Ascending Absolution

This story discusses topics of dementia and death.

It started with her forgetting names for things and places. Although it was rare, early on-set dementia affected people as early as forty. Forty-three in my mom’s case. The day she told me about her illness, I decided it was my purpose to learn as much as possible about her. It was important to me to hear about her childhood, her dreams, her fears, her loves, her heartbreaks, and her passions while I still had the chance. The duty and drive to document the life of the person I loved most was not only to keep her memory alive when the time inevitably came, but to honor the whole of who she is and to not leave one question unanswered. I was prepared to write down cooking recipes and the names of long-lost friends, but what I didn’t expect was to uncover secrets about my mother that would change the way I viewed her forever.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has been homebound, afraid of what might happen if she ventured more than two blocks from our front gate. Once when I was ten, she allowed me to go to my first sleepover. She assumed we’d be painting our nails and watching movies, which we did do. But when my friend asked if I wanted a turn on her push scooter, I of course said yes. Being the adventurous and reckless kid I was, I sped off, knowing I’d never get the chance to take off like that under the protective eye of my mom. One rock on the pavement and a speed down the hill later, I found myself tumbling over the handlebars and landing on a now-fractured wrist. I spent the next six weeks in a cast listening to my distressed mom repeatedly apologize, saying, “I’m so sorry, Carla” over and over. She blamed herself, and while she did not punish me or forbid me to have fun, she did keep a close eye on me and reminded me not to do anything too dangerous. She knew what kind of kid I was, and while she would never hinder my spirit for adventure, she was very careful about not allowing me to do anything far from her definition of safe.

Even though I was now twenty, my mom was still very protective of me. Because college was online, it only made sense to stay home. Though Mom learned to accept that I would be having my own life, leaving her entirely was not something either of us were ready to do. We both knew we would one day be apart, though we never imagined it would be like this. But for now, we were just mother and daughter sitting on the couch talking about childhood dogs, my grandfather’s farm where she grew up, the first meal my grandmother taught her to make, and first loves. That’s when she started talking about my dad.

 I knew we lost my dad shortly after I was born. He was traveling home from work one evening when some ice on the road made him lose control. I always assumed that was the reason she was so protective and afraid. I didn’t blame her. Although I never met him, I knew my dad was the love of her life and that she saw a lot of him in me. She would always tell me that I got my adventurous spirit from him.

She went on about them having met in college. I knew of this, but what I didn’t know was the story of how they met. “My best friend was dating the president of the climbing club, Ron.” Mom began. She was talking about Uncle Ron, my late father’s best friend who was given the title of “uncle” when I was born. But I had never heard of mom’s college best friend. They must not have stayed as close as my dad and Uncle Ron. “That’s how I met your dad. She dragged me to one of their meetings in the gym. There, I saw two things that took my breath away. The first was the rock wall that reached the ceiling and beyond, the second was Carlisle, your dad.” She told me how he slowly introduced her to rock climbing, and that she fell in love with both the sport and his adventurous, charismatic personality. They would go on to conquer climbs together all over Wyoming.

I was shocked. My mother, who wouldn’t dare venture down the street to the playground with me (my Aunt Marley would always take me) used to scale the walls of monstrous mountainsides?

Every day, my mom and I would sit down together and talk as I wrote down the things she shared. I cherished these moments with her and only wished they could last a little longer. As months turned into years of progression of her disease, she became more forgetful. She would repeat stories, but I still listened as eagerly as I had the first time.

As my mom worsened, my Aunt Marley moved in with us to care for her full-time. Her work-from-home website building job made doing so a bit easier. Watching my mom and aunt interact always made me wish I had siblings. They were close, and my aunt never made my mom feel guilty about her fears but would always reassure and validate her. Now with her illness, my aunt's expert knowledge of my mom was a blessing. She played all her favorite songs from their teens, and they would sing and dance together. It was beautiful to witness. My aunt admired what I was doing, and when my mom’s memory failed her during our talks, she helped fill the gaps.

One day, Aunt Marley looked at me with misty eyes and said, “you’re just like her, you know?” I asked what she meant. “Writing. She used to keep a journal, mostly documenting her climbing trips with your dad.”

 “Really?” I asked.

 “Mhm! She had notebooks full of stories. But after we lost your dad and she stopped climbing, the writing stopped too. But I think she kept the notebooks with your dad’s things.”

“All of Dad’s things are in the attic, but I’ve never seen any books.” I told my aunt.

“Ah, well, maybe she got rid of them, but if I know your mother, which I think I am pretty well-versed in her thinking, she would never part with those. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

And so it began, the search for a collection of memories that would help me further understand my mom and dad’s life together. I know mom wouldn’t appreciate my snooping, but she was used to my exploratory antics, and I was persistent with them as much now as when I was a child. I just had to know where to look.

I started in her bedroom. I looked in her chest of drawers, under her clothing. I found nothing. Not even a scrap of notebook paper. The kitchen was pristine, mom wouldn’t have kept anything in there that didn’t belong. I checked the garage and of course the attic. However, I knew the attic like the back of my hand from years of playing up there as a kid. Nothing had changed since. I was ready to give up, assuming my mom had gotten rid of the books, that maybe they were too much for her to keep around. But I wanted so badly to find what I was searching for. So, I decided to look one last place.

My mom kept a few articles of my dad’s clothing in her closet. Some of his favorite sweaters and button-downs that she didn’t dare move to the attic or sell. I opened the accordion style door of her closet, and just as I had predicted, it looked clean and clear of any books. Dresses and jackets hung, and shoes lined the top shelf. I saw nothing on the pink floral runner that lined the floor. Still, I searched behind shoes and clothing, thinking it was in vain. To reach the back corners of the closet floor, I had to get on my hands and knees and duck under the hanging clothes. That’s when I felt something beneath my knee, underneath the runner. Something that stuck up just above the wooden flooring. I moved the rug out of the way, and there were two metal hinges and what looked like a small trap door with divots in the front for fingers to fit and flip it open.

I hesitated. How had I never noticed this before? This was one of my favorite hiding places during hide-and-seek as a child. In fact, I had to stop hiding here because it became predictable.

I carefully slipped my fingers into the notches of the wooden door and lifted. The light from the bedroom illuminated the top of a staircase big enough for a single person to creep down. I had to know what was down there. I grabbed hold of the rail that lined the staircase and made my way down the narrow passage.

Standing at the bottom of the steps, I flipped a light switch perched on the side of a support beam. On flickered string lights that precariously hung from the ceiling. My mom must have hung these as they were so precisely placed that it looked like a wedding venue. The lights brightened illuminating the cellar, and that’s when I saw them. Bookshelves stacked with tattered notebooks that lined the walls of this hidden room. A rug sat in the center topped with a sofa and sprinkled with side tables and lamps.

This was not an ordinary cellar. This was a personal library.

I ran my fingers across the spines of the notebooks. They were all labeled by date and showed signs of being worn either from having been out in the elements or from being read too many times. I couldn’t believe how many there were. I had found them. My mom’s archives of her life with my dad.

I carried some of the notebooks upstairs to show my aunt. She was just as shocked about the cellar library as I was. We concluded that my mom must have visited down there on her own when she was missing my dad most or to relive the days when she was free and unafraid. Either way, there was a reason she didn’t share this part of herself with me. Maybe she was afraid I’d view her as weak since all I had ever known was her when she feared the world. Of course, I always knew she was more than that.

I decided if reading these was something she did when she was well, that now more than ever, she might need to recount some of her happiest memories. So, I started reading her the stories of long hikes with my dad, the grueling days on the rock together taking turns leading and belaying, and the pure serenity that looking over treetops brought them. I read to her the story of my dad proposing from atop a mountain, shouting. I even read about the time they got lost on their way back to camp after skinny dipping in the river. She scoffed at that one, and we both laughed. It gave me a feeling of peace to see my mom light up like this. Sometimes, she thought the stories were about someone else. Other times, she could recall in detail how it felt to reach the peak of a climb and stand above the world with my dad. Some of the stories even included Uncle Ron as he would join on these trips from time to time.

One day, she brought up a name I hadn’t heard before, “Samantha”. She started inserting Samantha into her memories, but nowhere on those pages about my mom, dad, and even Uncle Ron was a Samantha mentioned. I thought maybe she was confusing Uncle Ron’s girlfriend Sarah’s name, but Sarah was not on the pages either and I did not take her for much of an outdoors person. She said she and Samantha would spend hours on one route and that those were the hardest but most rewarding days. Soon, my dad and Uncle Ron were not mentioned, and I assumed she simply replaced them with a memory of someone she once knew. But I got curious.

I revisited the library in the cellar in search of stories about Samantha, but none of the books I pulled from the shelves mentioned her. I grew more convinced it was a symptom of failed memory. Glancing over the books organized by date, I noticed the final book on the last shelf was dated after I was born. I thought this was weird since I assumed my mom stopped climbing after my dad’s death. As I flipped through the pages, the memories my mom had of Samantha proved more than just mistakes.

I read the earliest entry.

 “I think it’s time to do what I know Carlisle wanted and keep climbing. I will be taking his ashes with me and spreading them from atop the rocks we climbed together. I haven’t dared to think of climbing again, especially without him, until now. I have found strength in caring for my daughter, Carla, and it is time. I’m going to let Marley watch her while I go, but she doesn’t know I am climbing. I need this part of my healing to be that, just mine. But I cannot go alone.

I asked Ron to join, but an injury has kept him from climbing. He knew how important this was to me and Carlisle, and he didn’t ask me to wait. I am going to reach out to my college best friend Samantha. I know she still climbs, and I know she is good at it. I haven’t seen her since college, but I know we will be just as we once were. It will be good to see her in these trying times and have her support in pacing myself back to peace.”

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. There were countless stories about Samantha and my mom’s adventures on some of mom and dad’s favorite routes in Wyoming. She spread a bit of my dad’s ashes at the peak of each climb. I admired the way she kept going, honoring my dad and herself in this way. One of the last entries spoke about their plans and prep to climb to the spot my dad proposed and spread the last of his ashes. After that, the pages went blank, no more description of the atmosphere or details of the climbing process. Just wordless pages. I kept flipping wondering if my mom had forgotten to write or lost her place, but from what I had seen so far, my mom was just as orderly with writing as she was with housekeeping. Then I reached the final page. Words were written more neatly than those from out in the wilderness, and the pages were cleaner. Something was different.

I held my breath and read on.

“This is my last entry. I thought it was important to write this down just as I have everything else, but then I am done. Done with climbing, done with writing.

Samantha and I began our final route. I was belaying at the bottom, and she was leading. We were going to trade out after she came back down so that I could spread the last of his ashes. She was about fifty feet up the climb when, while clipping onto the next bolt, the rock facing crumbled. I watched her fall as I stopped the rope from feeding through the belay system and braced myself to be lifted off my feet. I stopped her, but only for a moment. Large rocks showered down and smashed into me, knocking me out. I woke up on the ground next to Samantha. I crawled over to her mangled body, I tried waking her, but she was gone.

Rescue came, and though no one blamed me, I blamed myself. I still blame myself, and I will forever blame myself for not preventing this, for not protecting her. She trusted me, she depended on me, and I let her fall.

It isn’t so much that it could have been me, taking me from my daughter. It is the wondering. Who would protect her from tragedies like this? I won’t be able to live with myself if I let anything happen again, especially to her. I can’t, I won’t”.

Tear drops wet my mom’s words as I finished reading. I suddenly understood her. Why she was so protective of me growing up. Why she wasn’t just afraid of the world, she was afraid of me losing her, of not being able to protect me from harm. She felt responsible for all the bad things she witnessed, and she carried that on her shoulders my entire life.

But the thing was, it wasn’t her fault, it never was. Sometimes accidents happen completely out of anyone’s control, even hers, just like my dad’s car crash and just like Samantha’s fall. And although I may not be able to reassure her of that now, I can help her live the rest of her life without fear.

I kept reading my mom’s stories to her. I took her to parks and on walking trails and picnics. We went out in nature as much as her illness would allow. On one of our trips out together, we scattered the last of my dad’s ashes in Yellowstone. I wanted to let her enjoy the things she loved most while she could. Nature, the outdoors. And although she couldn’t take care of me the way she always had; I could take care of her the way she deserved.