Into the Depths

of Unconditional Love

This week it occurred to me that I have never written a poem that directly speaks to my Mother’s condition. Throughout my younger years, there was certainly poem after poem about my distress over the matter, all vague and tragic, loaded with self-pity and confusion. Most assumed they were about a boy; I don’t believe I wrote a single one about a boy. I suppose I felt I didn’t need to be specific because they weren’t for other people, so why describe and explain? I wrote these poetic laments in my youth to sort through my feelings, like a lamb bleating into an abyss, listening to the echo, trying to make sense of the tremendous thunder in it all. Subconsciously hoping that some greater power might hear my bleating and think, “Ah, poor thing. I’ll take it back!” And poof, I would have a future with my Mom again.

It is only now, as I work to publish a book of poetry, that I have begun to actively write poems meant for consumption by others—meant to come together and round out a world for a reader. My world.

As such, the vagary about her will no longer do. See, I didn’t feel the need to itemize the truth of what was happening when I was younger. When I discovered (through top-notch Harriet the Spy techniques, as it were) that my Mother was in the beginning stages of early-onset Alzheimer's. I was merely 14 when I was made aware of how this was affecting our home life. The enormity and gravity of the feelings that consumed me were what I presumed I needed to cope with. Not the reality.

                 Punahou Math Department 1985, Cathleen Sanders center

While seething with anger for my parents’ lack of communication on the matter, I seemed to inherit the avoidant tendency somewhat myself. Except I would talk about it, to some, just not art about it, and talking only helped so much as to confirm that I was the victim of some cruel cosmic joke. Counselors would dissuade me from suicidal ideation but not from resenting the world itself. Nor my family. Their empathy cast the shadow of a cheer squad’s pom poms. When what I really needed was a silhouette of possibility for the years we had left.

Alzheimer’s. The clinical term is oddly all-encompassing yet hardly explanatory; every instance is exceptionally unique in every detail that matters. Yes, eventually, everyone who has it forgets things. Everyone knows that. It’s said they’ll forget everything. However, it is less that they forget everything and more that everything about them is re-arranged. In this re-arrangement lies the brunt of the pain because it challenges what we think we know of unconditional love, and unconditional love has everything to do with our very corporeality.

There are all sorts of love and all levels of those sorts. A familial Mothers’ love comes with feeling known, and knowing someone, inexplicably well. There’s a faith that comes with that. A grounding that even surpasses distaste in one another; if such a relationship has soured. Familiarity orients us to a shared reality. Being able to read someone so well allows us the assurance that we are in alignment with the world around us.

Mothers are the first point of reference we get as we build our relationship with the universe. From there, everything starts connecting as we make sense of existence. A web of perceived reality forms, one that holds our experience together to create a fabric of life, one that suspends us in our story as the main character.

I’d gander that the phrase “unconditional love” typically calls to mind a love so profound that it carries no expectations. One would assume this is desirable, and many want it for themselves. To feel safe enough to be loved unconditionally. To feel safe enough to fail, fail again, fail significantly, and still be held in worthy regard.

The only type of unconditional love I have ever heard of, in a legitimate sense, refers to the bond between parent and child. With that sort of love roiling under the surface of reality, so much hangs upon the radical acceptance of all of its parts. You realize that your love won’t be truly challenged by failures or disappointment but by recognition. You see the threads that hold unconditional love in tandem with perceived reality begin to come apart and are called to rise above the ripping seams. To sew the fabric into something else entirely and to wear it with pride. For without pride, there is disillusionment, and disillusionment is the flower girl for a life of nihilism. Let not a meaningless existence walk down your aisle.

Sure, nothing mattering can feel like the right dose at the right time. To knock existence down some pegs offers a life with fewer expectations, less disappointment, less excitement, and surprise. It isn’t true, though– and the truth always has a way of rising to the surface with due force. Flailing in an unexpected flood of factuality is an awful way to experience the human condition. We are all here to experience being here. Taking responsibility for the paradox of unconditional love and dropping all willfulness that it isn’t a piece of cake is like moving into the houseboat of life and all that comes with it, rather than sipping on indignance through a used, soggy straw while wading in shallow waters until they overcome you.

Yes, it is not easy to navigate great seas. The alternative of standing near the shore feels quite doable, in comparison. But would you really rather fight for breath when the storms come? Or float upon them while getting to work lowering the sails?

                             Photography by Cathleen Sanders circa 2005

I spent a lot of my life thinking that the view of the stars from the beach was good enough. Basking in reckless passions fueled by an attempt to embody the nihilistic numbing of “be happy for this moment is your life.”

However, I am sure there is nothing quite as confounding as the view from the middle of the ocean. As egregious as it might be to get there.

I don’t know that one can, really. Find that place. Perhaps it is simply where one who strives for a fulfilling life should always set their compass towards. Where one accepts that they will drift, and possibly drown, and endeavors forward anyway. Radical acceptance is a daily practice– the key word being practice. My relations with the pains and pros of life & death/love & loss/passion & apathy don’t always get the highest marks. I am coming to find I oft use metaphor to cushion the sharpness of specificity, to package up extreme emotions rather than sitting with the uncomfortable truth that triggered them in the first place.

I aim to write a lot more about my Mother. Not about the sting of helplessly watching her joys turn into her fears but about the specifics that told me so. I sense that in seeking these morsels of my past, buried memories will come forth, and some holes in the bottom of my boat will make themselves known. In fact, I am noticing now how my toes are starting to prune. Thank goodness I’ve spent years practicing the art of patchwork on other wounds and am now ready for the big whale. (Not you, Ma! She hated when I nick-named her “Mamoo” and said it sounded like a whale!)

Ahem, perhaps this extended metaphor has gotten away from me / Or, perhaps you know exactly what I mean / Clearly, I have not achieved this perspective nor practice to a T…

The one about having taken serious note of the ways in which I cope, the ways that insulate me from the intensity of reality! The one about having the courage to do something about these observations. To find the place in art and expression where I can hold the whole of life, with all of its intensity. With all of its rearranging of beloved pieces and unpredictable shifts in recognition. With all of the challenges of unconditional love.

"Living with life is very hard. Mostly, we do our best to stifle life. To be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquilized or raging. Extremes have the same effect– they insulate us from the intensity of life. And extremes, whether of dullness or fury, successfully prevent feeling.”

– Jeanette Winterson in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal

(An incredible autobiography with a fantastic audiobook if you’re the listener type. The author reads it, and I highly recommend it to all.)

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Into the Depths

Because you were perfect
	I didn’t feel the call to memorialize you
Reserving my art for all my own imperfections

What a misdirection

to keep you on a pedestal
	You are a human
You suffer, you fail, you rose above that
Wind in your sails - always loving the moment

Waves rolling in, I watched you float
A smile peeking out from behind your book
How absurd a memory, but that was you

You on your back reading pulp in the waves
Laughing while pushing my doggy paddles away

I haven’t been so specific, because I don’t know what to say
about a woman whose life was so cruelly stolen away