Saints and More Saints

I sometimes feel a little conflicted about writing these blog posts, or at least, about sharing them. I'm not fishing for affirmation or praise. I don’t want people to think I’m over here being all heroic and altruistic. Believe me, I’m not. 

Back when Mom was still conversational, she asked me a question to which I gave a knee-jerk answer. I had complained to her—yes, complained—that neither of us was getting enough sleep because she got up every two hours during the night. She asked me, “Are you doing all this because you love me, or because you think it’s your duty?” I answered, “Because you’re my mother, and I adore you.” Which is/was true. But I’ve had time to think about it, and my answer wasn’t the WHOLE truth.

I’m doing this for a few reasons, and none of them have to do with me being a saint. In fact, remember the horns I mentioned in the last post? Yeah. Mom, in her liminal state, can probably REALLY see mine now…;)

Reason 1: I DO love my mother. I want the best for her, or at least the best I can provide. My mom got short-changed in her life. She was smart, curious, interested, and ambitious as a young woman. Then she married my dad at 17 and started at 18 having babies every two years. That’s what she’d seen the women around her do, and what was expected of most young women of her era. Although my dad sometimes reminded her that she was uneducated (she had a high school diploma) and not really qualified to join in their college-going friends’ intellectual banterings, Mom earned at least some of Dad’s degree (she wrote and edited his papers). But she would never have the opportunity to get a degree of her own. So now at least, I want the choices to be hers, and she told me many times when she still could, that she wants to be home for this transition.

Reason 2: I DO feel a sense of duty. I have an unusually expressive caretaking gene. An inherited or evolutionary aberration. A visiting poet once called me “hyper-responsible” when I dragged him out of our Little Town watering hole because he was 10 minutes late for his reading. I wanted to punch him in the face when he said that, but I knew he was spot on.

Reason 3: I believe dying at home is the best possible death, unless you can sprout fairy wings and flutter off into an enchanted forest on the back of your singing pet unicorn, while eating Doritos (all of which I’ve requested for my own demise). And I know dying at home is only a good death IF home has been a happy place, and IF you have loved ones who will stay with you and look after you. Those are two SUPER BIG ifs, but we're lucky that Mom has both.

Reason 4: I’m processing. I have a LOT to process—Mom dying, Dad dying, my real and imagined parental issues, retirement, change, Covidfear, aging, what life looks like moving forward, why Emergen-C changed their formula, housebreaking a puppy, the neuroscience of consciousness and reality-creation, orchid repotting…the list goes on. Good grief; how do people who DON’T write make sense of their lives?!?

Reason 5 (and honestly, my main reason): My grandmother, who mothered me while my own mother worked days and many nights, died at home. Mom and her friend and roommate Hope took care of her. Grandma died in the room that had been her bedroom for 50 years, surrounded by her own smells and sounds, her pictures, her bed linens, her hideous wallpaper, her picture window looking out at our ancient cottonwood trees, the ghost children who came to visit in the end, and the ghost church ladies who talked too much. She was soothed now and then by trains rumbling past a block away. And on her last day with us, we were all there—a circle of family around her hospital bed, holding her hands, brushing her hair back, stroking her face and arms. I don’t know if this made leaving easier or harder for my grandmother, but it seemed peaceful to the rest of us. It meant the world to me to be holding her hand for her last heartbeat, for that moment of letting go. I promised myself then, that if I could, I would give the same gift to Mom that she had given her own mother.

Honest, I’m not noble, I’m just very, very lucky—that my retirement and Ray’s retirement coincided with Mom needing more constant care, that we have a safe home and the resources to stay in it, that we have support from Hospice, that I’m still physically able. And I’m really stubborn—no matter how exhausting, frustrating, sad this is at times, I persist, by gum, because it’s also joyful, rewarding, hilarious, and because I made a promise to myself 30-some years ago.

Also, I couldn’t do this without support. Ray first of all. I can take care of Mom because Ray takes care of me. He reminds me to eat. He feeds the canaries. He makes me smoothies every morning. He runs all the errands. He takes care of this naughty baby landshark (aka puppy) we brought home. Other amazing people have been leaving us gifts of food, sending cards and flowers, stopping for visits, volunteering their time & energy to give me breaks. My kids and their spouses have cleaned, cooked, stayed with Mom when I need to leave for a bit, picked up and paid for my medicine, provided my tech support, cheered me up with their hilarious good humor and their adorable children. My brothers and sisters-in-love have given me full nights’ sleep, manicures, spa days, dinners, yarn, tax prep service, Lay’s Stax, and really, anything I ask them for.

Baby landshark at rest.

The upshot of all this blabbering is that there ARE heroes and saints involved, and they’re the people in my beautiful bubble—my family and community—all of whom make it possible for me to be the awkward, goofy, sometimes bitchy, bumbling, pigheaded genie in this lamp, granting Mom’s last wish.