My mother is the last person I would have expected to fold her tent when the going got rough. Tough, fierce, driven and tenacious, she never backed down from a fight. She was perfectly appointed and coiffed and ready to rumble. Now, unless going to a doctors appointment, she hasn’t dressed or left her apartment for three years.
I have always described her as a force of nature. She was fiercely independent, tough-minded and practical. A child of the Depression whose father died when she was 9, she didn’t want to wear her sister’s hand-me-down clothes and got a job at 16 so she could afford to buy her own. She never looked back. Working her entire life in businesses that had very few women in their ranks, she became extremely successful. Not bad for someone with no college degree.
She married three times, never willing to settle until she found her heart’s desire. Never mind some serious obstacles, like my father and me.
When her husband was dying he asked her to take over his business, a successful company that she had worked for but never run. She told him she would do it on the condition that he sell half of it before he passed away. He did, and though she was filled with doubt, she took it on with her customary drive and ambition and turned out to be a very talented, award-winning CEO. She ran the company for 18 years and by the time she sold it, it had become larger than it was before his death.
She taught me not to worry unless I had a reason to, and to be realistic and practical. When I was in college we had a list attached to the refrigerator in my apartment where we would write down questions, albeit sometimes ridiculous, because my mother had an answer for everything. For many years she suffered from depression and anxiety but took her medication and moved on.
When she became ill with a rare and chronic condition within a year of retiring it was a devastating blow. She had imagined a life of romance and travel and enjoyment and suddenly she could barely walk more than a couple of blocks. The man she was seeing cruelly dumped her to find a healthier dancing partner.
Then she started to fall. First she fractured her spine, then crushed her shoulder joint. After a couple of surgeries and a couple of lengthy stays in residential rehab she wound up at home with full-time aides. Never having pushed herself to regain her strength and muscle tone after so many months spent largely in bed, she is now pretty much completely helpless.
She uses a walker to move between the kitchen and the bedroom, which she does a few times a day. She sees a physical therapist 3 times a week and gets no other exercise. She barely eats and when she does it isn’t particularly healthy. She sees no one and watches CNN and episodic crime dramas all day.
She is obsessed with finding a doctor who can cure her illness, though that seems doubtful, but won’t take any action to improve her situation as it is. She won’t go outside with the walker or do any daily exercise that would build her stamina or muscle mass. She can’t use a bathtub, as she used to every evening, but refuses to use a shower chair and has to settle for a sponge bath a couple of times a week. She won’t go out to eat, despite a number of kind invitations, though she is desperately lonely and isolated. She won’t try to learn to email or shop online, though she has been given a gift of an ipad and private lessons.
It seems like she has determined that if she can’t have the life she wants, she won’t have any life at all. After all, she has always been able to bend the world to her will. It is as if the Body Snatchers came and stole the woman I knew. The one who would take the bull by the horns and do whatever she had to in order to thrive as best she could. The one who takes no prisoners. They left me with someone who is a prisoner in a confinement of her own making.
None of the traits that helped her run a company are serving her now. The need to control, the stubbornness, the fight, the resolve, are all being used to try to hold on to what has been lost instead of improving what she has.
I wonder to what degree her denial is really about a fear of having to reinvent her life in a way she never imagined. It must be terribly daunting to contemplate having to start anew. Maybe, at some level, she avoids facing her fear by remaining incapacitated.
It is just so terribly sad and frustrating to watch it happen. No suggestion is acceptable. No conversation is possible.
I have to work on acceptance and surrender… but she never taught me how to do that.
Dealing with the end of your youth is hard. I can’t imagine how hard it is dealing with the end of your adulthood, with nothing left except your ancienthood.
But after reading this blog I can imagine how terrifying that can be for someone who’s prided themselves on being a perfectionist, had a remarkably successful, lengthy run of maintaining that illusion, and now… this.
Yes, terrifying, and I think your use of the word “illusion” is particularly apt. Letting go of that illusion in order to adapt to the current reality may be the hardest thing of all. Kicking and screaming is how I would describe the current state of affairs.
How difficult it is to watch a loved one’s quality of life wither away. You refer to your mom as being in denial. From a distance I wonder if it is not denial but, acceptance of what has become of her life as well as a decision that it is not worth living in the state she is in.
I actually don’t think she has accepted what has become of her life. She is on a seemingly endless quest to find a doctor who can cure her. She says she doesn’t understand why no one seems to know what to do. We will travel this fall to a research institute to see the top people who study her disease. I figure this is good because it will give her a definitive answer, either way. They will tell her what she needs to do to improve her quality of life, or they will tell her there is nothing to do. If she accepts her situation, then she will have to deal with all of those quality of life issues.
On the other hand, I do think that she doesn’t believe life is worth living in the state she is in. This is what I find heart breaking. She could have a better quality of life if she decided she wanted it badly enough to act, but she would have to accept that it would look different than what she had before. And it would be a lot of work. It may require a mental fortitude that she does not possess.
What to do when someone decides they are done trying?
Your last line made me tear up. No, it doesn’t sound like she could teach you something she’s still not learned…acceptance, surrender. My heart goes out to you, her devoted daughter, and to her, whose defiance these days clings to a false hope, rather than opening to change, to solutions she could embrace that come from her.
Must be hard for both of you… reminds me of the metaphor of the branch that holds fast to the shore while the rushing water pulls on it to join the flow. It can either hold on to what it’s known and break from the constant pressure, or let go and flow and see where it’s taken.
Beautifully put. Thank you.
Incredible story there. What happened after? Take care!
Hi, just wanted to tell you, I enjoyed this blog post. It was funny. Keep on posting!
Highly energetic blog, I liked that a lot. Will there be a part 2?
This text is worth everyone
Definitely, what a fantastic website and instructive posts, I will bookmark your website.Have an awsome day! free best blogging course http://linktrack.info/free_blogging_course
Hi there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I am gonna watch out for brussels. I will be grateful if you continue this in future. Numerous people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is excellent blog. An excellent read. I will definitely be back.
Nice read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing a little research on that. And he just bought me lunch since I found it for him smile Therefore let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!
Howdy I am so glad I found your webpage, I really found
you by accident, while I was researching on Google for something
else, Anyhow I am here now and would just like to say kudos for a marvelous post and a all round enjoyable blog (I also
love the theme/design), I don’t have time to look over it
all at the moment but I have bookmarked it and also
added in your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will
be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the fantastic job.
Feel free to surf to my web-site – sidetracked