Her Demon

I enter Mama’s home with my key as I have every day for at least six years but on this spectacularly sunny February day the house feels…wrong. Vacant. We don’t see enough sunny days in Ohio. Sunny days in February are usually enough to break the winter doldrums. Not today though. The vacant feeling is oppressive.

“Ma?” I call out with forced cheer. I visit Mama every day at the same time to make sure she takes her pills. She is 90, I would never do her the disservice of describing her as 90 years young. She is too wise in lucid moments, though they are becoming infrequent as sunny days.

I stride in purposefully but the only movements are the twinkling dust motes waltzing in the air, set alight by the door swinging open. Puzzled, I frown, my belly almost painfully clenches with anxious anticipation. Mama always answers, even if from the restroom. Today there is no answer. Had she forgotten our morning routine? Had she slipped another peg into the gaping chasm of dementia?

I shuck off my shoes habitually, my stockinged feet glide over freshly waxed floors as I go from living room to kitchen then to the hall. My elderly mother is insistent on having a cleaning lady even though she rarely entertains guests. My lips twitch with a smile, thinking of mother cleaning for the cleaning lady. There is never anything out of place. The cleaning woman, almost as old as Mama, comes twice a month and scrubs the house with astonishing vigor. I think Ma is her favorite customer because scrubbing is all Deloris needs to do.

I skid to a halt in front of the bathroom door when I see the medicine cabinet door hanging open. The first thing I note is only three out of four medications are on the shelf. The smallest bottle, the most important, rests on the shelf, looking precisely placed aside from the other two as always. Two plastic bottles are lined up, vigilant soldiers on the lower shelf, “my” shelf. It is the shelf only I am allowed to access so Mama doesn’t take her medications at the incorrect time. Her oxycodone bottle lays in the sink, topless, its contents appearing to have spilt down the drain. Has Mom gotten into the painkiller without me? Was the pain from her recent hip surgery bothering her? She’s only supposed to take the potent painkiller when I administer it. Most days she refuses it but I don’t worry. She’s been taking the ibuprofen on “her” shelf.

Oh Mama! Was the medication not working? Had she taken too much? I race out of the bathroom to her bedroom. The door is closed. She never closes the door to her room. She insists on changing in the bathroom but doesn’t care to feel closed in when she sleeps. Why is it closed now? My fist is raised before I am close enough to knock. I’ve heard people with dementia get scared. Is Mama too afraid to answer me? Has she forgotten who I am? The possibilities clot my throat and brain, congealing into panic as the door swings open from the pressure of my feet pounding on the floor.

I immediately see her but feel no relief. She is dangling from the open plank ceiling, her care-lined face relaxed but contorted by the swelling from a noose around her neck. I stand there, no idea what to do. I never considered my mother would take her life. Her bed is made behind her, the chest she keeps extra blankets in slightly askew at the foot of it. It is obviously she used it to step off of and …

I can’t even think the word, even with the irrefutable evidence in front of me. I want to be happy for her freedom from the demon slowly consuming her once brilliant mind but wonder if it was the failure of her medication to control her pain which forced her to commit an act such as this. I feel selfish as I keep wondering what I should do.

Mother switched her bed spread. The thought manifests like a ghost through the fog of shock. The only reason I notice is the little black notebook, the type people once kept any manner of information in, glowers from the center of the pristine, white spread as out of place on mother’s bed as a man would be. I take a jarring step forward before I know I intend to move. I hesitate, I would have to walk around the corpse of the woman who gave me life, who kissed away my tears no matter my age. Mother held me close when my husband left me after we learned I was infertile. Mama held me when I missed my dog Olga who died when I was 18 after being our pet for 16 years. Olga was my friend longer than my ex-husband. Mama held me when I was seven and came home to the note from my father announcing he would not be back. If anyone should have broken down that day it was Mama but she hadn’t. She rubbed my back and stroked my hair with the declaration we would be okay. We were. For decades I spent my late mornings with her after getting off my nursing shift at the hospital.

I know the signs of depression. Mama never displayed any of them. What caused this? It had to be a mix of pain with the dementia. Had to be. Unless…

No, I won’t permit myself to think unless. The only demon in this was the dementia. The one which made mother a stranger some days. She was never mean. Before the demon she could be harsh occasionally but never after. She was sweet and rarely forgot who I was to her. She forgot my name sometimes but not my roles: her daughter, her care giver.

I rush past the… thing (I refuse to believe it is the remains of Mom) in the center of the room, dangling from the beam, a macabre piñata wearing mother’s best dress. The one she always said she would wear to her funeral. I assumed she told me so I would have the coroner outfit her in it, never thought she would dress herself for the day we knew would come. It wasn’t supposed to be here today, when I am so ill-prepared.

I stand as far away as I can from her and stretch for the book in the center of the queen-size mattress, Mama knew how to get my attention. She didn’t keep a journal that I know of but I don’t know where this ugly black spot came from. The book was handsome but tarnished by the circumstances. I do…did Mom’s shopping and I never purchased anything like this little black notebook. I hold the it in my hand as I right myself squarely on my feet, pinching the book between thumb and forefinger as though dead was contagious. I sit on the edge of the bed, almost atop the pillows along the headboard.

So many pillows. Mama loved to have plenty of pillows in case she decided to sit up reading on her phone. The introduction of book apps overjoyed her. Mama always was an avid reader but her eyes weakened as she aged and it was only because of her ability to enlarge fonts within the apps that she never had to give up her only true love, a love of well-told stories. She enjoyed dark fiction because they made reality sunnier

I turn the tablet over in my hands, noting there is nothing to foretell what is inside but there is a white slip of folded paper marking a specific point. It was obvious where she wanted me to look. I curiously and cautiously flip to the marked paged and the rectangle flutters to the floor.

Dearest Jo,

Call the police. I know nothing has prepared you to deal with my imminent death. You are an emotion-based problem solver. The feelings will wait. The fact you are assuredly sitting with my corpse, reading this, means you need a stern nudge. Call them, tell them what has transpired, then read this.:

Chills rove over my spine while following directions. It’s as though she wrote before the dementia. Mama was gentler than this. Her tone reminds me of the woman I grew up with than who she became. She was emotionless when packing up Dad’s belongings.

The dispatcher is calm, direct and kind. She tells me not to move anything. Obviously not the mysterious notebook.

I read on, “Good work Jo.” It’s like she’s with me. I recall the fluttering paper but don’t stand to pick it up. My legs are useless, all I can do is read mother’s teacherly scrawl left for me in this obviously placed book. I feel left out as I acknowledge how planned this is.

“I found out you switched my pills about a month ago. When the doctor suggested I was taking too much oxy based on the results of lab work. You switched it for the lighter stuff. The less addictive painkiller.”

I begin to tremble. I always thought Mama would go quietly one day while I was away. The oxy bottle spilled into the sink wasn’t oxy. It was just ibuprofen. I switched it when Mom refused to take it. I coerced her into one a day. I knew Mama would take the weaker painkiller without me. I just knew the oxy steadily disappeared while the ibuprofen barely did. Mama knew what I was doing but did she understand why? I read on to see if she alluded to understanding.

“Jo, slowly killing me with my medication is no different than intentionally overdosing me. I was able to taste the difference immediately and flushed most of the oxy down the toilet and replaced it with acetaminophen. I know this monster in my head is a burden for both of us. As long as you were with me, I was willing to wake up every morning to see the only person I’ve ever loved but I see from this… cowardly action you are getting desperate to banish the demon in my head. But can you live with yours?”.

You know I have a sizeable insurance policy which would have kept you well supported for the rest of your days. With my suicide that is no longer yours. Instead, I’ve written you the check I marked this page with. It is for $20,000. While that is nothing compared to the insurance policy, it is enough to hire a good lawyer. I have left a page in the back of this journal filled with the numbers of attorneys who will represent you.”

Why would I need a lawyer? My actions were not what killed her. I turned the page with fingers numbed by the tension building in my shoulders. I can hear sirens approaching from the center of town.

“Your actions are what made me see how much my anguish is paining you. I took my life because you could not live with who I’ve become or who you would become if you directly killed me. You may have tried to end my life before it gets harder. Your unspoken desperation gave me the strength to do as you needed me to.”

Love,

Mama.

I bend over to pick up the check with my stomach aching and slip it into my bra before the knock comes. When the light tap hits the door frame a voice calls out, “Jo Goodyear? This is the Troy police. Open up. Please.”

I glance at what remains of Mama. I don’t know whether to cry or scream. She’d known. Mama always knew.

I am at my lowest. The only way is up from here. I take one last look at the no longer centered notebook and close Mama’s door behind me.