Mom & Me Five Archive

    If I thought about it I could probably list legitimate reasons, but they all come under the heading of "Not Being on the Internet Much". Somehow, though, I've been managing to keep busy enough that I also haven't been able to catch up with all the reading I began. Three books will be headed back to the library, shortly, only lightly cracked. I'll check them out later when life settles down.
    The monsoon is here in earnest. I'm loving it; the thick air, the daily rain, the fragile light...my mother is not, but I'm keeping her bedroom and bathroom warm and dry, which helps. Mom, though, despite her distaste for this kind of weather, is so excited about the upcoming birthday visits that, although she has been steadily scoffing at my continued attempts to ramp up her moving (which remain only fitfully successful), she is, of her own accord, arising earlier (often before noon), remaining up until well past midnight, moving well (when she moves), looking good and in excellent humor. As The Days of Visiting approach she's also spending less and less time in The Dead Zone, which I find interesting.
    A few nights ago, I asked her if she considered, when she was much younger, that she would live to see 90.
    "I don't think I ever thought about it," she said, "I think I just took it for granted that I would, since most of my relatives lived to a ripe old age."
    "So," I teased, "how to do you feel about it, now?"
    "I'm ready for the next 90," she said!
    Later that evening, I couldn't help but reflect that my father believed he would not outlive the age his mother was when she died. A few months ago my oldest sister and I noticed that he did, in fact, die at exactly the age his mother was when she died. Maybe, I mused, barring unforseen disaster, we tend to live as long as we think we're going to live. Less than 24 hours later I chanced upon an article mentioning that Laura Nyro died at the same age as her mother (49) of the same cause (ovarian cancer).

    I'm here, though, to another purpose: Something I realized yesterday resulting from a visit to my barber for a trim. One of the reasons I so enjoy my visits with this woman is that she is a sibling whose father was cared for by one of her sisters-in-law. Although his life was tended in another state, she was extremely active in keeping up with her dad, spotting her sister-in-law and rallying other relatives to her dad's and his daughter-in-law's side. Her perspective is an unusual one and she regularly startles me with her insight as we talk about her and my experiences. The realization my visit provoked yesterday, though, was implicit rather than voiced and hit me a few hours after I left her chair.
    Can't really tell you how I came to understand what I am about to state, but here it is: I finally realized why being thanked by my siblings for "taking care of 'our' mother" makes me uneasy: I'm not actually taking care of "their" mother, I'm taking care of mine. Each child develops a unique relationship with each of her/his parents. That relationship dictates that the parent becomes a different person for each child. While, technically, the life I'm tending is the same as that which has generated the relationship that each of my sisters has with my mother, I am the companion of the person who is my mother; not my older sister's mother, not my next youngest sister's mother and not my youngest sister's mother. Those mothers, those relationships, can only be tended by the participants, none of whom are me. This isn't new information for me. Knowing that our relationships split each of us into a host of people is something I understood early on, particularly through knowing my father, whose difficulties with life made this easy for me to see. Early in adulthood I had to come to grips with the realization that I was incapable of, for instance, hating my father on behalf of some of my sisters, who surely had (and may still have) reason to hate him. It seems, though, that I forgot to apply this to my mother.
    I'm thinking, now, that, as my mother and I continue our journey, if I am doing anything at all for my sisters (and I consider that this remains debatable), it is this: I am keeping alive whatever possibilities each believes exist in the relationship between each of them and the woman each identifies as her mother. Nothing more, nothing less. I can live with this. I can even accept gratitude for this. I am relieved.

    Yet more barber shop banter: While I was having my hair cut, the man queued after me dropped in on my barber's and my conversation. He runs a series of therapy camps for men and women (separately), in which he facilitates group sessions (interspersed with nature experiences) which are designed to allow his clients to consider confusing aspects of their lives out of their every day context. He mentioned that the number one issue among the participants is how to manage relationships with aging parents; number two is how to come to terms with "unfinished" relationships left in the wake of a parents' death. I was startled by this bit of information. Somehow, it never occurred to me that, of all the issues with which middle-aged people have to grapple, relationships with parents would be at the top of the list. True, when one is a caregiver, one notices, everywhere one goes, that there is much casual talk about parents. Strange, though, the media typically doesn't focus on this. If it deigns to focus on aging parents, its thrust is usually, "What to do about mom or dad (or both) and still keep a confident hold on one's life."
    During the course of the conversation, my barber mentioned that during her father's evident last days, she literally forced her reluctant brother, who had been estranged from their father for seven years, to visit their father on his death bed. Although the brother fought the effort and dreaded the experience, he later admitted that he was grateful that his sister had insisted on this visit. He commented on what a surprising and welcome difference it made in his life. My barber's waiting client not only confirmed this but added that, usually, the resolution to even the most difficult and tenacious parent/child problems is incredibly simple: "What parents and children need to know, most, is that they are loved and the other person is proud of them."
    I know, I know, it isn't hard to think of situations in which these feelings are not experienced and cannot be communicated. My barber's waiting customer, though, made the point that bedrock hatred and disappointment, as well as bedrock love and pride, exist behind all the fierce defenses we erect and nurture that protect us from our confusion about our parent-child relationships. Across the board, he stressed, facing the frailty and approaching death of a parent seems to have the power to sweep these defenses aside for parent and child. This temporary defenselessness may not resolve all the niggling issues, but because the truth of the love or lack of it are no longer disguised, are spoken and confronted, any "adjustments" that remain to be made by and within the child and parent come much more easily and with much more acceptance. "I've seen it happen over and over," he insisted.
    So, I found myself thinking later in the day, maybe I was wrong about the ineffectuality of clamoring to see a long ignored relative "before [she or he] dies", which I asserted in this essay. While I still believe that overcoming the desire for extended ignorance of one's older relatives is preferable, it seems that the possibility of emotional redemption exists even in the most tenuous, undernourished, on-the-brink-of-death relationships.
    Just wanted to mention that before I forgot.
    Later.