Bright eyes, burning like fire
Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes --- sung by Art Garfunkel
This was one of my moms favorite songs. I can’t hear it without choking down tears. If you’ve watched the beautiful film, Watership Down, then you’ve heard it. It played in the 1970 version and in the Netflix remake. The story focuses on a warren of rabbits and after the fearless leader has seen that his rabbits are safe and secure for the next generation, he lays along the river bank, taking his last breath. The music begins to play and his soul lifts and romps through the green hills with the Black Rabbit --- guiding him home. *I am crying now.
My mom just loved the tune. Growing up my cousins would come into town around Christmas and we’d all go out to a big brunch at the Marriott. There was live music and my mom would always ask the musicians, “Bright Eyes? Do you know it? It goes like this….mmmm, mmm, mmm…mmm, mmmm, mmm.” Sadly, they rarely knew the song.
The lyrics are about leaving this earth. Is it a kind of dream? Floating out on the tide? Following the river of death downstream, Oh is it a dream?
Yet for me, this represents my moms dementia. How can her blue sparkly eyes have paled so much? Is she stuck in a fog? A dream? To slide from your family, your friends, your life is cruel. She’ll never be in her kitchen again cooking or puttering around the house filling vases with flowers. There are no calls on birthdays. No specially wrapped gifts that only she remembered. The warning signs were there several years before she moved into a memory care community and I’m riddled with guilt. Guilt that I should have demanded to go to doctors’ appointments, been more present when she first got tested or flown to her to be part of all the legal paperwork. It’s clear to look back and foggy staring forward.
I miss her. Only my mom complimented me and gave me confidence on my parenting, career and dreams. It wasn’t always a perfect relationship, but as the years ticked by and I had my children, we grew together in news ways.
I grieve for the lunches, the laughs, her yearly visits and all her motherly touches. I cry knowing she’s struggling, stuck in a strange in between, knowing something is wrong, but being too confused to understand.
I don’t want her to suffer. Or experience panic and fear. I want her to close her eyes, listening to the soft lapping waves of the river, smelling fragrant flowers and spring grasses, only to find herself walking side by side with the Black Rabbit.
Wandering over the hills unseen, Or is it a dream?