1 October, 2024: Bathing Her For the First Time

set in Pristina, Kosovo

His mother, or Giyshi Kuleta, has already been seated under the shower. This is their bathroom, the second of three in their apartment complex. There is a sink, there is a shower with a curtain, and there is a washing machine. Giyshi Kuleta is completely naked, sitting on a stool under the shower head. Father wears a loose shirt which falls over his belly and shorts. His wife is in her bed-wear, her hair tied up and covered by a beige scarf. She picks up the shower spray and hands it to Father. All Father has to do is turn on the water and hose his mother in all the right places while controlling the heat of the water and its pressure. Afterwards he will have to help his wife lift her up, towel her body, and put her back, clothed and fresh, onto her wheelchair.

It is simple. His mother has lived with them since January, but he is showering her today for the first time. There’s no time like the first time. He’s going to do it right and make his mother proud. He grabs the spray and faces his mother’s back.

But Father holds the spray in his hand and stands still, touching neither the water adjuster nor his mother.

It’s not that the power is off. The power turns off every six hours, and when it does, they bathe her in the faint sunlight filtering in from the window rather than in artificial light.

It’s not that he is seeing his mother naked. His mother’s breasts are big and fat, her wrinkled belly covers most of her abdomen, and there are brown blots and pink bruises all over her taut white skin. She has the body of any woman of her generation not only from Kosovo but also any part of Southeastern Europe.

And yes, she vomits all over the place; she wears a diaper which has to be disposed. Even now she is pissing as she sits on the stool. There is a bit of a different sweat from the private parts of a woman, and Father is not used to experiencing that smell with the person who birthed and raised him. He has to smell his mother’s sweat, he has to touch her excrement and saliva.

But Father is a hospital doctor. He has been around dead bodies and dying bodies and overweight bodies and starving bodies. He survived the Kosovo War, and he sees suffering from malnourishment and poverty all around him in the hospital. To be a doctor is to be in constant awareness of the flesh and its limits.

His mother is simply another human being, like any other.

What affects Father is seeing how much Giyshi Kuleta’s back is slumped. Her eyes are closed. She is rocking back and forth. It looks like she is about to fall down. He tells Mother:

,, Do you see how you have put her?”

Mother raises her voice.

,, What are you saying? I have bathed her every day since the year began. She makes this face the entire day.”

Father inspects his mother while shaking his head.

,, She looks very weak. If I spray her, she will collapse.”

Mother clicks her tongue.

,, She bathes like this every day. You try and see.”

Father readies the spray, but his finger doesn’t press against the knob.

He puts the spray down and tries to change his mother’s body position.

Immediately Giyshi Kuleta notices she is being touched. She starts to whine like an angered puppy.

,, Don’t worry, my mother,” Father says. ,, It is just me, little old Mikra. I am your son. I am here.”

He tries to pull at her, but she barely budges. She starts to groan inconsolably. Her face appears pained, like she is experiencing some sort of inappropriate touch. Father curses to himself. Ever since Father was a younger man, he avoided sports. He didn’t have any muscle then, and he barely has any muscle now to shift his mother’s body. He changes his focus from her waist to her back and tries to straighten her.

But in doing so, he pulls a bit too strongly. Giyshi Kuleta has no control of her body, and gravity does all the work for her. She starts falling backwards, with no attempt to cushion herself. She falls on top of Father. Father falls downward and lands on his ass, straight on the tiles of the bathroom floor.

Mother rushes to his side.

,, Are you alright?” she shouts. ,,Why are you trying to move her? Did you not listen to what I said? She sits that way, and she is fine. You never listen to me. You think you are a big hotshot man. All of the fire, it goes to the top of your head. And you never listen. Now you are probably hurt.”

Mother pushes Giyshi Kuleta off of Father and adjusts her back onto her stool, while Father tries to lift himself up.

,, I am good, I am good,” Father repeats, but as his body straightens he feels a sharp pain around his knees. ,,What is this? Don’t tell me…I hope I have not injured them.”

,, What is it?” Mother shouts. ,,What is it?”

,,Wait,” Father says. He stands fully, leaning against the wall. He stretches his muscles. His ass hurts, but luckily he is well cushioned by the fat around his hips. He feels the cartilage around his knees and the muscle around his thighs. Everything aches. It is sharp and resounding but also going in waves. He thinks it will calm shortly.

In the meantime, he notices his wife sit Giyshi Kuleta back down onto the stool perfectly.

,, How did you do that?” Father asks.

,, I did what?”

,, You lifted her. It was so quick and easy.”

,, I have had to do this every day. I am used to it.”

,, It is amazing. You are quicker than some of the nurses who work at the hospital. You are stronger than me now.”

,, That’s impossible,” Mother says, but Father looks at the muscles around Mother’s arms. Her arms are thin but well defined. They aren’t nearly as flabby as they used to be.

Father doesn’t even want to look at his arms, but he knows how puffed out they are with fat.

Father slaps the water off of his hands. He takes some steps and notices his body is more or less fine. He has hurt himself but not that much. It’s time to get to showering his mother.

But he still doesn’t push the knob. That is because his mother is looking back at him. She’s confused and disoriented. It’s the look that patients who are lost in dementia often give the nurses. She’s not used to seeing her son bathe her, and it’s not like he’s her son at all. At this stage of mental decomposition, it’s important to have the same person do the same tasks so as to not confuse her. He might as well be a complete stranger. He wonders if bathing her is the right decision at all, given how well his wife does it, and how much his mother is used to her way of doing it.

Father says:

,, Mama, it is me, Mikra. I am your son. We used to pick figs off of the trees together. I would sit and chat with you as the dough of the burek puffed and the cheese inside of it melted. I was not at home during the war. I saw how all the bullets holed the walls of our home, and it made me cry. It wasn’t like I was safe in the hospital during that time, either. I also almost died. But I did it to send you money, and I sent you that money, and you are home with me now. Even I am home now. I’m not working anymore. I retired to help out. I’m at home, and it’s all for you. You should be happy, Mama. I sacrificed so much so that we could have this time together.”

Mother interjects to complain: ,, And yet you have not even started the shower.”

,, That is true,” Father says, feeling glad to be interrupted. In a way, these little tasks of bathing her, talking at her, taking her for her walks…they feel like tasks he can handle, they feel like busy work. It’s just that he never realised how much doing these sorts of chores discomforted him. He liked having the excuse of hospital work. It meant that when he came home, he could sit on his couch and watch the TV shows he liked, or catch up with the news in the paper, or chat and drink his coffee while his wife did all of the hard work.

He was the breadwinner, which meant that there was a logic in how the housework was separated, and he liked the way things were. What was wrong with taking it easy? He liked the taste of the kollpite his wife made as a snack and wanted to really enjoy the sour, yoghurty taste. He wanted to lie on his bed and sleep, for hours, uninterrupted, in a way he hadn’t done since he was a teen in the village.

He wanted to have a retired life that a doctor like him deserved, a life of rest. He was also an old person. He deserved his own sort of peace.

But it can’t ever be like that again. Father has retired to be at home to take care of his mother.

Father sees the hardened lines under his wife’s eyes. He really takes the time to look at them, not just casually glance at them. These are not the ones he knew all those years ago. The dark puff under her eyes is fully indented, giving an impression of truly lost sleep. They are the product of a sacrifice, the consequence of a decision to care for someone no matter how much it negatively affected her own health.

Father looks down, towards the wrinkles on his hands. Then he checks out the ones on his wife. Then he looks at his mother’s.

All three of them will continue to grow and age in the same way, no matter which decisions each of them makes.

Father straightens Giyshi Kuleta’s feet so that they are aligned against the line of the wall and standing properly on the slippery white tiles of the shower floor.

He picks up the shower handle. This time he doesn’t hesitate. He lets the water spray, quick and hard. The water slaps across the flaps of his mother’s skin. The mix of shower water, sweat, and liquid soap liquid against him and his shirt. He is drenched, as is his wife, but it doesn’t trouble them.

The easiest part of the bathe has begun, and now their minds focus on where to rub his mother, how to lather her, and which of the two partners should do which part of it.