Pancakes, the Breakfast Vegetable

Judging by the photo and the title, this is going to be a funny one.

I should have known there was something lurking under the general joy when my sister showed up at the wedding and told me that mom had fallen out of bed the night before and had asked where my uncle was in the morning. My uncle wasn't coming; my uncle has troubles of his own to attend to. She, my mother, took a long time getting out of the car when they arrived at the reception. I waited for a while in my anxiousness to greet people, then finally came out and knocked on the window of the passenger door. She fumbled for an opening, window or door, then finally found the automatic window button. "Hi, mom." She smiled her new smile, the one that's tight-lipped and faint, like the remainder of a penciled smile that has been imperfectly erased.

I escorted her by the arm to the front door. She was so small. I've been taller than her since the fifth grade, but my mother has always carried weight, ranging from obese to pleasantly plump, and thus had a solidity that was reassuring and matronly. She lost the first shocking amount of weight after her bout with heart disease, then another sheaf after the subsequent breast cancer. Now, in the throes of back surgery recovery and what appears to be prescription drug addiction, she has shed another 25 pounds to become a small stork, a short and hobbled puppet that carries her head around. It's not anger that causes me to type such unflattering descriptions. It's shock. It was probably shock that swept me through the wedding weekend with her wraith-like form sitting so quietly, so still, at one table or another, smiling that palimpsest of a smile. 

She eventually put on her back brace, which swallows her frame the way a scaffold swallows a building in need of repair. As awkward as it looked when she moved, it at least replaced some of her familiar bulk. Her hair looked nice. She looked as if she had a genuinely good time, when I could steel myself to glance. I began to take her presence for granted, as something asymptotically approaching normal.

We staged our ceremony on the back porch of Lustre Pearl, and choreographed it on the fly the night before the ceremony so that V would emerge from the shadows of the bar and step through the back door. Just picturing the moment made me misty all morning, and when it came, to the crescendo of the final chorus in Ingrid Michaelson's "The Chain," the effect was as profound and cathartic as I'd imagined. She was dressed in a billowing A-line, so perfect for her figure, with Tiffany blue detailing and her hair in vintage curls. She looked demurely at the floor, like a shy child or a philosophical woman or the perfect combination of both, and I got choked up. Just before I went to greet her and escort her the rest of the way to our makeshift altar, I looked at my mother at the center table in the backyard. She was looking back at me. Her happiness appeared to glow faintly through the frozen expression on her face. I searched for joy, and found what I believe was a spark of it.

The rest of the ceremony was focused, naturally, on my bride. The rest of the party, I circulated through friends and family with giddy appreciation. I stopped by my mom's seat and spoke with her at some point during the festivities, though I've forgotten what I said. I remember more clearly my beautiful sister and her happy, healthy boy, both looking comfortable in their skins. I remember my beaming father in his dapper suit, and the proud ease with which he dove into conversation with my boss. I remember so many details of so many congratulations and hugs and jokes and photographs, but the last clear picture of my mom's face was from the altar, that elusive spark.

My family left for the airport the next morning, far earlier than V and I could check out of our honeymoon suite.

Last night, still basking in the glow of an empty apartment and a celebration completed, my sister called, her voice hitching slightly. Mom fell out of bed again, this time silently. My father discovered her on the ground with her face covered in gushing blood, her nose possibly broken. She made no noise. My sister described with a detached horror the seeming lack of sensation, of pain, of crying. My mom is a complainer and a moaner. Her simply lying in a pool of her own blood -- on the white bedroom carpet we couldn't wear shoes on -- without a sound -- is the most chilling description I can imagine.

That's all I know for now. 911 was called and my long-suffering father escorted her to the hospital yet again. I don't know exactly what it is I'm supposed to feel about all this. There's a bizarre mixture about the entire situation of sadness and anger, as incongruous a combination as pancakes and vegetables. Should I be mourning yet? Is she gone, just a whisper of a pencil line still inhabiting some remnant of a body? Or is she a force to be kicked and dragged back into life? 

Is all this something that's happening to her, or is it something that's happening because of her? There's no definitive answer, and so nobody can define this as a terrible disease or a pathetic suicide. I feel numb to type about it, caught between anger that her excruciating fade is swallowing the events of my life and the natural outpouring of a son's empathy for his mother's pain. I should be doing more; there's nothing I can do.

There was so much joy and celebration to write about this weekend, but tonight I have to start with that small moment when I turned from my beautiful bride to find my mother's face in the crowd and see a death mask, numbed by pills, inured to emotion by some internal switch that has cut her off from the difficulties of Earth. Where is the woman who could cry at the least emotional offense, or the sappiest commercial? Where is the woman who could sing to cure boredom? Where is the woman who would ask the boldest question of any peer, make the craziest (and most penetrating) statement about any situation, or wrap our family in the most tightly woven blanket of smothering concern? 

Is she in that hospital right now? Has anyone wiped the blood from her face? Where are her eyes? Where is her smile?