Sweet Ache

Thanks, Dad.

The thought flickers through my mind and I struggle against the hostility toward him that slips through every now and again. It wasn’t Mom’s fault but I swear to God his suicide was the beginning of her undoing. They say Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a trigger, but she shut down after Dad died. Life was too much for her to cope with any longer. I swear she didn’t want to remember so her mind turned against her.

I force myself to shake off the thoughts as I approach her room slowly, a lump of anxiety in my throat since I’m unsure which person she’s going to be when I enter. The room decor offers more muted colors, as a soft glow emanates from the lamps on the walls, mementos of the family she rarely remembers scattered throughout it.

The sound of her humming has cautious optimism rising within me as she comes into view, embracing Hunter, her hand petting over his hair like she used to when we were kids. I strain to hear the song, but already know what it is: “Over the Rainbow.”

My beautiful mother with the pitch-perfect voice. She had so much musical potential but she preferred singing lullabies to her boys over being out late and performing in the jazz clubs that begged for her and my father to take their stage. She feared the moments she’d miss if her sons woke up and needed her. All her life my mother was so full of laughter, love, and compassion. But a single gunshot silenced all of that within her—it killed her too in a sense.

Her brain is allowing her a moment’s reprieve before it swallows her back into dementia’s bitter clutches. I stand still and watch the woman she used to be, afraid to breathe too loudly and upset her and trigger her to turn into the woman I don’t know.

“There now, Hunter. What did your brother do to you this time?” she asks him gently as a mother does a young child. Every time I come here I hope that she remembers me for the child she loved, not the one she blamed for not stopping her husband from killing himself.

Those glimpses of that mom who used to kiss my scrapes and tuck me in are so few and far between these days, her mind so warped that even when she does remember us, she remembers that Hunter was her baby, and I am the son who didn’t stop him.

I know she doesn’t mean the things she says to me, know it deep in my core, and yet it does nothing to lessen the hurt or damage the hope that for one fleeting moment she’ll look at me and tell me it’s not my fault. That she’ll hold me in her arms, tell me she knows I couldn’t have stopped it.

That she’ll tell me something I’ve gone what feels like a lifetime without hearing, that she loves me. So once again I fight off the discord that overtakes me every time I visit her.

I shift my feet and she hears. She looks over and the familiar sneer appears on her face, the words like a reflex at the sight of me. “What are you doing here? I told you I don’t want you here anymore.” She hugs tighter to Hunter as she speaks to me, ice lacing her voice. It’s amazing to me that even though we are twins she can still tell us apart even in her altered mental state.

The stupid fucking hope I get every time I cross into this damn room sinks to the pit of my stomach.

“Hi, Mom.” It’s all I can say really. “How are you today?”

“How am I today?” she shrieks, releasing Hunter to face me. “How am I? I’d be a lot better if you didn’t let my husband kill himself, is what I’d be.” Her voice rises as she stands from the bed. I glance at Hunter and it’s the first time in a long time that I see compassion in his eyes for what he knows is coming next. The pain he can’t stop for me. “You stood there like a pathetic little boy and didn’t scream for help, did you?” Her words begin to slur as she steps into my personal space, and I know that means her mind is starting to pluck her memories away one by one.

I set my jaw, teeth clenched as I prepare myself for the verbal assault to come because as much as I’d love to scream and yell back, tell her she’s full of shit and what in the hell can a little boy do to prevent a man with a gun—the words I’ve repeated in my head for years, the ones I’ve used to try to silence my own conscience—I keep quiet. It’s not going to fix anything and by the time the words are out, she won’t even remember what happened anyway.

And besides, she’s still my mom.

“You stood there,” she says, shoving me in the chest, “and let him take the easy way out. Ruined me.”

I so desperately want to tell her it was in no way the easy way out. That obviously he was sick, and he needed help that he never got. But how do you explain to one sick person about another sick person and have it make sense? Especially when it doesn’t even make sense to you all these years later.

Hell yes I’m pissed at my dad. Angry he robbed me of all the things in life I deserved to do and see with him. Angry that he left me with a bucket load of promises I don’t want to keep most days and yet I do so that somehow, in some fucked-up way, he’ll be proud of me. I still love him just like I still love her despite how much she hates me.

I brace myself for the slap that comes but welcome it to shock me from the slide show in my mind of all the skeletons in our familial closet. It stings like a bitch despite her weakening physical state but I accept the pain.

“Mom, stop!” Hunter speaks up for me, knowing this isn’t my fault even though I’m sure over the years he’s blamed me too at some point. He uses the rage inside him over being cheated out of a father and he uses the drugs to numb himself as fuel to get back at me subconsciously.

“Don’t you protect him!” She whirls on Hunter, the pitch of her voice shrill. “He ruined our lives. Your brother didn’t try to stop it and ruined our lives.” She’s screaming now, loud enough that I hear the nurses call over the intercoms for a Code Gray in her room.