Inconclusive

My mother may be nearing the end of her life. Or she may not. It's hard to get a concrete answer from anyone. There is fluid, lots of fluid, that keeps accumulating in the lungs. This is obviously not good, no matter what the cause. But it could just be a really bad pneumonia, which, you would think, would be treatable. Or it could be lung cancer. The bad kind of lung cancer. They really don't know. It looks like lung cancer, but the tests come back inconclusive. Since her lungs are already so compromised by emphysema and disease, they can't do any radical testing or surgery.

For me, the possibility of losing my mother is not as devastating as it would be for others. This is making me feel a little guilty and monstrous. She was not a bad mother, especially compared to other mothers. She did not hit, or even yell that much. She controlled, but what mother doesn't? Maybe she was a little worse at the controlling than some others. I remember her telling me what to say, answering for me, as long as I could talk. The endless hours trying on scratchy dresses and never being allowed to get the one - or even try the one - that I wanted. The reading my diary - probably another common mother thing - and then complaining about what I wrote (about a boy, instead of talking about what a wonderful 11th birthday party I had). Not sure if that is a common mother thing or not. Lots of things like that, on a regular, daily basis, probably not so bad. Just stop whining about it and try to understand more, I think to myself. And that is what I've been trying to do.

It helps that this continues, that suddenly, I am a six year old again, incapable of doing anything right or making a decision or speaking my mind without it being the most ridiculous thing ever heard. I bring socks, they are the wrong socks (they were the only socks, really.) Don't leave any lights on and I hope you're feeding the cat the right food and I can't understand why you did the checkbook that way and why did you bring the dry clothes upstairs when they should have just gone to the ironing board and I should get a job in the hospital because they make money and all the ways I am a bad mother.... I try to understand this too; she is just not feeling well, and frustrated with being hospitalized for weeks on end.

For me, trying to understand makes me think more about my own mothering. Probably a lot of people want to be different than their parents were, and until the day you hear yourself say something that is so like your own parent that you have to stop and go into another room and scream a little bit, you think you are.

The choices she made - which I've always been down on - for example. She married young and lost my father when she was around the age I am now. (and maybe this is another reason that it's not that devastating: this is familiar. My father, the scent of whom I can still conjure up in a flash, sitting on his knee when he wore his blue pajamas with the yellow piping, had the first heart attack when I was five. Four more over the next 9 years, really quite remarkable, if you think about it, to live that long. Technology wasn't as advanced back then, or maybe our insurance just wasn't so hot. Nothing could be done...it was genetic. A line of slavic people with enlarged, bad hearts; my grandmother died carrying a bucket of pig slop from their little inner-city farm; my father died on his forklift. C'est la vie. Death lurked in the corner of each childhood room, and if you forgot about it for a little while, there would come a reminder. The way he's have to sit for a long time, arms stretched out on his knees, popping nitroglycerin, just from walking from the supermarket to the car. The way you can't swing anymore, between your parents hands when you jump from a curb, or get picked up and held upside down. The hushed conversations and things that you overhear anyway. You think this didn't really have much of an impact, it was just the way it was, until you imagine your own children living through such a thing, and maybe it did mean more than you thought on the scale of things that messed you up a bit. Or maybe not. Everyone has problems. But I digress). At that point, she did things and made choices that I would like to think I wouldn't, but who knows, really?? The "clubbing", and smoking (3 packs a day, in the 80's when one really should have known better), the prolonged and ridiculous relationship with the nut (not just a little, but certifiable) who would decide at the last minute not to show up for things and have spats that were high schoolish and weird, instead of looking for a normal, bland companion while she still could. The inability to save much of a dime. The inflexibility and refusal to give up the house that she loves, even though she hates/mistrusts/feels alienated from the neighbors so much that none of them can even be asked to feed the damn cat. I think about these things, and wonder if I really would have done things differently in the same scenario, and think about the impulsive moves and unhealthy habits and bad decisions I have made in my own life, and try to be more understanding.