is still there. I don't think that part, though, will be coming here, even if this part of me never gets back there. I considered feeling sad about that, on behalf of my mother, and decided I didn't have it in me. I don't think it's difficult for her; just a fact of life.

    I called MPS this afternoon to let her know MFS was coming to visit soon. MPS told me that last night (I was gone for about 4 hours) my mother called her just to talk. [I know my mother often calls 'around', relatives and such, when I'm gone. I always ask her, whenever I return home, if anyone's called or if she's called anyone but I almost always find out about these calls days later from the other participant because plans have been made and my mother sounded so rational, aware and alert that the participant thought nothing of making plans with her, 'knowing' they would get back to me. For that reason I have censored our phone list down to a necessary minimum.] While they were catching up my mother announced the good news that I was moving back here from Seattle and coming to live with her. MPS said Mom was very excited. I told her, good, then, things would go well when I get here.
    I guess I'm still Gwyneth Gillette. I have no complaints but, still, I look forward to the time when I will be me, here, or where ever I am, again. I was, for awhile last night but my mother is still entwined with me where ever I go. It's not unpleasant. It leaves me thoughtful. Sometimes at the wrong time.
    A day of confronting identity.

     Response to following passages quoted from Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather:

"He was soon to have done with calendared time, and it had already ceased to count for him. He sat in the middle of his own consciousness; none of his former states of mind were lost or outgrown. They were all within reach of his hand, and all comprehensible.
...
"Sometimes, when Magdalena or Bernard came in and asked him a question, it took him several seconds to bring himself back to the present. He could see that they thought his mind was failing, but it was only extraordinarily active in some other part of the great picture of his life - some part of which they knew nothing.
...
"When the occasion warranted he could return to the present, but there was not much present left; Father Joseph dead, the Olivares both dead, Kit Carson dead, only the minor players of his life remained in the present time."

     Thanks for reminding me of these. Every word you quoted reminded me of my mother's Now. "...and all comprehensible." Completely. More, I think, than her states of mind ever have been. I think that's why she's so flexible now. States of mind are no longer ladder rungs to other states of mind anymore. There's no such thing as higher and lower to her. They are what they are and connected because they all exist in her, not because they lead/led to anything.
     I wonder if it is a "turning" or if it is a final, prolonged "fare well" before the "next great phase" which, I'm beginning to think, is not a mind phase but something else. If there is anything else I hope it's more extensive and exhilarating than 'minding'. Not that I'm disappointed. I can barely contain myself, now. I don't want to be able to contain myself, at all. That would be the ultimate in exhilaration; what Hindus imagine as the ex/implosion at the end of a series of kulpas. The dis-solution.
     I hope cats internalize aging much the way my mother is. Kona, the Ancient Cat living with MPS and her family, seemed so pitiful to us, but she also seemed completely unaware of any of the misery we projected onto her.