I am sounding out titles for my memoir in the wake of a phone call reporting that my 91 year old mom
is misbehaving BIG TIME in her new "Level 2 Nursing Facility," aka a
nursing home. Two weeks ago and more this would have thrown me into a tailspin
of problem-solving and responsibility-assuming, which has been my life in
relation to my mom for 69 years.
But
recently I made a breakthrough in trying to sort out this most complex of
relationships any of us ever has, the one with Mom. I let go of trying to make
things better and to change my mom's very stubbornly planted bitter perspective
on you-name-it. Since, I have noticed some curious changes in me. I no longer
see the bus in downtown Montpelier with "Montreal" on the destination
screen as a possible escape route and imagine just getting on and going
wherever it goes. I no longer wake to an immediate dread about how my mom is
that moment or what demands will come my way that day. I actually feel that I
am the mistress of my time, my day, that I don't have to justify my choices.
Today I stayed in my bathrobe until 11:30 and still had one of my most fun days
ever just putzing around, finishing a Penelope Lively novel, weeding my birch
island, having lunch with a dear friend.
Amazing.
Everything has changed and yet it seems nothing has changed. I don't have to run away
with the circus anymore, just as Circus Smirkus comes to town. I am making
plans to go on a retreat in Ireland this fall, as a matter of choice rather
than a desperate attempt to survive. Mom is still in a nursing home and miserable. I still go to see her once or twice a week, down from five or six. But wait...I do have a more peaceful heart.
Don't
get me wrong. I love my mom. She is a Force of Nature and she has been tireless in trying
to be a good mother. Considering where she came from, she has overcome so much.
Her indomitable will, often the bane of my existence, saw that
my siblings and I went to college, an advantage she did not have. When we were young she taught us to present ourselves to the
world in ways that helped to assure our success. She introduced us to the public library as soon as we could read. She spent Monday nights and
Tuesdays during my early years ironing baskets -- plural -- of little dresses
and blouses and shirts, putting my sister's and my hair in bobby pins nightly,
and teaching us endless survival skills like ironing, sewing on
buttons, and measuring solid shortening, that my own otherwise very
accomplished daughter does not have.
She
brought us up with a sense of service and community, something that influenced
our choices of careers, which she did not have. She volunteered at school and
especially at church, a tireless campaigner for people less fortunate. As a
good friend has said, "She probably should have run a small country."
Indeed, there are a few countries in this world that could have used her, still
can.
She
brought us up in the church, which we all eventually rejected, at least for
some time. Our growing up years as the third generation in our family at St.
Stephen's Episcopal Church meant among other things that we knew who we were,
who we belonged to...and so did everyone else. That meant she would find out if
we ever got out of line, which was never, with the possible exception of my
little brother.
My mom
gave me a sense of color, of organization. She passed on her values of honesty
and loyalty and equity. She did not play with us much but we all remember the
summer we were consumed by pinochle and euchre and she was our fourth at the
table, between vacuuming and getting dinner ready, before Dad came home. And at
one time you could really card around with her. She had a sense of humor that ran to slightly off-color jokes and
when she was sour my dad could love her out of it with his. She hugged us and kissed us and I never doubted I was wanted and loved.
Now she
is angry and bitter. She is blind from macular dengeneration and virtually deaf
due to a series of insults going back to childhood and a mother who was doing
the best she knew how to do too. She can't walk. She is grieving the loss of the love of her
life, an earnest, playful, loving man she had for over 76 years, someone who
asked her to marry him on their first date at age 15. She just wants to be
loved and accepted...and young and physically able.
I can't
do much about her age or her abilities except promise her I will make sure she
gets the care she needs. And that is no small promise. But I can accept
her in all her unhappiness and anger and fear and sadness. Just accept her with love, without judgment. Take her Hershey's kisses, rub hand cream into her hands, hug her and kiss her,
brush her beautiful silver hair, and when I need to leave, say the Lord's
Prayer out loud with her. Finally, it seems like enough to me. I am so grateful she lived long enough for me to learn this lesson.
