Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The Day My Mother's Head Exploded (Short Version)

Transcript for The Day My Mother?s Head Exploded
Produced by Hannah Palin

Nikki There?s something about that experience that was very freeing. Because it was just a typical Friday morning for me, you know, and all of the sudden by the end of the day, I was almost dead.
Narration Fifteen years ago my mother had a brain aneurysm when she was only forty-six years old. I?ve come to refer to it as the day my mother?s head exploded.
For those who don?t know, and I didn?t either, a brain aneurysm is a bulging spot on the wall of a brain artery, kind of like a thin balloon that can pop at the slightest provocation. When that happens fifty-percent of people die within minutes.
The mother I grew up with died that day and was replaced by an entirely different person who just happens to have the same memories and body and family and address as my dead mother.
That?s my mother and I singing together. My mother never used to sing. Now, she will erupt into song at the mere hint of an attentive audience.
A few years ago she branched out into composition and wrote a song about Wendy?s because she loves going there so much. She?ll look at my stepfather and start singing ?Wendy?s, Wendy?s, Wendy?s? and she won?t stop until she has a Frosty in one hand and a hamburger with mustard, no pickles, in the other.
Last year she got a tattoo above her left knee. A little red heart on a green stem. It?s the way she always signed her letters. She?ll show her tattoo to anyone who asks. She?ll even pull down her sweatpants so you can get a real good look at it.
She always wears a pair of Groucho Marx glasses when she picks me up from the airport. She?ll hand me my very own pair at the gate and then I?m obligated to wear the thick black frames with the plastic nose and the fuzzy little mustache attached all the way to baggage claim.
I tell myself my mother wasn?t always like this. My mother used to be very proper, very meticulous, very aware of social conventions?the ones that usually discourage people from wearing Groucho Marx glasses while singing ?Hey Good Lookin?? in the middle of an airport.
Nikki: I?m just a completely different person. I used to be very uptight all the time. Oh, I was a great worrier. I would worry about the grocery shopping and what I had to buy, or my schedule the next day and what I had to do and if I had to take a shower and what time I had to get up and I worried right up until the very day.
Narration: Last summer, my mother was visiting me in Seattle and it happened to be the anniversary of her aneurysm. After years of avoidance, we finally talked about ?it.?
Nikki: It was Friday the 20th of August and I woke up with a bad headache. And in the past I?d go to an aerobics class and my headache would go away and it was just like magic, it was great. And I went to the aerobics class ad I worked out a little bit and the headache just kept getting worse and worse. I was really overcome by this headache, you know, and somebody took it upon themselves to call 911. And I was laying on the couch and all these little men came in with a stretcher and rushed me off to St. Francis hospital in beacon. And that?s the last thing I remember for four months.
Narration When my mother?s head exploded, I was twenty-four years old, living in Chicago, an aspiring actor, which of course means I was working as a waitress. And on this particular morning, I was watching My Three Sons, just waking up, drinking coffee, when my stepfather called from upstate New York to let me know that my mother had had an aneurysm.
On this steamy summer day, all I could think was, ?I?m going to a funeral. You?re supposed to wear black clothes. Pack black clothes.?
I found the first flight I could to upstate New York and spent the next six hours trying to see my mother one last time before she died.
When I finally arrived by my mother?s bedside, my stepfather led me into the tiny room where my mother lay hooked up to every conceivable wire and monitor. I took her had just to let her know that I was finally there and she responded with a surprisingly tight squeeze. She knew her only child was there and her sprit wanted to let me know how happy she was but her fragile body just couldn?t handle it. Every monitor in the room went crazy. Alarm bells went off. The room became this living thing, hissing and beeping, consuming my mother?s life-blood. Nurses and doctors filled the room, my mother tightened her grip on my hand?
And then I fainted.
It turns out that was the second time my mother died and was revived, the first was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Eventually her condition stabilized. She was moved into Neurological Intensive Care. It was a large room staffed by two nurses working with three other patients, who came an went with regularity?stroke victims, head injuries, cerebral hemorrhages?while my mother stayed put until they could finally operate to repair her aneurysm sometime in October.
Nikki: I woke up for very selective parts of it, you know. Once I remember everybody being in a real fuss about it snowed on October 4th and they called it ?snow leaf.? I remember looking up out of the windows and I could see red leaves on the trees and a good-sized snow.
Hannah: There were huge periods of time when we didn?t know what you were doing,
Nikki: I was looking at leaves.
Narration: A parade of people came to visit. While she was in Neuro Intensive Care, we could only see her for fifteen minutes every three hours. We spent a lot of time in the cafeteria eating sinfully good French fries and drinking bad coffee.
I was in a real New Age phase at this point in my life. So I insisted on putting healing crystals under her pillow and playing tapes of ocean waves and massaging her feet to make sure the chi was flowing. I?d sit outside in the sunshine and meditate, trying to reach my mother on the astral plane, but the only message I ever received was that she was still deciding whether to stay or go.
In early November, my mother had been moved into a regular hospital room and she was able to sit up and talk a little bit and was conscious, although not exactly coherent.
One day I couldn?t help but ask where she thought her spirit had gone while the rest of her lay unconscious at the Westchester Medical Center. She told me she?d been in Vietnam.
Nikki: Well, I remember that I was a little old man in Vietnam and I grew vegetables. It had something to do with reincarnation, I think. I didn?t know if that was a previous life or that?s the life I?m going to or what but it was so far away from anything I know now. I know nothing about vegetables and I know nothing about Vietnam and in know nothing about being a little old man. But that?s what it was.
Hannah: Do you remember the rehab center?
Nikki: Oh yes. I hated that place. Just hated it. The nurses were real brusque and rude. I mean, the physical therapy staff were, were mean.
I?d get in my wheelchair and I?d come to the door of my room and I?d look down the hall and I couldn?t remember which way to go and I?d have to go all the way around looking for the room where the food was. And then once I got to the food it was all just terrible! Ever had a piece of steak that?s been mushed up in the blender so that it?s just mushy and runny? Oh!
Narration: I remember the rehab hospital, too. Everyone there seemed exhausted. They just wanted to go home. I used to hang out in the smoking lounge with stroke victims who just couldn?t kick the habit, with orderlies on break and, in particular, one woman who?d been in a house fire with burns over 85%of her body. It made me just want to go home, too.
Nikki: And one day, I was sitting in my wheelchair and a young man who was obviously a doctor walked by and he said, ?You don?t know who I am, do you? You don?t remember me.? And I looked at him and didn?t have any idea who he was and I said, ?No.? And he?s the fellow who did my surgery. It was a funny kind of sensation to meet this person that, you know, had done such intimate surgery on me that I had no idea who he was.
Narration: And that was one of the strangest effects of my mother?s experience in the hospital. She doesn?t remember most of it. Not Vivian, the lovely Neurological Intensive Care nurse who patiently explained my mother?s condition to us every day. She missed the daily forty-five minute commute down two-lane highways from their rented condo in Beacon to the hospital in White Plains. She doesn?t know that we tried to find someone to visit her every single day she was in the hospital. She doesn?t have any idea how my stepfather and I spent our evenings, eating my really bad cooking, watching TV and drinking a little too much so that we could forget, too.
When Christmas came around, my mother was still just the shell of a person. She could barely talk, she still had a feeding tube coming out of her stomach, she needed help going to the bathroom, she was using a walker?really she should not have been outside of a nursing facility.
Nikki: I had to learn to walk again. I had to learn to climb stairs. I had to learn to read again. But I had to learn to do everything all over again. Because I just had to start from scratch almost. It was a real weird sensation being forty-six years old and having to learn to walk again.
Narration: Over the months I had become my mother?I taught myself to cook because she?d been a gourmet. I kept the house immaculate because she always had. My father and I talked about what we?d done that day over a glass of wine or on really bad days, a martini, because that was his routine with my mother. I began to see for the first time that my stepfather was a really great husband. And I enjoyed his friendship a lot. But the better my mother got, the less my father needed me to fill that role so the more I became the cantankerous, argumentative stepdaughter again. It was just really time to go home.
In February my mother was released from the hospital. In March, my grandmother came to take over the care-giving duties and I returned to Chicago to pick up my life where I left off.
When I returned home, I found myself grieving and feeling really guilty about it. I mean, my mother was still alive. I was supposed to be happy. But I just kept feeling like she was gone forever.
I used to miss my mother so much I could barely breathe, especially early on. I wanted my pal, my confidante, my role model back. I tried to connect with the woman who?d taken her place, but it was just so hard.
In the aftermath of an explosion, I mean, there?s nothing and I?d forgotten that it takes a long time to rebuild, layer upon layer to make something new, to make something different.
I ordered myself to have patience, to wait it out. I was her daughter, she needed me. And then slowly, very slowly, this other person began to emerge.
Nikki: I used to be very perfectionist oriented. Now, if things are perfect, that?s nice, if they?re not so perfect, that?s okay. (Laughs)
Hannah: It?s all just okay.
Nikki: Yeah, yeah. Everything is okay. I love sex now; I wasn?t too crazy about it before. I don?t know what the difference is, but I?m just more open to that kind of thing. (Laughs suggestively) Hunh-hunh!
Nikki: They gave me an eye patch at the hospital, in the hospital because I had double vision after the aneurysm. The patch eliminated one of the visions, so that I could at least read and drive and walk.
Narration: Whenever my mother went out?to the grocery store or to the mall?little kids would stare at her and say, ?Mommy, it?s a pirate!? And my mother would stare back at them and just say, ?Boo!? They usually started crying.
Hannah; You should talk about Wendy?s.
Nikki: Wendy?s, Wendy?s, Wendy?s?
Hannah: Wendy?s, Wendy?s, Wendy?s.
Nikki: Oh, well, I just love Wendy?s. That?s one thing before my aneurysm. Never, ever would I have even set foot in a fast food restaurant. If a Wendy?s hamburger is in that part that you define as living, you better do it. And it is in that part that I define as living.
Narration: As the years have gone on, the memories of my old mom have faded more and more. I?ve really come to love this new woman, but in a completely different way. I?ve really come to love her outbursts of song and her rather brusque comments like ?Well, you are fat.?
Hannah: You also like to sing now.
Nikki: Oh yes. I love to sing.
Hannah: I don?t remember you signing before.
Nikki: No. After the accident I could (whispers) barely talk. I decided that singing would help me get my voice back. It made me feel good, too.
Somebody said, ?I?m so impressed that you know all the words to Goodbye My Coney Island Baby.? And I never thought about it, but it is kind of an obscure song to know all the words to.
Hannah: It?s completely weird! When you think about it, it?s really strange. For me, it?s kind of fun, but it?s also can be really embarrassing. (They laugh) To stand up in front of a group of family and friends and start singing Goodbye My Coney Island Baby it?s like?
Nikki: In front of family?!
Hannah: Yeah. I don?t know. I mean?
Nikki: Well, how do you think I felt at the Mayfield School standing up on the stage singing Goodbye My Coney Island Baby all by myself, when singing both parts is really a bitch!
Hannah: Did I leave you standing up there? Where was I? Was I being embarrassed?
Nikki; I don?t know.
Hannah: I sang with you.
Nikki: No you didn?t.
Hannah: Yes, uh-huh.
Nikki: Did you? Well, you came in late, then.
Hannah: Well, fine!
Narration: You know, you spend most of your life developing a persona that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy?the right clothes, attitude, outlook? and while it can be comfortable and secure it can also become a prison. When my mother?s head exploded she had a chance to start all over again. The slate was wiped clean. And for me, too, really. In those months, I became acutely aware of what was real, what was important.
Sitting at the hospital by my mother?s bedside?important.
Getting an audition for a telephone commercial?stupid.
My mother?s illness, like a death or an accident, was one of those moments when time stops, when normal disappears, when you marvel that everyone else in the world can still laugh and go to the movies and complain about the weather.
That?s an explosion.
In those moments, you can see life happen. It has clarity and meaning and purpose in the midst of its horror and pain.
But then those moments pass, and you?re consumed by the trivia of daily life once again. Sometimes, when I?m overwhelmed by the task of making my way through the world, I try to focus on the fact that the electric bill does not matter, the idiot driver glued to their cell phone, does not matter, the mind-numbing day job truly does not matter.
But welcoming the strange and the different?that matters. Seeing the wonder and the beauty?yep. Being open and available for my husband, my friends, my family, experiencing love and laughter as often as possible?that?s what matters.
Because it can all be taken away in one brilliant flash.
Hannah: Do you feel different than other people?
Nikki: I don?t know. I don?t know how other people feel. But I do know that I don?t worry about death at all. Not at all. Because I?ve kind of seen it and I?ve been there you know. And that?s very liberating.
Hannah: Do you have any memory of a near death experience?
Nikki: No. A lot of people have asked me that, but I didn?t?
Hannah: See the white light or anything like that?
Nikki: No.
Hannah: Go over on the other side?
Nikki: Well, not unless being a farmer or vegetable farmer in Vietnam is the other side. You know, that could be what heaven?s all about, being a vegetable farmer in Vietnam. (Laughs) Maybe that?s the whole thing.