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Wow. We live a long time on Ma's side of the family. Our Gran lived to be 100. I moved Ma in with me a couple of years after my father died. She'd been living with our Gran, and was bored to distraction. Gran did everything, leaving Ma in the position of being a child again at the tender age of 60. That didn't last long. Ma rang me up one day to ask if the invitation to move in with me still stood, and a month later we moved into the most comically dreadful house I've ever lived in, where I found myself in the position Ma had just vacated. I gave up my routine self reliance as Ma set in to reclaim her own life. George ( our dad) had coerced her into retiring from teaching ahead of schedule--promised if she resigned he'd move her out of the hated town they were living in, but once she'd quit he denied any such agreement. She hoped to return to teaching here in Austin, but her age, mental accuity, and adherance to teaching methods long obsolete dashed her hopes. It was then that her mental health took a turn for the worse. She began spending more and more time in "autistic fantasy"--a psychiatric term meaning the world in your head is preferred to the world outside. Years of anger, disappointment and resentment bubbled to the surface in the form of whispered conversations with people long dead. Not so much conversations as diatribes. My efforts to involve the rest of the family in getting her some help were futile, and the psychiatric system I worked in was also closed to her. Boy, did those years suck. It was after my brother's death, when her own physical health began to deteriorate, that things actually improved. I found a smaller, brighter house, found healthcare professionals that would come to her (as mobility and agorophobic issues keep her housebound) just in time, as she experienced congestive heart failure later that month. Now she is taking medication, has regular visits from her doctor, and has her condition monitored daily via a specialized scale. The reactive psychosis from my brother's death (exacerbated by the CHF) has passed, and she is in better health than she was in her 60's.
Caring for an elder parent is somewhat anomolous here in the US. It seems strange to my friends-- my WASP friends, anyway. It seems obvious to me that it is the proper thing to do. Ma had a crap life , for the most part. Her marriage to my dad, her mental illness, her own family drama, all left her feeling somewhat powerless and pissed off. Never the less, I have her to thank for my liberal social values. That has to be the greatest gift I have ever received from anyone. I can trace my own courage and compassion back to the values me Ma demonstrated to me during the 60's and 70's. Happy birthday to her, with thanks.
namaste
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4 comments:
Your mother is very lucky to have a good son like you.
I had this conversation once with my husband about what we would do if his mother ever got too old to live alone, and he immediately said she would come to live with us. I think that's a good person's first instinct.
Oh, and happy birthday to your mother! :)
I totally understand, since my Grandma moved in with us when she was no longer able to take care of herself completely anymore. Unfortunately, we eventually had to move her into an assisted living place because she and my mom didn't get along very well, and because we could no longer take care of her since her health started to decline further. We later learned that part of the crankiness was due to lack of oxygen to the brain, and depression, so as soon as we got her on oxygen and antidepressant, she "bounced back" for a while. You should talk to mum about it, as I'm sure she has a much different perspective on it than I do.
And Happy Birthday to her too! Grandma lived until she was 83(?)
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