Coffee with Mom

by Mike Glenn

  Maybe I deserved the cussing she gave me. Maybe she cussed me out for good reasons. Nothing is more frustrating for a control freak than losing control, and Mom was losing control over every aspect of her life. I had control over her finances. I was making the decisions about her health care. I was choosing her doctors. I was agreeing to the treatment plan. I was even making her hair appointments. I bought her clothes and her adult diapers. There are things an adult son should never have to do for his mother, but I had to . . . and I did.

  She protested. She raged against me. “You’ve taken everything from me! I had a nice house. I was taking care of my life, and you tricked me into coming up here, and now, you won’t take me home. I don’t like it here, and I want my stuff back, you lying, no good (bunch of words I can’t print here).”

  For a while, I would try to explain. My mother and I had always been able to talk about things. Yes, we were both strong personalities. We both had our opinions, but we were usually able to come to some kind of compromise. Okay, most of the time we’d do it her way, and I’d get her to agree to a little different timing; but now, of course, I wasn’t talking to my mother. I was talking to the illness.

  Everything I said, everything I tried to explain to her, was turned into more evidence that I had conspired to take everything away from her. “What have I ever done to you,” she would ask, “that you would treat me this way? Did you have to steal everything? Did you have to take my home? Why would you do this to me? Your father and I gave you everything.”

  And they had. It took me years to finally understand how much my mom and dad had sacrificed to put me first through Samford University and then through Southern Seminary. I never had to worry about anything. I always had everything I needed—books, cars, clothes, and places to live.

  Now, I was being accused of the worst betrayal. My mom was doing a pretty good job of making me believe she was right. Maybe I was a lousy human being.

  Add to this the reality that Mom was scared. The other problem with the illness is it takes you a little bit at a time. Parts of your life are lost while other areas are untouched. Mom was aware enough that something was going wrong. Not only would she forget things, she was losing her ability to figure things out. Most of the time, when faced with a problem, Mom would be able to figure out a way to handle it. Now, she couldn’t. She would get lost in the details. Once she had one part figured out, she would hold that fact in one spot in her mind and work on the rest of the problem. She would get frustrated, and then, she would get angry.

  Not knowing what to do with her anger, she would yell at me. When yelling didn’t work, she would cuss. I mean, she gave me a good ol’ Southern dog cussin’. I have tried to imagine what someone would have thought if they had overheard our conversation. My mom cursing at me and me standing there like I’m watching a scene from The Exorcist. What demon has been unleashed on me?

  I guess it would have been more hurtful if it hadn’t been so funny. See, my mom didn’t know how to curse. She didn’t know how to put the words together. She would put the wrong words together, and what she was suggesting I do was physically impossible. Part of me wanted to correct her cursing grammar. Part of me wanted to say, “Excuse me, Mom, but those words don’t go together. If you want to say that, you have to use these words in this manner.”

  Really? How do you give your mom a grammar lesson in cursing? There are moments you just can’t match what you know to be true with the reality you’re facing. I know my mom didn’t curse. I know my mom would never say the things she was saying.

  But she was saying them. Someone who looked just like my mom was saying things to me my mom would never say. Of all the moments I experienced taking care of my mom, this was the most troubling. I could never find a way to align Mom’s language with the woman she was. I know it was the illness. I know she didn’t know what she was saying, but there are some days I can’t get that scene out of my head.

  My mom standing toe-to-toe with me calling me everything but a child of God.

  Yes, she was angry. She had lost everything. My dad was gone. She didn’t like where she was living. She didn’t like the food. She didn’t like me. She wanted to go home, and I wouldn’t let her. She had a dream about how her life would be. My dad and she would stay more and more at the lake house, and all the family would come to see them. Mom would cook, and Dad would call us around the table and tell stories.

  None of that was working out the way she planned, and she didn’t know why. Why wouldn’t anyone do what she told them? Why wouldn’t anyone listen? Could we not hear her? Could we hear her if she screamed? Would we pay attention to her if she cursed?

  She had lost control of her life. There were too many strangers in her business. She hated for anyone to be in her business. She had told us that. She told everyone that, but no one listened.

  Coffee with Mom: “What’s there to talk about? I want to go home. You won’t let me. I guess we’ll just sit here and drink coffee.”

  Would we listen if she screamed? Would we listen if she cursed?

  Everything was out of control.

  She was so angry.

  She was so mad she could curse.

  So, she did.

  And before we judge my mom too harshly, maybe if you and I were in the same situation, we’d curse too.

  Who am I kidding? I’m Barbara Glenn’s son. If I was going through what she went through, I’d curse too. I know I would. I’m too much like her.

  Chapter 13

  Mom Prays When She Plays

  Coffee with Mom: “After people heard me playing yesterday, they couldn’t believe it when I told them you had taken away my piano.”

  “I want to give my piano to Craig,” my mom announced to me one day over breakfast. She was still living in Huntsville, and I was driving down from Nashville every other weekend to see her and help her with the transitions after my dad had passed away. Mom still had rental property to tend to and other business to take care of. There were things she needed done around the house—like changing light bulbs and moving boxes in the house. We had to take care of Dad’s clothes and rearrange the house a little bit so his absence wouldn’t be so evident.

  Then, out of the blue on this particular morning, she made this announcement concerning her piano. She hadn’t moved to Nashville yet. She hadn’t agreed to move yet. We were still “talking” (translated: arguing) about it. She was adamant about not moving. No way. No how. She had lived in Huntsville for more than fifty years. All of her friends were in Huntsville. Besides, by the time she moved to Nashville, some big church somewhere would call, and I’d move away, leaving her in Nashville where she wouldn’t know anybody. (She threw this up to me several times. “How much longer are you going to be at that church anyway?” No matter how much I tried to explain the work I had ahead of me at Brentwood, I was always one Sunday from being called to another church.)

  While she wasn’t going to agree to move to Nashville yet, she was considering downsizing. Some of her friends had found some very “cute” condos, and they were very happy there. She wasn’t ready to move into a retirement center. She wasn’t going to give up her kitchen and have strangers cook her food.

  Downsizing would mean she would have to do something with her baby grand piano. Her beautiful baby grand piano—the one she played every day. She played in the morning. She played at night, and any time during the day she could slip away from her chores and meetings, she played her beautiful piano.

  And she played beautifully. She inherited her musical gifts from her mother who played and sang. Mom began taking music lessons when she was a child, and she never lost her love for the piano or songs of the faith. She would tell me of going to singing schools in the summer and attending shape-note singings at churches in the area.

  That never changed. Mom and Dad would invite friends over after church on Sunday nights, and aft
er everyone had brought leftovers to be shared, they would all migrate toward the piano. Mom would play, and everyone else would sing. And I mean everyone. You didn’t have to have any talent, just the willingness to make a joyful noise. I don’t remember many people who couldn’t sing, except me and Dad. Dad told people that he was the only man in the church who had been asked NOT to sing in the men’s choir.

  But Dad and I enjoyed the music, and Mom always brought the music with her. When she moved into Morning Pointe, she immediately found the grand piano. After a few weeks though, she insisted on having a piano in her apartment. She didn’t want to share the piano. Too many of the “other people” at the residence played. One resident, she told me, thought she owned the piano and was telling Mom not to play “her” piano.

  Of course, Mom played it anyway.

  Several years ago, we started a young adult worship experience called Kairos. The worship experience was attended by twenty-somethings who came from all over Nashville. Mom and Dad had attended previously, and the young adults knew my parents. Now that Mom lived here, she was becoming the mother of Kairos.

  As I mentioned at her funeral, if you stayed in my mom’s world for too long, she became your mother. The young adults were no exception. She became their mother too. Before I knew it, these young adults would be sitting around her table talking with her and asking her advice about relationships, dating, and their own parents. Mom would sit there as long as they would.

  She would play the piano for them as well. One night as we came to the close of worship, Michael Boggs, our worship leader, told the congregation, “Mike has told us about listening to his mother’s playing the piano all of his life, so we thought tonight we’d let Mrs. Barbara play us out.” And with that, he invited my mom up to the piano and asked her to start playing.

  “What do you want me to play?” she asked.

  “Just play,” Michael said. “We’ll catch you.”

  So, my mom started playing “Amazing Grace,” and within a few beats, the band had her key, and they had all joined in. The band surrounded her with drums, bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars. That night, we even had someone on the Hammond B-3 organ. The louder the band got, the louder Mom played. The louder Mom played, the louder the band got. When they kicked in, Mom got a little boost from the band and began to play as if she was afraid she’d never get to play again. Listening to my mom play with Nashville-quality musicians was a moment I’ll never forget.

  On Tuesday mornings, the Nurture Team, one of our women’s pastoral care teams, meets to write cards, pray together, and fix flower arrangements for their upcoming visits. My mom loved being part of this ministry. On these mornings, I would pick her up on my way into the office so she could attend their meeting. We’d usually get to the office about thirty minutes before the Nurture Team started. So, if we got there early, I would ask if she wanted to play the piano. She always said yes.

  I’d take her into the sanctuary or the chapel to one of our grand pianos, and she would sit down to play. She played totally by memory and always by ear. She could read music. She just didn’t do it very often. She told me she needed a large print hymnal, and I bought her one. She never used it. I would put it up on the stand, open the hymnal, and press the book flat so it would stay. Then, she would play. The song she played may or may not be the song the hymnal was opened to. She would play for about thirty minutes, and in that time, she hit on pieces of every hymn she knew. “Rock of Ages” would blend into “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” “Silent Night” would lead into “Just as I Am” . . . some of the transitions were, well, interesting. Others were brilliant.

  I also noticed something else. Our staff began to notice when my mom would play. Whenever I would go get her to take her to Nurture Team, I would notice several of the staff members sitting quietly in the sanctuary listening to Mom play. They wouldn’t say anything. They would just sit quietly, listen, and when she left, they would wave to her and go back to their work.

  Once, Jaclyn, my administrative assistant, went to get my mom in the chapel, and she didn’t come back for a long time. When she finally did come back, I asked her if everything was okay. Jaclyn said yes, everything was fine. They had just been singing. Singing? My mom and her? Yep, she said. They sang every song in the hymn book, and when they finished that, they sang Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.

  Coffee with Mom: “When I play, I play the old songs. They say something. These new songs don’t say anything.”

  My mother told Jaclyn not to tell me they had been playing country music in the chapel.

  But there was something about the way my mom played the piano. The music made you want to sit down and listen. Whatever else you were doing could wait. You just wanted to hear her finish the song. Somehow, the music brought a little peace to your life.

  It was then I began noticing something about Mom herself when she played. Mom was praying. The music wasn’t just music, and the verses weren’t just verses or pretty words that rhymed. These were the psalms of her life. These were the songs that had comforted her as a little girl. They were the songs she had sung to celebrate her faith. She sang them to remember her mother who died when she was twelve. She sang them to remember her friends who had played and sang with her across the years—Buster and Addie, Bill and Elizabeth, Charles and Mary—all who had stood around my mom as she played the piano and they sang. She played to remember when she and my dad were young marrieds, and me and my brother were little boys.

  The illness had taken a lot from Mom, but it hadn’t taken her music. I don’t know if she could have learned a new hymn, but she never forgot the old ones she knew. These were the words she wanted to say to Jesus. These were the feelings she wanted to express to Him in prayer. When she couldn’t find the words, she would find the music.

  She was lost. Not the kind of lost that means you’re separated from Christ, but the kind of lost where you can’t get your bearings. She didn’t sing about being separated from Christ by sin, but by the struggle of life itself. The darkness wasn’t the darkness of evil, but the darkness of the light slowly going out. She knew she wasn’t far from home, but she just couldn’t find her way. So, she sang as if she was sure that if she sang long enough, Jesus would find her, and she wouldn’t be lost anymore.

  Pass me not, O gentle Savior,

  Hear my humble cry;

  While on others Thou art calling,

  Do not pass me by.

  Savior, Savior, Hear my humble cry;

  While on others Thou art calling,

  Do not pass me by.

  I had heard her play this song a million times. We sang it at the end of almost every service at Huntsville Park Baptist Church. This was the song we sang during the invitation while we waited on those who wanted to respond to Christ. This was the song imploring our friends to come and know Christ. I know this song by heart.

  But I had never heard it like this.

  This song takes on a different meaning when the person playing is lost in the fog and isn’t a sinner, but a saint held captive by Alzheimer’s and dementia. There she was sitting at the piano that wasn’t hers, living in a place she didn’t want to live, and trapped in a life she didn’t want to live.

  Dad was gone. Most of her friends were gone. Her memories were slipping away. Names were lost and wouldn’t come back. Friends she loved were no longer part of her life. Sometimes, words were hard to find.

  But she could find the music. These old hymns said what she could no longer say. “Pass me not, O gentle Savior . . .”

  I’ll never sing it the same way again.

  Jesus told us not to worry when we pray if words are hard to find. The same Spirit that searches the deep things of God will search our own hearts and find our prayers. What the Spirit found for Mom was music. When Mom prayed, she played the old hymns.

  Coffee with Mom: “Do you know what
song they want me to play around here? ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ We’re like a bunch of kids.”

  The music that had saved her when she was a little girl in south Mississippi; the music that saved her when her mother died of breast cancer; the songs she sang when her own father died years later; and the music that carried her through the early struggles of her newly married life trying to make ends meet on the salary of a first-class airman—that same music, those same hymns were saving her life now.

  Alzheimer’s had taken almost everything from her, but it hadn’t taken her music. As long as she had her music, she’d be fine. She could play her prayers. She could sing her joys and grief. She would hum her faith and play out her joys.

  As long as she had her music, she’d be fine. She could always find Jesus if she had her music.

  Chapter 14

  I Can’t Be Dad

  Coffee with Mom: “Your daddy loved Easter. Since he’s been gone, I’ve been trying to figure out, ‘Is it Easter every day in heaven?’”

  I saw her disappointment as I walked across the parking lot. She was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of Morning Pointe, shading her eyes as I walked over to her. When I got close enough, she dropped her hand and let out a loud sigh.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Not really. When I saw you walking across the parking lot, I thought for a minute you were your dad. As you got closer, I realized it wasn’t him. It was just you.”

  I think I disappointed my mother every day I showed up and I wasn’t my dad.

  My mom and dad had one of the great romances of the twentieth century. Both had their challenges growing up. My father grew up on a farm that was doing okay until my grandfather died when Dad was nine years old. There were two sets of children. John Robert, my grandfather, had been married before and had several children that were twenty years older than my dad. My dad was born in the second group, the next to the youngest boy.