Happy Meals

 I’m staying at my mother’s house in Houston, Texas. Its not the house I grew up in, but where my father and she lived for 25+ years until his death in 2003.

A series of strokes have left my mother basically an Alzheimer’s patient, with only fleeting moments of recognition and awareness of who is with her. Her biggest nemesis right now is the dreaded oxygen tube, the two long prongs that deliver the much-needed air to her rapidly failing lungs irritating and annoying her nostrils to no end. She is constantly pulling it down out of her nose, and many times either a nurse, myself or one of my other visiting siblings will find her propped up on the bed, lips blue and eyes glazed over as if she is drunk.

Every time we find her this way she has invariably killed off more brain cells with the loss of oxygen to her brain. She allows me to feed her something, most often cake or other sweet meant to be eaten as a treat. Just getting her to eat something at all is a treat for all of us.

My brother discovered she will eat a McDonald’s Happy Meal, with either chicken nuggets or a hamburger, fries and a coke. Its comical to watch her, as she will sit with a honey coated nugget in her hand while asking me did my brother go to McDonalds yet. I tell her she to look at what she’s holding, and she’ll focus on the chicken between her fingers and say “Holy shit! A mcnugget! I must be magic!” Then she winks and pops it in her mouth, knowing that what she just said was crazy.  It’s a macabre moment and we all laugh, guiltily but fully.   Each moment is a gift now and we know it, taking nothing for granted.

Every night we have to line up the toys that come with her Happy Meals, across her tray table and facing her. She needs to say good night to them and wishes them all good luck. The drive home from the hospital is not far, but long enough for me to wonder about the future of her illness and where it will take her. For the moment she is childlike again, and wants to know if her mom has come yet to take her home.

I go to sleep in her bed, the bed of my childhood, and dream about when she was young and a different kind of happy.