Mom has been wrestling a lot in her dreams lately. She argues and fusses, mostly at her brother, Bean. That wasn’t his real name. I didn’t learn his real name, Prior, until I was an adult. I have only vague shadows of memories of my uncle.
I do remember him taking me for a walk back behind his house in the woods to pick muscadines. Every time I eat one now, I still think of him. There was also a huge spider web with a zigzag line. He picked me up so I could examine the beautiful spider in the web. I guess that’s why I’ve never been afraid of spiders!
With all the fussing she’s been doing at Bean in the nights, I thought I’d try to get her to remember in the daytime. I wondered if she really had such a cantankerous relationship with him. When I asked her, this is what she told me:
He and I did a lot of rumbling and rambling around. Those were the days. We were both young then. To begin with, we decided early on that we would always have a good time together. Those days were filled up with going to see people we’d known in the past and people who were good for us as young people. We really did try to do that because there were so many people that didn’t have a good example to follow. We had a good family and good examples.
We did a lot of … visiting. I was especially that kind of person. We had, I think, a good beginning in our relationship because we went out together. He would always walk with me and wanted to be the boss. He had to be the boss man. One of the things we did together was spend time looking at the flowers in bloom. That was something he enjoyed and something that I enjoyed. I think his very, very favorite flower was the gardenia. We had some in our yard.
I called him “Bean” because that was his most natural name. We tried to understand each other. I found out that what I liked, he liked. Sometimes we’d have misunderstandings because of the difference in personality. He was quiet. The things that inspired us mostly were things that we both liked the same. He belonged to different clubs than I did. There were more clubs in school then.
I think of him as a part of my family at one time. You continue to be family regardless of the situations in our lives. When we would see each other, we were always so glad to see each other. We continued to greet each other so when our children came along they would have that connection.
Lunch and therapy interrupted our reminiscing. Later in the day, I tried to get her to talk about him again. She couldn’t grasp what I was asking this time. When I asked her to talk about Bean, she didn’t know anyone named Bean. “What about your brother, Prior?” I asked. She didn’t know that much about him, she said.
This is the hardest part of caregiving for Mom now. What and who she knows diminishes as the day goes along. Dad has said it before and I’m just beginning to understand, but he says he alone carries their memories. I’m not certain that what she told me this morning is true. It could be. Many of her thoughts are based on a nugget of truth that gets embellished to make a story. Sometimes it’s difficult to find the truth.
I like the idea that Uncle Bean had to watch after her as they went visiting. It would make sense because she was one of the younger kids in the family. She most certainly wouldn’t be allowed to traipse off by herself. Dad remembers him as being very opinionated so he was surprised at her sweet memories.
I hope all our memories are as sweet.
