It’s a strange business listening to my mother go over the same things time-and-time again in her illness. To ask the same questions during the day and across the weeks. I wonder what her mind is seeking and why her mind cannot retain the answers any more. This is not the repetition of teaching the young, when rote teaches. This is a brain seeking for things it knows. Searching whether there is truth in what it knows, every hour, every week.
Are these people really dead? Is that person really old? Is it really so long ago when . . .?
The abstractions of a mind in crisis looking for continual affirmation not for the good things in life but of all the negative things. She remembers the good things quite well but the negative things hurt, they well up and to stem the pain maybe she asks if it is really true. And should I lie she knows the truth anyway so what does she accomplish?
Perhaps these questions well-up in her because of her illness, that the anxiety rips though her and she focusses upon those sad moments that fuel the anxiety instead of fighting the anxiety with thoughts of the good moments, which she hasn’t the mental strength to do.
These are not the questions of the mother I have known all my life, nor her voice.