If I'd Known Then

I really miss my mother. I've said it before, written it before, felt it for five years (and really for some time before that when she didn't seem to share a frame of reference with me anymore) and I know I'll say it again. And again. Because it keeps coming up in obscure little moments, small epiphanies - how shallow was our understanding of what it was like to be in the prison of her dwindling world.
Now that I take the same meds she did, I understand differently. Blood pressure meds? Made me dizzy. Made me ultra-sensitive to sudden noises. Made my feet and hands swell. I took off my toe ring (with the help of liquid detergent) so it wouldn't cut off circulation. Statins? Please! Hip pain. Joint pain. Sudden snaps in the ankles, descending a staircase. Nausea. Headaches. Dry mouth. The time comes when you just want to stop. Stop it all. Go live under a fern, drinking rain drops, eating tiny clusters of pollen.
My Mom was not a complainer. Stoic, she would send out little peeps, every now and then, so we came to know about this rash, that insomnia, continual constipation only in the gentlest, most dismissive of terms. She didn't want to be any bother. She wanted her 30 something doctor to like her so she never told him how hard it was becoming to find a reason to open her eyes in the morning.
My sister and I like to be helpful. "Try warm milk or mint tea in the evening," one of us would instruct. "Prune juice for breakfast would help."
Mom was nice to us about this folly. Seemed to take our sage advice under consideration. Never told us to shove it.
Last year, my sister had a sudden onset of back problems and asthma - nice little bundle of problems. For a number of months, nothing she tried seemed to help. About the time her morale hit subzero, she tried a brand new protocol, featuring injections of her own purified blood (I think I have this right) and now she's smiling, walking, talking, exercising again, able to sit at her potters' wheel for hours at a time (but mindful now of needing frequent breaks) so, Phew!
If I could call Mom, like I did every day at 4 p.m. my time, 7 p.m. hers, right after she got back from dinner, I'd ask her about these aches and pains, these memory glitches, that really odd stuff that happens in my head at 3 a.m., right after the first major hot flash, when scripts are running with words that don't belong together. At least we might commiserate.