The Long View

My mother has been struggling with myriad health issues for a few years now. She was never very clear about what was wrong. It was always a jumble of non-specific symptoms and ailments. I chalked most of it up to her age and her lack of exercise. When I would quiz her about her doctor visits, she complained that the doctors didn't tell her anything. But, then again, she's of that generation that doesn't question medical professionals. Something about the white coat makes children of adults of a certain age.

Because of a disturbing diagnosis she was given recently, I decided that I needed to get involved, if only for my own satisfaction in being able to talk to her doctor and get some answers. What I discovered when I accompanied her to her appointment was that her doctor really wasn't forthcoming. Direct questions put to him were answered with vague, curt replies. My mother and I both left the office feeling unsatisfied. And I felt more than a little guilty for thinking that her years of obfuscation were her fault completely. We decided then that she needed a second opinion and that if prolonged care was needed, she'd find it elsewhere.

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My relationship with my mother has never been easy. I was what you'd call a "parentified child". I grew up thinking I had to take care of her, make sure she was happy and cared for. Not a great position to be put in as a kid. Only in my thirties, when I had kids of my own, did I throw off the mantle of responsibility for my mother. I had my own family to care for now. Once I did this, I got angry and have stayed angry, to varying degrees.

Through my twenties and thirties, I identified with a Shawn Colvin song I thought could have been written about me.

Sometimes I feel so reckless and wild
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
I gave nobody life, I am nobody’s wife
And I seem to be nobody’s daughter


I was angry. I was righteous. I was indignant. What does angry righteous indignation for things not received, things you certainly deserved get you? A good song, if you're Shawn Colvin. Bitter distance, if you're me.

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The poet and philosopher John O'Donahue talks about how quickly reality can shift. One minute you're standing in your kitchen at the end of the day with a to-do list 50 items long. Then the phone rings and it's someone with news that a dear friend is dying. It takes ten seconds to relate the news, but in those ten seconds everything changes. Your feet are still in the same place they were when you answered the phone, but you're standing in a different landscape when you hang up.

A few weeks ago, I was telling a friend, "I wish there was another way I could relate to my mother. I wish there was a way to be close to her without expecting her to be the mother I need."

Wish granted.

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As I help my mother navigate her new health care needs, I can feel my expectations falling away. As they do, I feel myself opening to her and to the unique ways she expresses herself as my mother, for better and for worse. I need to care for her, and I want to care for her. This is my new landscape.

My complaints and grievances can still be found, if I choose to attend to them. But right now I'm choosing not to. Whatever harm was done, whatever care and attention was not given, it wasn't because my mother didn't love me. She did. And she does.

Is this forgiveness?

Is this growing up?

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I wonder in what ways I'm failing my own children, even as I try so hard not to. What complaints and grievances will they have as adults? Sometimes I'm patient and attentive. Often I'm not. Sometimes I'm smiling and loving. Often I'm not. Who knows what will stick and what will be washed away. Whatever harm I do, it's not for lack of love.

TEOM had a post awhile back about a bedtime ritual at her house. When she thinks her children are asleep, she whispers to them, I love you just the way you are.

When I look down at my sleeping children, the children I don't see enough of, the children I miss even when I'm with them, I want to lean close to them and whisper my plea from the future. Forgive me.