Why I Won't Play Tetris

if you can't watch the sun rise,
i'll watch it for you.
if you can't get on your feet,
i'll stand up tall.
if you want to feel the ocean,
i'll run through it.
you gave me life, the greatest gift of all.
if you can't say you love me,
i'll just know it.
if you can't take a breath,
i'll drink mine in.
if you can't fight the fight,
i'll find the will, mom.
i'll savor life, your greatest gift of all.

I wrote that for my mom two days before she died. I felt so strong -  yet so helpless - then. I was willing to do and to be whatever it took to help her carry on in this world (because she so wanted to live) and I was struggling to let her go to be free of pain. She was in so much pain. I had to look back in my timeline and find this poem to read it again...mostly to remember what I promised.

One of the hardest things to do so far is the "I'll just know it." I do know it, innately, that she loves/loved me. And it's heartbreaking that I can't hear her tell me.

I love my mom and I miss her so deeply my heart hurts. 

What's nice to notice is that I am savoring life. I recognize the importance of taking care of myself and modeling that for my own daughter because of the insurmountable obstacles that eventually cost my mother her life.

I liken the end of my mom's life, and maybe my own life, to that game called Tetris because for a while she was able to navigate easily despite a barrage of difficult decisions and laborious tasks, right? Especially in her last five years on earth. She'd avoid pile ups and think really quickly and find last-second fits to the constant puzzle that rained. She would hurry to the next uncommon thing to come down toward her and pray and pray and pray and try and try and try to make the right adjustments to get all the pieces where they needed to be.

But life was too fast. Her burdens were too many. Her health was too out of shape. And she died.

I don't want my end game to be a scramble for survival. I want to come to a successful end I can be content with and glad about. I want to grin at my final score and know I rocked life.

I promised to fight that fight up there in that poem, but I can't play my mother's game and win. I have to play something more rewarding....more slowly, methodically, strategically in all fairness to myself and everybody else.  I wish she could do this with me.

To "Me"...or not to "Me"

If you follow my sporadic blog postings then you know my mom is very ill. I have wrestled with my feelings about her decline in health. A few months ago, I came to the uninspiring conclusion that I have to lower my expectations of my mom. Her ability to change her situation still has a small window; however, she controls her life, not me. And while I'm busy fretting over her life, I am forgetting mine...and how quickly and easily I could be in assisted living if I don't change my own situation.

It's a lot easier to support someone I love than it is to support myself. Why? Because I don't have to do the work. I can be all the great things I like about myself: smart, caring, thoughtful, full of ideas, fun, helpful, a good listener, ready with a shoulder rub or a back rub or a pep talk on those not-so-great days...and I still don't have to do any of the actual work.  All the reward, none of the honest-to-God effort.

Do I want to gyp myself? To do so will mean a hospital bed and three people helping me get out of it just to use the commode. Or worse: staying in bed to soil it because I don't have the energy to push the call button let alone get up.

This is a reality, a probability. The proof is my own mom. I am not so far from being where she is, really. The difference between where she is and where I am is only a matter of years.

I've wanted her to change that for herself so much I was willing to do it FOR her. So what's my deal? Can I micromanage serious life change for my mom...but not for me?

The more I listen to my mom talk about her new world of assisted living, the more urgently I want to care about myself. That's why I am in counseling. That's why I pay attention to my habits. That's why I keep equipping myself with ways to change what I'm doing and how I'm being and feeling and align myself with people who make health their own priority and others whose example or presence makes me want to be even more accountable. 

I am micromanaging serious life change for myself now. I can't do my mom's work, and that breaks my heart, but I can do mine....and that could very well save it.

Memory Serves

PALM SPRINGS, CA - "Waitress Insults Fast Eater, Stuns Family"

We were sitting in a Denny's, eating breakfast, coming to the end of the happiest family vacation I can remember. Breakfast was my step-dad's favorite meal and, in true lover-of-food fashion, he graciously allowed us to order from anywhere on the menu.

We ordered big.

I can't remember liking anything but ham and eggs at that early age, but I'm sure I ordered what would come with toast, with pancakes, and a big, big glass of milk. (In a family full of fat people, this amount of food is common for a nine-year-old to order at a restaurant.) 

Plates of pancakes were still steaming yet my step-brother, the skinniest of our bunch, announced he had finished everything on his plate - I mean he gloated that he was done before all the rest of us. Our waitress happened to be there just to see if we had everything we'd need. She saw the pride in my brother's smile, heard the tiny arrogance in his voice, and noticed he was looking to her for praise.

But, instead she made a face and said, "Pig!"

My brother's jaw hit the table. The rest of us laughed.

For years since we have preserved the memory of my brother being told. Well deserved, you smug, little show-off.  The grown up me now stares at this scenario with a new appreciation for what my step-brother did.

In a family full of fat people, it's kind of great when you finish all of your food - especially if you happen to conquer something big. I remember being so proud of myself, and so full, and so satisfied with life, and so full, and so happy, and so full, when my step-dad looked at me and said, "God love ya, kid." because I'd finished a 12" pizza. I did that. I finished it. I never could before. And now that I did it, I had my step-father's attention and acceptance AND I had a recommendation for God to love me. I was proud of myself. I think I've finished every pub pizza thereafter, and we ordered pizza on Fridays religiously for years.

So, yeah, my brother expected the waitress to be pleased and find him super cute and exceedingly interesting and accomplished and and and and and.  Why wouldn't he?

Food was LOVE.

I'm Cheating.

I know some of you are waiting to see a post here, so I am posting - but I am kind of cheating because this is something I wrote for school recently. Still, it's relevant material to what is going on and it was a good assignment to complete...because it has helped my overall attitude and freed me a little bit, too.

Reflections on How Can I Help? Ch. 2: Who’s Helping?

“I had to look through him and find something beside this astonishing appearance of a father I could barely recognize physically.”

And like the first storyteller in this chapter, I was caught up in my role as a daughter for a few minutes when I stepped into my mother’s bedroom to find a small bump under the covers. The feeble, toothless woman whose eyes went wide and whose gasp rang out in the room at my appearance had white and grey streaks and no ability to get up out of bed. In the few minutes of observation I yearned for my mother, not the reflection of my deceased great-nana Pearl.

Mom has dyed brown hair, not gray. Mom has teeth in her mouth, not bare gums. Mom is strong and resilient, not bedridden. The fact that I see her only a few times a year is not supposed to change that. But, whom did I see? Not mom.

Until I softened, remembering this chapter of How Can I Help? and the experience of that initial storyteller who had to come to terms with seeing her father near to death in a hospital room.

I feel fortunate to have read that before going to my mom’s house (where I’d been called to by worried relatives.) I’m glad the words prepared me for the distraction of seeing my mother in her truly natural state for the first time.

“So often we deny ourselves and others the full resources of our being simply because we’re in the habit of defining ourselves narrowly and defensively to begin with.”

I admit that I ached as I listened to my mother talk about restrictions that prevent her from getting out of bed, getting in better physical shape, getting good nutrition, getting involved and active with her friends and family, following some form of routine as she would do while keeping her business in the black.

My mom deeply believes she is condemned to a life of lacking mobility, sugar-filled foods and an inability to communicate in business. She sees no other option. Doctors, nurses, physical therapists, psychologists, friends, church buddies, family…they all see other options and also the strength that still exists in her body, if not in her spirit or will to activate it.

I wanted my mom to believe herself capable of 80% more than she suggests she is and yet I knew I couldn’t convince her of it. Not only had other people been trying to, for example but in being around her for the few days I was there, I became aware that my mom is scared to believe she is more able than she is being. I’m not able to answer why.

What I am able to do is love her with her gummy smile and drab hair and strange size. More difficult, though, is being able to listen to her because what she has to say is so sad and very often clearly untrue. I find myself getting tense, ready to argue – sometimes I will argue – instead of listening because my own head is discounting her thoughts as lies. They ARE lies. My mom has always lied as a way of protecting herself and controlling her environment…and while I’m used to her doing that, I also feel desperate for her to stop because her health is the cost of her made up stories.

For example, she will say a doctor said something he or she didn’t like, they “don’t want her to walk or exert herself until after the next appointment” she has with them. Or she’ll say the physical therapist told her “not to try going down the stairs” (with help) because “she’s not ready for that.” These professionals disagree and they will tell me and other relatives involved in my mom’s care that they never said those things. If confronted with that, mom will just make up some other excuse and use some other source to validate it so she gets what she wants.

Her methods are frustrating and they make it difficult for people who support her and love her and believe in her abilities.

“With nothing left to do, we let our heart and intuitive wisdom reveal another way to be.”

So one night, after many of sleeping in the same bed as my mom and going to sleep angry that she wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t try, wouldn’t stop manipulating people, I simply gave up. I had to come to terms with my inability to help. Lying in bed, I reached for her hand and held it. I told my mom I love her and went to sleep, with tears in my eyes, still holding her hand.

It was the first moment I stopped trying to fix my mom.

I spent the next few days trying to arrange her care around how and who she was, not what she could become. Care is costly, involves a lot of people and is taxing on my heart because of my belief in her, but we provide it for the same reason I reached my hand for hers that night: we love her. However she is, we love her.

I’m not a changed person. I still have to come to terms with my inability to help – and I am sometimes so tempted to shove my mom’s wants out of the way and take control of her care more completely just to force her to get better.

I have to step back and reassess often and let my mother be the woman she is, even if I am scared she will die because of it. She could. And I now feel the best thing I can do is be with her and be loving while she is here to be with me and be loved.