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.
