What?
Was a while back that me and my siblings fretted over my aging mother's lack of hearing and we badgered her to get hearing implementation but she resisted and we capitulated.
We adjusted to eardrum splitting TV and telephone-ringer volume. We forgive her for constantly saying "what?" when we forget to yell out our conversation. Or at least yelling is what it feels like for a soft-spoken person.
We try to forgive ourselves when we lose our minds, lose patience, get pissed off at the nature of things as represented by an 86-year-old mother with a pronounced widow's hump, lack of hearing, and an incrementally progressing dementia.
Her independence, desire for autonomy, ability to fight off our suggestions of professional assistance we console ourselves as evidence of her strength in the battle against disappearing from the map of usefulness. Nature is harsh.
That she wants to carry on alone in that big house we holler out cautiously, hallelujah.
That when anyone visiting leaves the house she immediately begins worrying about them we find charming.
That those that left the house are in her mind of a number far greater than actuality and that we can't answer when are they coming back with any more confidence than ten years ago we could play the role of dad's secretary when he gave you/she instructions from the realm of near-death dilaudid dreams, we just right off as curious but not debilitating.
That she maintains the grudge against the potentially helpful neighbor who once cussed at her ten years ago while going through his divorce trauma we just consider no big deal.
That the formerly vivacious woman across the street who lost her husband shortly after our mom did ten years ago, and then went into virtual seclusion, and who has now started making yard maintenance appearances but seems pissed off at our mother for some imagined or real insult we just say yeah well shit's weird all over.
That our mom can't sit in her nice private back patio without obsessing over the neighbor's over-hanging tree and whether or not it will crash into the house during some future storm from hell, but which she does not want to rightfully have trimmed because she doesn't want to get in a hassle with the neighbor and yet doesn't sense the irony that lack of communication is the cause of all her neighborly hassles, we just see as testimony to the fact that we are all fucked up in different ways.
That she is going to be able to maintain the allegiance off the autistic yardman who has been doing her yard for fifteen years and who persists with the insane, absolutely insane assertion that she owes him 30 dollars, we can only hope.
It's funny how things play out. How independence was taught and glorified as a strength and how you yourself know it to be one of the most alluring drugs, of the many you have tried, and yet how it seems to limit so much the experience of those under its spell.
At the beginning of my bachelorhood a few years ago mom expressed a totally non-insulting concern about my lack of mate and progeny to sustain me in old age and that is the cruelest of the many ironies that bombard me daily because of her six children, 20 grandchildren, and handful of great-grandchildren, not a lot of us are around to ''sustain" her. And this is no slight to my siblings that live near her and do obviously more than the rest of us combined to assist her. It's just that she is so goddamned stubborn, which is fine, but in old age is playing out less than fine. It seems we are all resolved to wait it out, for an incident that forces action. Until then, autonomy rules the day. I know it sometimes crosses her mind these last ten years without the old man around to annoy her, just what a long day it is.
My sister and I were talking recently, after a visit with moms, and we laughed, sort of, nervously, like you do about things that don't strike you as particularly funny, "remember when it was just her hearing we were worried about?"
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Was a while back that me and my siblings fretted over my aging mother's lack of hearing and we badgered her to get hearing implementation but she resisted and we capitulated.
We adjusted to eardrum splitting TV and telephone-ringer volume. We forgive her for constantly saying "what?" when we forget to yell out our conversation. Or at least yelling is what it feels like for a soft-spoken person.
We try to forgive ourselves when we lose our minds, lose patience, get pissed off at the nature of things as represented by an 86-year-old mother with a pronounced widow's hump, lack of hearing, and an incrementally progressing dementia.
Her independence, desire for autonomy, ability to fight off our suggestions of professional assistance we console ourselves as evidence of her strength in the battle against disappearing from the map of usefulness. Nature is harsh.
That she wants to carry on alone in that big house we holler out cautiously, hallelujah.
That when anyone visiting leaves the house she immediately begins worrying about them we find charming.
That those that left the house are in her mind of a number far greater than actuality and that we can't answer when are they coming back with any more confidence than ten years ago we could play the role of dad's secretary when he gave you/she instructions from the realm of near-death dilaudid dreams, we just right off as curious but not debilitating.
That she maintains the grudge against the potentially helpful neighbor who once cussed at her ten years ago while going through his divorce trauma we just consider no big deal.
That the formerly vivacious woman across the street who lost her husband shortly after our mom did ten years ago, and then went into virtual seclusion, and who has now started making yard maintenance appearances but seems pissed off at our mother for some imagined or real insult we just say yeah well shit's weird all over.
That our mom can't sit in her nice private back patio without obsessing over the neighbor's over-hanging tree and whether or not it will crash into the house during some future storm from hell, but which she does not want to rightfully have trimmed because she doesn't want to get in a hassle with the neighbor and yet doesn't sense the irony that lack of communication is the cause of all her neighborly hassles, we just see as testimony to the fact that we are all fucked up in different ways.
That she is going to be able to maintain the allegiance off the autistic yardman who has been doing her yard for fifteen years and who persists with the insane, absolutely insane assertion that she owes him 30 dollars, we can only hope.
It's funny how things play out. How independence was taught and glorified as a strength and how you yourself know it to be one of the most alluring drugs, of the many you have tried, and yet how it seems to limit so much the experience of those under its spell.
At the beginning of my bachelorhood a few years ago mom expressed a totally non-insulting concern about my lack of mate and progeny to sustain me in old age and that is the cruelest of the many ironies that bombard me daily because of her six children, 20 grandchildren, and handful of great-grandchildren, not a lot of us are around to ''sustain" her. And this is no slight to my siblings that live near her and do obviously more than the rest of us combined to assist her. It's just that she is so goddamned stubborn, which is fine, but in old age is playing out less than fine. It seems we are all resolved to wait it out, for an incident that forces action. Until then, autonomy rules the day. I know it sometimes crosses her mind these last ten years without the old man around to annoy her, just what a long day it is.
My sister and I were talking recently, after a visit with moms, and we laughed, sort of, nervously, like you do about things that don't strike you as particularly funny, "remember when it was just her hearing we were worried about?"
- jimlouis 4-05-2004 8:00 pm