Trying to Forgive My Mother as She Neared a Hundred
Kurt Schmidt
My 95-year-old mother laughed a lot despite past ordeals, like almost being shot once. She was eighty-eight when her third husband died. I missed him, not because he had many admirable qualities as a stepfather, but because he’d been a highly responsible pain in the ass to my mother for forty-three years. Because I lived nearby and worked mostly from home as a telecommuting technical writer, I became her next overseer. Having to monitor an elderly mother who ignored safety advice seemed like an impending catastrophe. I thought I might minimize the risk by having the local hospital install a Lifeline system, thinking she could just press a button if she were in distress. But she wouldn’t wear the Lifeline wristwatch or pendant, saying she’d call me if something happened. Something always happened.
“Why me?” I often asked myself. It seemed unnatural for a man on the verge of retirement to have to take on the added problems of an ancient mother whom he’d never quite forgiven for the harebrained behavior that had stained his childhood. Could a child fall out of love with parents if they’d abrogated their responsibility for providing a safe home? Could I love Mom if I couldn’t forgive her?
Mom seemed to recognize my effort. Whenever I prepared to leave her house after doing a variety of chores, she always said, “Thank you for everything you do for me. I really appreciate it.” Knowing she was grateful helped me on days when I despaired about her decline and our awkward relationship.
Since the shooting disaster when I was twelve, I’d tried to wipe the trauma from my mind. Arriving home drunk one night from his weekly sales trip, Dad had confronted Mom with a .22 rifle, spouted vile accusations about cheating, and fired three times “just to scare her.” My sisters had cried, the sheriff had arrived, and, to my relief, Dad was gone. But two days later he’d arrived with flowers and was on his knees with his head in Mom’s lap, sniffling that it was the alcohol’s fault and that he was quitting hard liquor. To my amazement, Mom forgave him, and life was supposed to be back to normal. But as life progressed, his behavior confirmed he was a narcissist, philanderer, alcoholic, wife beater, and jealous maniac. Somehow their marriage lasted eighteen years. I resented the additional years of trauma and that she hadn’t turned in the divorce marble at the time of the shooting.
…
As each year brought her closer to a hundred, Mom struggled more with her fear of dying. She called me each night at eight to chat, although sometimes she was engrossed in a novel that distracted her from the time. Then I called her. When she developed a pain in her left ear and neck, she seemed convinced it was her carotid artery. She spent sleepless nights wandering around her house, worrying whether her time had come. The examining doctor said she probably strained her neck, which seemed logical in that when she dozed from a sitting position, her head dropped back and her left leg hooked over the arm of the sofa like the tentacle of some dormant octopus clinging to its favorite coral reef. When I asked why her leg was up, she said it was comfortable that way.
I didn’t really want to be responsible for shepherding Mom toward the death trip known as “the end of independence.” Mom avoided the term death. When I let her read a draft I’d written about my chaotic childhood, she said, “Don’t publish that memoir until I kick the bucket.”
But I was now her partner in medical visits and occasional trips to the ER. I gave the medical people my phone number as their primary contact for appointments and feedback. I kept track of her pill supply. The day arrived when Mom was too slow punching in her prescription numbers on the pharmacy’s automated phone line, which then timed her out. So I took over that task.
I suppose my anxiety about all this had something to do with the constant stress of being the caregiver for a woman who was struggling against diminished capacity. I wondered if I was competent to make the right decisions for her.
Each Tuesday I became anxious while driving her to the supermarket, worrying about potential catastrophe while we pushed our shopping carts along separate routes. She’d fallen several times, once even in the supermarket, but said with a laugh that landing on her head or butt was no big deal, because no damage could be done to those areas. A cracked rib and a broken wrist had been short-term problems. She’d had gallstone surgery at ninety and figured surviving something like that meant she was impervious to smaller dangers— like falling and breaking bones. She refused to use the cane I’d bought her. A woman couldn’t appear sexy if she was toting a cane.
Without support like a grocery cart, she walked slowly with her left eye closed, wobbling sometimes. She said her eyes hadn’t worked well together since her stroke years ago, and so she saw distances better just using her right eye. At the supermarket she said, “I try to keep both eyes open here so men won’t think I’m winking at them.”
“Why don’t you use a black patch for the left eye,” I said, failing to suppress my sarcastic nature.
I wanted to change my poor attitude — the sarcasm that I often directed at Mom as arrows from a painful childhood. Jane Gross writes that the unexpected tasks of caring for an elderly parent “kicks up all the dust of childhood…everybody sort of becomes who they were when they were ten.” The last place I wanted to be was ten again.
I thought the best way to keep Mom independent was to examine her house and figure out what she could do and what she couldn’t, or had no energy to do, or had decided not to do because she’d rather be reading and eating crackers. I should encourage her continued participation in the town’s garden club and newsletter group, members of which always made sure she had a ride to their meetings. I should try to be congenial about her nightly phone calls, even though I never felt like chatting. I should help her look forward to small things. To that end, any trip to a doctor’s office or nurse’s clinic included a trip to a book store for large-print, used books (mysteries and thrillers).
As the eldest resident in our town, Mom became part of the town’s 250th anniversary celebration, riding in a parade and receiving a memorial cane. But then, bad luck. Two months later she fell in her kitchen and fractured a rib, and a month later she tipped over in a chair at a newsletter meeting, sustaining a painful contusion on her pelvis. Days later a friend brought scallops from a local restaurant and left before Mom got the first one stuck in her upper esophagus. I arrived for my daily visit, found her gagging, called 911, and followed the ambulance to the ER. As Mom recuperated, I wondered where God was in all of this.
…
Mom reached one hundred on June 13, 2015. Because she was emphatic about no big gathering, I drove her to my house for lunch, stopping along the way at the lake of her joyful childhood and a view of the mountain she’d climbed then. I knew that scene always made her nostalgic. Along with presents from my small family, I gave her a gratitude list of twenty-nine good things in my life for which she’d been responsible. I hugged her despite her history as a non-hugging mother. She seemed comforted by it.
When she died six months later, I realized I’d loved Mom in the beginning but had fallen out of love with her during the turbulent years. Now, after twelve years of my caring for her, I thought she’d been content to have me ease her through the tough transition from independence to infirmity. I hoped she’d seen my small acts of help as a form of love larger than the words used to proclaim it.
I thought about her humor that had continued to prevail during hard times. Even with declining eyesight, she’d still been able to read bumper stickers on cars. One day as we drove to a thrift store to pick up some Prevagen that she claimed cleared her brain, she pointed to a passing car and said. “I like that one. I Don’t Brake for Yankee Fans.” Then she’d cackled, as if remembering my father had been a Yankee fan and possibly relishing the thought of running over him. I thought that might be an appropriate epitaph for her.
Whenever I visit Mom’s gravestone at the town cemetery, I think of the laughter that spanned her one hundred years and how our love had blossomed more toward the end.
