“I’m living two timelines moving in different directions.” 

I sat up in bed and said that to my husband last night. I’ve been plagued by night terrors for years, waking up with Déjà vu, shouting about what felt like a horrible, unrelenting eternity. Ron was used to me yelling from dreamland, but he said this time, my voice was lucid and calm. He asked me about it over morning coffee. I tried my best to remember.

Just yesterday, I had a more probing conversation with my mom than I’d had since aging began changing her memory and brain. And that night, I felt the stream of time I lived in, from birth to death, with me just past the middle. I also felt this wasn’t the only stream: I was also in a timeline moving backward from death. I think it can best be understood by the questions “Will this matter on my deathbed?” “What’s my contribution in this life?” “What does my spirit say?” “What’s my purpose here?”

I think you have to be ‘there,’ to answer these questions: in the future, that is.

I’m empathizing with the chaos of my mom’s timeline too. She’s going backwards, or around in circles, or moving in a way I just can’t understand. The experience of watching her slip away is painful and annoying.

“Mom, we just figured this out 5 minutes ago”
“Mom, did you eat today?”
“Mom, it’s fine”
“Mom, I’m busy.”

I asked her if she knew her memory wasn’t good.  She said she did. I asked her if she knew when she couldn’t remember something. She couldn’t. Each moment, she was sure she was fine, remembering exactly as needed, carrying on.  The annoyance and anger from others let her know something was wrong. She teared up and looked like a scared child. I hugged her, I told her everything would be fine. I lied.

My memory is not okay either. I can tell by the annoyances and anger of folks around me. Just like my mom, I’m repeating.

My mom didn’t struggle to remember, she just didn’t. Her routines and systems pulled her through her day.  Stimulus: walk in kitchen, response: eat ice cream. Stimulus: see car, response: drive to pick up my brother. It did not register that these things were not a good idea, she just did them. My brother made sure she ate something other than ice cream every day. Her food benefits drained by a dozen or more gallons of ice cream each month. Each container was as if it were the first one in weeks: “a special treat!”

Until last night, I hadn’t experienced this forwards and backwards nature of my life. We have visions of the future we imagine we’ll live, and futures we fear. Whether we’ll get there —the us of this moment— we’ll never know. But we have experiences, and they make us feel something. Our memories do too. Streams of time can be felt.

Somewhere in time, there are things realized, things expected, and unpredictable moments (that’s the real stuff). Maybe that’s what my mom’s doing: experiencing a jumpy timeline, but she doesn’t know it, she’s just riding along inside…

I think, I hope, that my mom is living each moment anew, and that I can coach her into happiness.  I am trying to accept that can’t help her back to a linear “time marches on” kind of life. Sometimes she gets stuck in an anxious thought and this is awful.  That happened yesterday: she was scared she’d have to move because her rent went up and she’s poor. She’d “realize” this, we’d make a plan, she’d forget, and then she’d feel the shock as if she just heard about this problem for the first time. Repeat.

Often Mom remembers her childhood. She remembers her best friend Teddy Sullivan the most. Cowboys and Indians. Over and over. She also remembers why she thought something would be different than it is.  She remembers being mad at her mother. Her mother had Alzheimer’s too.

I may go down this road someday. I may be on it now. When I woke up last night, for the first time in my life, I felt calmer about my timelines: one forward from birth, one backwards from death. I realized I was at some odd nexus and maybe could embody the here and now without shouting. It’s okay, I guess, it’s okay.

I love you mom.