There Was No Choice

Appreciate Our Moms and Dads

When I was a small boy, the only boy in a sibling cohort of 4, my mom often exclaimed that she was “bone tired.” I was clueless as to what she meant. I thought that when she finished the dishes, or folded the clothes, that had been hung by clothespins, on the rope in the yard or tenement basement, that the work was done. It never occurred to me that the clothes we were wearing were getting dirty as she was doing the “final” folding or ironing, and that they would have to be cycled by the scrub board, clothesline, ironed, and folded. Ditto my father’s shirts. The work was never done. She could never catch up. She had no choice. She had a fulltime job, with all the stresses and a husband, who had his own issues based on his parenting, and life experiences in the south in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, in a family of 10 siblings.

My mom endured physical, verbal, and relational abuse as a married woman. She had endured physical, verbal, and relational abuse as a child, growing up in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and later, working as a court reporter, clerk-typist, and expert in the Social Security Department. Her ambition was to become a physician. Given our society in this country in the 1920s, and the discouragement thereof, as well as the discouragement of almost everyone with whom she shared her desire, especially her husband, my father, that ambition was not to become a reality for her. Of course, us 4 children piled on demands, backtalk, and the usual silliness of youth, to make her life as a mom stressful as well. Now, as a loved mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she has enough loss of blood supply to her brain, that she is not as aware of how much she is honored. It is sad for all of us who want her to know how much she is loved. She does not know. Wonder if she ever knew. Wonder. Doubtful.

I do not know where this is going. I began by acknowledging all the things I took for granted during my early years as a son. Except for the 5 years that she lived with me and my wife, here in Plymouth, Michigan, I have called my mother daily for decades. I have wanted her to know she is appreciated. She has never acknowledged the praise from me or my siblings. She is now 99 years old. She is tired of being tired. She is tired of hurting. She is tired of the numerous losses that age seems to lose almost daily: sight, hearing, memory, painless walking, family and friends. She is tired of the times when she is alone. And all her offspring, and our offspring’s offspring, yearn for her to know peace on this side of her next step.

The other day, I was lamenting how frustrating it is for me to communicate with my mom when she is struggling for a word or recent memory as she stutters and stammers to recall. I mentioned this to my oldest daughter, Sara. Later, Sara sent me a statement from an unknown author, who declared that if I think I am frustrated with my mom’s memory loss, imagine how frustrating it must be for her. She knows she cannot recall or express what she has not recalled. That thought made me even sadder, though more empathetic. Some days she hears me as I speak at the normal 70 decibel speech level. Other days, she hears nary a word, no matter how loud I speak. I remember being on a Neurology rotation as a medical student, and meeting patients who had what is called an expressive aphasia. The patient says, “Bacon and eggs,” when they mean to say, by the context of the meeting, “Good morning.” The patient would slap their thigh or have a look of disappointment and frustration on their face, and try again, again without success. Most of the medical students would, later, express that we would hate to be in that condition. Now, the rising recognition of dementia is there for us to see in our parents, friends, and relatives. Sometimes, we hear about it in famous people we “know” in the film industry. The latest example is Bruce Willis, now age 67 years, with frontotemporal dementia, a progressive disease.

So, I listen and talk to my mother every day, and I just feel her loss of who she was, and her awareness of her loss. She used to have a great memory. We could call her and ask about which child had chicken pox and when, and she would give “chapter and verse.” I know the helplessness of “modern” medicine to do anything about it, and it hurts.