It wasn't a sound....

....that woke me, rather it was the quiet.  




I lay in the dark listening and after a few minutes I knew the hum of the oxygen machine was not there.  I wondered why she had turned it off.  I rolled over to look at the time, 3:13 a.m. and I slowly, quietly, so as not to wake Matthew, crawled out of bed and felt for the door handle in the dark.  I went to her room to check on her, the light in the hall providing just enough light to see her.  Her breathing was slow and steady, so still, but never the less, she was still breathing.




I felt my way back to bed and remembered something my Aunt Arlene had said once.  It was during one of my many visits back to Minneola to see my grandmother.  My grandmother hadn't known me for years.  I looked in her eyes, familiar, green and kind.  I wondered where she had gone, the grandmother that I had spent so much of my youth with.  I could see her in front of me.  She looked the same, but she saw nothing that was familiar to her, nothing that would pull her back from the world of Alzheimers. 




I raised a spoon to her lips, which she slowly opened and I gently slid a spoon full of chocolate pudding into her mouth.  She lets out a long, mmm.  I had to laugh.  I thought of the Bush trait of loving chocolate, anytime, anywhere.  I wondered if she had done the same for me when I was a baby?  She had taken care of me and she loved me, of course she had fed me.  It was an honor to do the same for her.  Yet, I longed for some sign of recognition in her eyes, a hint of a smile that would tell me she knew I was there.  Nothing.






It was then my aunt said a phrase that I am reminded of today, "Once a man, twice a child."  Yes, I understand now, on a new level, what it means to be twice a child.  I checked on my mother just as I had checked on my children at night, tucking them in, making sure they were safe.  






I slowly drifted off to sleep again, but when I got up this morning, the first thing I did was check on her.  Still sleeping, oxygen machine back on.  It told me she had gotten up in the night again and I hadn't heard her.  That worried me, that she might have needed me, but I had slept through it.  




...I think I hear her, she's up.  I'll go and check on her and let her know I'm here.