My love is an Excel Spreadsheet - Robin Dake

I sat in the darkened room with the machines beeping and longed to love my mother better. This was her third ER visit in four weeks and the worst yet. Her skin looked gray, and she slept with her mouth slightly open. I stared at the numbers on the beeping machine, willing them to be higher or lower or steadier, as though my fierce gaze could fix all that was failing in her body. It felt like that was the only thing available to me at that moment, the only thing I could do since I couldn’t control anything else. I knew some daughters would take their mother’s hand, and talk to her even while she slept, but I couldn’t. Love is complex and it was only later that I understood that my love comes in a different form, that my love is an Excel spreadsheet.  

My mother and I were always wildly different people. She joked that I took over the house when I was two years old and started organizing everything from then on. I kept my toy horses on a shelf with their names on tiny pieces of paper underneath each one. In contrast, her bedroom had clothes and magazines spilling out of her walk-in closet, covering the ironing board that sat outside the door. I leaned toward jeans and hiking boots while she didn’t own a pair of sweatpants. She once was appalled when I couldn’t recognize a fish fork and I was equally appalled when she couldn’t understand that cotton socks could not be substituted for the high-tech version I used for extended hiking trips. And yet, as with mothers and daughters across the centuries, we found our way to each other with commonalities, specifically for us, our shared love of horses, dogs, and my two girls.  

When I was seven, my father gave her a gift of riding lessons and I begged to go along. It wasn’t long before I was the one spending most of the time in the saddle while she drove to lessons and shows across north Georgia. It took until I was a mother that I could truly see the expressions of love in those equine days, the hours she spent standing by a dusty ring, or holding the reins, or spending her money so I could seek my own glory. In my mind's eye, I can see her early on a show day pulling the clean saddle pad out of the dryer that she had remembered to launder in the wee hours of the morning. Even now, the memory of that ordinary moment feels like a hug. 

Once I grew up and had my own daughters, our time together was focused on their needs and activities. We four shopped for school clothes and prom dresses. We ate out and talked about them and the big and small dramas of their lives. I rolled my eyes a lot and she said, “Oh Robin,” just as much. We found a peaceful no man’s land and loved each other in our own subtle ways. 

The call that came on an ordinary Thursday was from a number I didn’t recognize. I don’t normally answer unknown numbers, but I suspect that my hesitation that day was also some kind of premonition that told me that when I answered the call, both of our lives were going to change. It was one of Mom’s friends who explained that a group of them were worried about her, that her behavior that day was strange, and the condition of her apartment alarmed them. 

In the next several weeks, the family gathered at her apartment, learned of her stroke diagnosis, and set about figuring out how we could care for her from afar. We found her a bit confused, but able to move around on her own and determined to continue her independent life. This made us uneasy, but we were not sure how to move forward. Sometimes, my sister-in-law, Jenn, and I would just look at each other and shrug our shoulders.  

Like her friends, we were also alarmed by what we found in the apartment. There were piles of unwashed clothes in nooks and crannies. Unopened bills and notices, some of them with red warnings splashed across the envelopes, covered the dining room table. In the kitchen, dishes were piled up in the sink, and cat food cans were on the countertop.  Even for my messy mother, this was unusual.  

So, we cleaned and organized. I tackled the paperwork. Jenn did the cleaning and together we created a spreadsheet with all her vital information, insurance coverage, bills owed, and medical team. We made a plan on how to care for her and installed cameras so we could see for ourselves how she was doing once we left. I got my calendar out to schedule doctors' appointments. We took away her car keys, explaining how the stroke nurse said she couldn’t drive for at least 6 months. She both appreciated and hated it all. We did too. 

Through all those trips to doctors, check-in calls, or moments of worry, my heart flailed against my chest, longing to hug her or hold her hand like I do with my own children. But the bars of family dynamics and ingrained patterns stopped me. The dances we had done my whole life of teasing and talking just enough felt inadequate and yet, I could not seem to leap over the barriers. And so, I updated the spreadsheet, paid the bills, arranged care, and once when a car warranty company was trying to exploit her, I defended her with such ferocity, it startled me.  

Like a classic car that stops working little by little, my mother’s body continued to fail steadily. She had more falls. She couldn’t keep track of time. She thought someone was in her apartment when it was just a video playing on a loop on her laptop. Painfully, delicately, we convinced her to move to a nursing facility. Jenn, better at the hand-holding kind of love, came down to watch over her while I found space in a nearby assisted living home and then organized a group of my friends to move her life’s possessions out of her apartment. Together, we helped her into her new life. I checked off the things on the to-do list, face and voice calm while inside, my inner child wept.  

Once we had professionals looking out for her, we relaxed a bit. The messages that flew between Jenn and me were less frequent, less frantic. I started including Mom in my regular small-town world, picking her up on Sundays for church, taking her to a hairdresser, and finding ordinary, fun activities she could do. One of the best tiny instances I had was taking her with her cat to our church’s pet blessing. She beamed while holding the cat carrier and reached to pet the dogs closest to her. For just one moment, I was able to let go of the over-protective daughter and just enjoy her happiness. 

But that reprieve was short-lived. In the Fall, her mobility declined even further, and the doctors' visits increased. Then just after Thanksgiving, the trips to the emergency room began. The facility staff would call me and send her ahead in an ambulance. More than once, when I walked into those cold, sterile rooms, she would say, “You didn't have to come be with me,” and I would answer, “Of course I do. I am not going to let you be alone.” 

I started keeping her insurance card and medication list in a small bag near my door, ready to grab it on the way out. I made sure every doctor and nurse knew her medical history and what was hurting her on that day. I kissed her head and told her I loved her, but I didn’t hold her hand or read to her or arrange her blankets like I thought all the good daughters would do.  

Finally, as the new year began, I checked off the last big thing on the checklist: I called hospice.  

In the weeks that followed, her mind and body declined achingly slow. She entered a realm of altered reality, seeing people and animals nearby that had once meant so much to her. She still knew me and my girls, smiling with love and recognition, even when she didn’t have words. I felt all I could do was show up. There was no more organizing or checklists. There was only sitting by her bed, letting her talk about the other world she now saw, and finding moments to look her in the eye and say, “I love you.” 

Always, I could hear a refrain of apologies in my head, though I wasn’t completely sure what I was apologizing for. I’m sorry you lost your dignity. I’m sorry for not being able to take away all your pain. I’m sorry my spreadsheets couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I couldn’t love you right. 

I was unconsciously waiting for that movie ending where all the barriers and subtleties would drop away, and we would speak our love honestly and eloquently. I would hold her hand and she would receive my love without looking away. Soft music would play in the background But life is not the movies and love is messy and unorganized. 

 She died quietly on a Tuesday and in the foggy days that followed, I had one image in my head. The last time I saw her, she was asleep. I touched her shoulder and said, “I’m here Mom.” She didn’t wake up, but she smiled the way she always smiled when she saw me. And somehow, that was enough.

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Robin is a mother, daughter, friend, writer, and photographer. She has spent her career working as a journalist or non-profit manager while writing essays and poems on the side. Her work has appeared in Breathing Poetry Anthology, Amaranth Journal, Snapdragon Journal, Amethyst Review, This I Believe radio program, and in Trailway News magazine She lives in N.E. Georgia with two hoodlum cats.