“Johnny,” my brother spoke up bravely from the back seat,”maybe if you came to Tucson more, you’d like it better.” I was much too quick and cutting in my reply, something along the lines of that being the funniest thing he’d said all day, but Tucson brings out the ugly in me.
We were all three—my sister, my brother, and me—on the way to visit our mother at the nursing home. My sister drove past endless blocks that were all the same: wretched strip malls, blown trash piled up in the cacti, palm trees that didn’t belong, nothing anywhere that made you want to stop and give thanks. Tucson is like a giant failed experiment in bulldozing and paving—at least the contractors must have gotten rich. Here and there more upscale franchises glittered for a frozen moment. Soon the sun and no-one-gives-a-damn would fade the paint and crack the plastic, but by then the customers would already be gone to the next nice place with fresher asphalt. The slash-and-burn economy still works here where the populace is mesmerized, viewing new piles of concrete and construction clutter as signs of hope.
I didn’t need to see my 90-year-old mother, not one bit—it had been three and one-half years—but three busted siblings on such an outing was like over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go, and would not be denied. I didn’t need to see poor Helen because I did most of my grieving years ago, after she threw me out in a psychotic rage that was the ultimate breakup of my life.
We walked into the dining area, where I recognized her immediately. My first thought was, she looked masculine in profile, gaunt and short-haired with enormous ears and a drooping nose. She sat in a wheelchair, grasping the edge of the table, staring blankly into space. We greeted her. She knew my sister, possibly my brother, and appeared to know who I was after she’d been told, reaching out to touch me with a swollen hand that had no muscle in it. Her eyes were huge, wet, and dim. She looked like someone you wouldn’t expect to last a day.
We wheeled her slowly back to her room to visit. It’s a smaller room than we had her in at first, because she doesn’t notice anymore. Here and there were signs of recognition, even a touch of the old guilt-tripping: “Do I look like the same mother?” And then, “Ask me anything,” but no one did. My sister held her hand and talked gently to her. My brother had few words and taped a picture to the wall that promptly fell right down. I could tell that each of them was still probing, caring, hoping for a connection. As for me, though, I felt nothing.
Does that shock you? I think it shocked my wife when I told her later, but it’s the truth, so help me God. Seeing my mother was like looking at someone who wasn’t a relation. She could have been any of those other women sitting in that dining room, hunched over in their wheelchairs, staring at the window, waiting for release. I felt the same compassion I would feel for any human being, but no more. No grief, no sadness. That may come, perhaps, when she finally passes on, although she did symbolically four years ago. My siblings have had no such inoculation, no purifying flames, and may deal with this forever. We all have different fates, it seems.
Perhaps my flames were not so purifying after all, however. All week long I’ve been suffering a sustained emotional constriction, a general sense of awfulness and feeling really, really bad. Not guilty, mind you, just depressive, grinding, ugly, brutal. The stress has given my wife an awful case of hives for the first time in her life. We both know I’m responsible.
In the aftermath of the visit to my mother, I feel more determined than ever to say goodbye to the Tucson portion of my life. I’ve taken much too long to clear her house out, lingering over memory-provoking artifacts of family history, feeling responsible for the preservation of it for my siblings or some other entity that pushes me. But I’m the oldest and lived through it all. My younger sister is dead. The youngest three have their own experiences that must be huge to them, but only I lived through my parents’ entire evolution as adults. Things resonate with me that mean nothing to anyone else, though the one who died summer before last would know. (Dear Teresa, I miss you so…)
I will find the time to write about such things as may be important or engaging, then let the rest slip loose. This episode is almost over, and there is deeper dirt to plow.
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Here and there more upscale franchises glittered for a frozen moment. Soon the sun and no-one-gives-a-damn would fade the paint and crack the plastic, but by then the customers would already be gone to the next nice place with fresher asphalt. The slash-and-burn economy still works here where the populace is mesmerized, viewing new piles of concrete and construction clutter as signs of hope.
Brilliant.
I felt the same compassion I would feel for any human being, but no more. No grief, no sadness. That will come, I’m sure, when she finally passes on
Maybe you won’t, and if you don’t, so be it. My father died three years ago, three hellish years after falling and breaking a hip. Although I was tremendously relieved that his suffering had ended, and ended before he took my mom down with him, I can’t say I’ve ever felt much sadness.
In the 50′s-60′s paradigm of fatherhood, he was what he was supposed to be: responsible, mature, the bread-winner. But he was cold and distant. Not in any bad way, really; he was from an era where children were not the center of the entire universe. The contemporary meme that “my mom/dad is my best friend” was foreign to him, and IMHO rightfully so. He was an interior person. He had other priorities.
I think of him often; pretty much every day. But I don’t feel bad that I don’t feel sad.
Very well put about your father. Honesty is healthy, in any case. I for one feel much better after writing this post! Your father sounds a lot like mine. “Distant” is the kindest way to put it in my case, however, because his non-involvement stood out in bold relief at every crisis point.
But I did just edit the second quotation. The earlier phrasing was defensive, in anticipation of the inevitable comments to follow. [Update: which they did!] I may not, in fact, ever feel anything more. And if I don’t, that will be quite alright.
Forgiveness, John. Trite but true. You will never be free of your mother until you forgive her. You think you’ve already dealt with her. Killed her off in your heart but can’t you see how she’s still got a strangle hold? It’s taken nearly my whole lifetime to learn – experience – the redemption of forgiveness. It the only answer — all else fails. Not just forgiveness but giving in to it, whatever IT is. And love, too, whatever THAT is.
Just roll with it baby and trust that you are exactly where you need to be. Peace old friend.
But Kate, there’s nothing to forgive! That’s like telling me to be hungry when I’m not.
What I saw at the nursing home on Sunday was what I saw. Nothing tragic, and for me, no poignancy, because my relationship with my mother did end in 2008 (things were pretty awful for years before that, too), and it was her doing. But that’s all right. The soul I saw on Sunday will be leaving soon. My mind was perfectly clear and calm. All is as it should be.
This is a question and not a critique….
My own mother has been gone for over three decades – she never made it to my own present age. My father died more recently. With both of them I had my issues and arguments. But the thought that always kept occurring to me was this: I am made of the same stuff they are. They produced me, gave me their own flawed genes, loved me, spent the little they had on me. What I dislike in them is often very much what I dislike in myself. I can’t pretend I come from some distant place unrelated to them and their place. Yes, I’m different, but I’m also very much the same. As Yeats said, “it’s the foul rag and boneyard of the heart.”
Don’t you feel this about your parents, differently for each perhaps? I don’t see how you can you reject them so completely without also rejecting large parts of yourself. Cut them some slack, as you cut yourself some slack and as you want those around you to cut you some slack. Life is hard for all of us.
[EDITED] I wrote a big long reply but have decided to delete it. To answer you fairly requires a damn book. If we’re both lucky, I will write it. The key here though, I realize, is in this sentence:
WHAT, NO QUALIFICATIONS?!?
See?
I think I can understand monstrosity and depravity as well as the next man. What perplexes me here is the extremity of your feelings – disgust, loathing, contempt – which seem crazily disproportional to what you have told us of your parents’ actual behavior and personalities. In my reading of your accounts of them over many months they come off as not that out of the ordinary for that time and place. Of course you don’t owe me or any of your readers anything more than you feel like talking about. But writers live or die with the details of the stories they tell, whether made-up or true. The reason you’re always getting push-back on this particular subject is that you haven’t quite given us a narrative that would justify all the blood on the page.
Anyhow, it sounds like you have plans to do this. I will read carefully.
Try this: I’m not crazy, bad, empathy-challenged, stupid, or lacking in compassion, and presumably neither are your kids. So fill in the blanks. What would you have to do to make them feel the the things I’ve written about and put it out in public? Either one is capable of this, or the child is always “wrong.”
But you know, most of the crap we had to endure took place during the last 30 years! That’s even worse, in a way. You expect a parent to mess up every once in a while while raising kids. But to turn pro at this in middle age brings us to another level, like picking someone out at random on the street and pelting him with dog shit. A nominal parent has no right to do that to a grownup. The only choice one has is to get out of range.
The quoted statement isn’t the whole story. There are plenty of qualifications. Truth isn’t monolithic, even if rhetoric often is. Love certainly isn’t. The main point here – call it the essential truth – is that you and I and every mother’s son and daughter of us carries not only parental genes but family experience inside us forever. I was querying you on what that must mean for someone who feels as you do about your parents and your family experience. It was perhaps a rude query, I realize.
Well, one has to be aware of all that happened. The painful stories are encapsulated in layers of habit and self-deception (inner monologues), much like an oyster produces a pearl to smooth the pain of embedded grit. To understand, one has to “go there.”
In the process of discovery, one realizes that the injury is still fresh in one’s unconscious. Some of what you see in my writing about my family is an articulate VERY ANGRY adult describing just-released emotion he couldn’t handle at earlier stages of life. This isn’t pretty, but boy, is it important! And the only way to do that is to feel it, to experience it fully. It can be a rough and nasty business.
John- it seems to me you are perfectly in the flow…. of a taoist nature indeed. This cannot be articulated… in any way…. you simply are immersed in the moment you know and know it to be right… to be true. We don’t know each other personally, but I’ve learned from your writing for many years… and I am in debt to you for your many sage insights. The tales of your family are no exception. keep going where the flow naturally take you. All the best! Ty
Yo Ty!
The Taoist reference is apt, and I love the way you put it. Thanks for sticking with me all these years. I promise more to come.
Edited version: Tucson = Mother. No beauty. No purpose. No empathy. No forgiveness. If this gift of life isn’t all about me, then why am I here in the first place?
A lot of people are going to be surprised when a memorial to Helen V. Farr appears on this website. I hope you’re not one of them! Sure, Tucson has been under a cloud for me. But you also gotta remember, I’ve been going there almost every month since May. It’s been a ton of hard work and stress. Unbelievable emotional ups and downs.
As for Helen, I remember plenty of good things from when I was a kid, although you can see from reading faces in the family photos when things began to change, even way back then. But that’s all right. No one’s perfect. The last 30 years were basically hell, though. People just need to understand that one doesn’t rule out the other.
And believe me, I’ve mostly already grieved. I’m the designated driver, so to speak. All is working as it should.