The Cyclamen

It’s the end of my mother’s life. Or so we think it is. But we (my mother and I) have been thinking this for several years now. Although my mother does nothing but tell me she wishes that she were dead, she is, in fact, refusing to die, and I am caring for her…in my way. My way means visiting her weekly at her apartment in New York City. I arrive and she lets me in, usually about five minutes after I have rung the bell. Her apartment is a one bedroom but even crossing that small space with her walker takes several minutes. I hear her shuffling toward the door across the dirty rug (she refuses to let me vacuum), stopping every other step to rest and wheeze. She is chronically exhausted. She is depressed, angry and weak. She has always been depressed and angry (as well as brilliant, curious and creative) but the weakness started to set in around her 80th birthday and has been gaining strength for the last eight years. Mostly she sleeps. And reads the New York Times and watches Fox News, which I assure her is not doing her anxiety levels any good. But she's a fan of chaos and continues to watch it, faithfully relaying to me all the catastrophic news about the next pandemic (it’s coming!), the impending Civil War in the U.S. (it’s been brewing since the sixties!) and the imminent threat of World War Three (China and Russia and their nukes!) “How else will I know what is going on?” she asks me “if I don’t watch the news?”

“That's a very good question,” I tell her, and then I add that sometimes not knowing what’s going on can be nice. “I don’t watch it.”

“Well, I’m not an ostrich like you, hiding my head in the sand. I like to be informed. Now go get my mail.”

And so I do. When I get back to the apartment my mother is in her chair staring out the grimy window at the world going by outside. This chair is where she has spent most of the last five years, when not lying on the couch or resting in bed. She is out of breath. Her hands are ice cold and her feet are blue. It must be a circulation problem. Congestive heart failure most likely. “Is it painful?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “But I lose feeling in my legs sometimes.” She points and flexes her feet. “My hands too. And that's uncomfortable, but nothing too bad.” 

“I can take you to a doctor,” I offer, as I do every time I see her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.

“I could bring a doctor to see you here,” I press her.

“Will you just cut it out!” she snaps. So I cut it out, just like she told me to.

My mother has become a shut-in. A recluse. A phantom. Seeing no one. Talking to no one. Completely disengaged from her own life, my life, her grandchildren’s lives. It’s been over two years since she’s left her apartment and it’s been almost a decade since she's seen any of my children, who live a short car ride away from her apartment. If any of them knocked on her door she would not recognize them. “I can bring them in to see you,” I offer.

“I don’t feel well,” she insists.

“I can drive you up to my house,” I say.

“It’s too far,” she insists.

“Well we could FaceTime them,” I plead.

“No one wants to see me like this,” she assures me. And with that the subject of whether she will ever see my children again is closed.

This visit I didn't even try to cheer her up. I usually bring her a sugary treat or some fun show-and-tell to coax a smile out of her but this week I was very busy and needed to be in and out of her place quickly. I did the chores, got her groceries and in the act of trying to surreptitiously dust I took a quick look at the four plants that she has had on a table in her apartment for at least the past ten years. The table rests right next to where she sits all day. The plants were bone dry. Two of the four looked dead. Parched. Each just a pale stalk, like a stump of something once alive, in a clod of dry dirt. The fallen leaves, forlorn and desiccated,  surrounded what at some point must have been a stem.

“Mom, what the hell”? I scolded, pointing at the table. “Your plants are all dying.”

“I know,” she told me, looking more like a defiant child than an 88 year-old woman.

“Well why don’t you water them?” I asked, irritated. She sighed then. A sad, world-weary sigh. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back and went silent. This was a very dramatic move. A very effective move. Well played, I thought to myself, well played.

“It’s too much,” she said.

“It’s too much to water the plants?” I pestered her. “It would take a glass of water once a week to keep them alive. That’s too much for you? It’s not that difficult,” I told her, my voice rising.

“Well then you do it,” she barked.

“Mom, I’m traveling a lot for work. I can’t be here all the time. If you don’t water these plants they are going to die.”

“Then let them die,” she said, staring at me with those inscrutable icy blue eyes of hers. And then I realized the depth of her depression. A deep and paralyzing melancholy that has taken up residence on all the floors, the attic and the basement of her mind. It’s crippling her. My mother loves plants. I get my love of plants from her. I would never watch a plant die and in the past, neither would she. But that is exactly what she is doing.

“Bring me the cyclamen,” she commanded. How in the world anyone could recognize what was once a cyclamen in this apocalyptic houseplant wasteland was beyond me and I told her so. “That one,” she told me, pointing to the smallest of the bunch in a tone that let me know I am a houseplant idiot. The cyclamen was a tiny little thing. Just a stalk and roots spiking up out of a golf ball-sized chunk of earth. The dirt was so old and dry that it was no longer even brown; it was a dusty grey, almost white. The cyclamen itself looked like someone stuck a matchstick into a burned up charcoal briquet from some long ago and forgotten barbecue, certainly not a living thing.

The plant weighed nothing; its cheap, cracked, plastic pot was the size of small cup of coffee. I handed it to her and she pointed to something on the side of it. Something I had not seen before.

“Look.” She showed me the plant, and I could see that attached to the withered stalk was a thread of a stem so thin it looked like dental floss. Attached to that was one minuscule, almost invisible pale pink translucent flower. “It’s blooming,” she said flatly. “Remarkable.”

And it is remarkable…that something so close to death could gather the strength to bloom again. “I was watching it die and now it’s blooming,” my mother said, apparently impressed. It’s hard to impress her at this stage, so I was surprised, but also very irritated. I grabbed the plant from her and marched it over to the sink. I was furious. These plants are an arm’s length away from where she sits. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. She’ll probably die in that chair…of a heart attack if she has her way. And then, as she often reminds me, it will be up to me to come in and “clean up that mess.” The thought of which, for some perverse reason, makes her laugh.

I stood at the sink, full of rage at my mother and at this surreal situation, and I prayed to God to help me hold my tongue. Prayed to God to help me to find the strength and compassion I would need to keep this visit on an even keel. I got my blood pressure down to a reasonable trot and went back to where she sat. “Here,” I said, placing the drenched pot and its dry saucer next to her. “The plant has been watered. Can you remember to keep it watered?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and I knew deep down that she won’t ever water her plants again. I will.

We sat there then, in the gloom of her depression, staring at each other as if daring the other to break eye contact first. In a standoff. I felt like I was in a battle…dark versus light. The dark entrenched misery of her mental state battling the light of my gratitude at being able to be of service to her. Suddenly I had an insight and I laughed. “What?” my mother asked, almost aggressively.

“You are that cyclamen. That plant is just like you,” I told her.

“In what way?” she asked.

“Well, there it is, starved of care, starved of water, and yet it refuses to die. It just keeps going. It’s not giving up. With nothing at all, it bloomed. That’s like you. Seeing no one. Going nowhere. Barely eating and drinking. No companionship. Not even a pet. Existing on the bare minimum of what a human being needs.” I paused to let my little speech sink in. Then I sat down next to her and tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let me.

“Mom,” I told her softly, “you need to let me get someone in here to help. To do a thorough cleaning. To help you bathe. To do your shopping and laundry when I’m not available. Someone to take care of you.”

“What are you talking about?”She snapped at me. “You take care of me.” At that I excused myself, went into the bathroom, ran the water and bawled. Because I am taking care of her. But my care feels like the way she cares for that plant. The barest minimum to keep it alive. Like my mother watching the cyclamen, I’m watching her. Watching her shrivel up and lose her life force. Watching her wither and fade and disappear. And it’s painful. Sometimes it’s excruciating and I don’t think I can bear it. I can’t help but feel I’m not doing enough. But I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year if need be. Because if I don’t, who will water my mother’s plants? Who will care for them? Who will keep that poor cyclamen blooming?