Confronting Suffering

I got home yesterday sometime in the late afternoon. I'd been at the ASJA annual conference in New York most of the weekend (where I learned that, yes, I *actually* am a journalist).

There were two telephone messages from my father, quite distraught, and another from a cousin, also quite distraught.

So, any sort of good vibes I was feeling from finally discovering what I'm really good at, who I am, and that I can probably do what I love for the rest of my life, got shoved to the side as I dealt with my family.

Dad is losing it. Mom is being moved to hospice care in the rehab center. She is not getting any better, nor do the physicians expect her to. Dad is worried that he will not find the house deed, that he won't be able to do his own laundry, that he won't be able to find the titles to the cars, that he can't dust nor vacuum nor keep up with the general everyday household stuff that my Mother always did.

"I need another Mary," was what he told me.

"I know Dad. What you're feeling, though, is natural in this instance..."

Residing in me is an immense sense of sadness and frustration. Frustration that I can't drop everything and care for both him and my Mother....frustration that this is coming at a time in my life when I am finally getting with the fact that, yes, I am a writer and that I can pretty much bulldoze over most of the medocrities that have held me back over the years.

Frustration that I don't have time for either and will give both a half-assed effort that may result in me being stuck in a crappy job and Dad getting hurt even more than he already is.

I spoke to my cousin at length about my Mother's condition. She and another cousin were very worried about her care and that she seemed to be spending long periods of time alone.

There is, truthfully, nothing I can do about her being alone. I did, however, reassure my cousing that Mom has good days and bad days, and that they probably saw her on a bad day.

Everyone is going to have to accept that she probably will not die at home, and that there is little they or I can do about it. She needs constant care to fight infections that might cause her more physical suffering than is necessary.

We talked more about my sister and her anger towards my father. This is troubling, considering all that he has done, materially, for my sister, yet she hates him. It is palpable and evident to everyone else in the family.

I fear for him being alone around her.

So, I gave my cousin the task to help me devise a way that we might be able to do something about my sister.

She isn't sure what she can do, but she did remind me that I need to step back from the situation and not consider my sister as such. Sister is not sisterly in any way, nor will she be an ally with me in dealing with the imminent death of my Mother.

Yet I cannot consider her an enemy either. How I might see her is as another person in this milieu who is suffering. She is a separate, distinct individual, not a sister, who is caught up in the death of her Mother (not our mother) and that she may, more than likely, spin out of control with grief and anguish when her Mother is gone.

My cousin helped me to see that my Mother and my sister's Mother are two different people. I was never my Mother's best friend. At times our relationship was quite contentious. But our relationship also had a philosophical quality to it. There were times when my Mother and I could discuss family dynamics in a way that illuminated much for me. We could discuss faith on a level that transcended the emotional.

I understood that my mother, while on some level hating her family, also loved them--and why. I understood that she may have threatened--such as disowning myself or my sister for something like divorcing--but would never follow thru, as to do so would have been like cutting off her own arm.

When I got past my childish anger at my Mother for the things she did not give me, and past my psychobabble-induced hissies over "emotional abuse," I was able to hear and to see the complexities of my Mother's life. I could appreciate her suffering and realize that mine was small in comparison.

But this isn't the Mother my sister knew.

I can honestly say that I do not totally understand my sister's Mother. They were "best friends" and had a bond I will never understand. My sister was born while my father was in France during the rebuilding after WWII. For the first two years of her life, my sister was raised by a single mother--a career girl who was a telephone operator, who bought her own house, owned her own car, and was fairly independent.

Then, my father came back....and the 1950's happened.

If y'all know anything about the social milieu of the 1950's, you will be able to appreciate when I say that my Mother's independence was totally cut off. It was "unwomanly" to work outside the home, and she had to become a housewife and be subserviant to a husband who was Military thru and thru (he went into the Civilian Conservation Corps. at 12 and from there to the Army, and the war, at 16).

All of a sudden, the mother/child idyll was disrupted by this young, handsome Warrior Male. He was the usurper, the dominator, The Enemy.

Wow. Talk about a mess.

So, my sister's understanding of things between my parents is that Mom did it all...she was the Liberated Woman before the term was coined, and everything would have been just fine if Dad never got back from The War.

Dad is the Interloper, who would have Nothing if not for my Mother (which is, quite frankly, not true--theirs was, truthfully, an economic partnership, as I found out, from both of them)

Then I came along, and that was another slap in my sister's face. I was the Little Stranger who would take Mom further away from her because I was needy.

Sorry 'bout that. If I could have been born, say, at about 10 years old, I'm sure things would have been much easier for all of us.

I am sad, though, that my sister has done little work to resolve these hurt-child issues....but, when I put it in perspective, I can understand her suffering.

I am slowly seeing her as a separate individual who is defensive, who will hate me for whatever consolation I can give, who will lash out at me and say "what do you know!" because, in her mind, I am an Outsider with no connetion to anything; who, with her fancy education, is just a know-it-all pain in the ass who has No Idea about anything and always takes the side of The Enemy.

I now understand her comment to me about some trinkets my father sent home while he was in Japan in the 1950's...when I mentioned I would like some of them, she lashed out with "why do you want them!/ you weren't even born yet! I'm going to take them and sell them at a garage sale or ebay or something."

In my sister's view, I'm just some stranger who's taking the last remnants of Her life with Her Mother. I am stealing Her Souvenirs of Her Idyll.

What can I say to ease this level of suffering? What can I do about it?

At this point in time, I feel there is little I can do. I'm like some odd-ball, in-house social worker who has to mediate the family dynamics and ameliorate the suffering as best I can. I have to be reasoned and professional in all this because I am The Outsider.

And I wonder why I am kind of numb, kind of overwhelmed, kind of depressed.

My feelings are hanging somewhere on a corner of the ceiling; and I will re-claim them, hopefully, when the time permits.

(concurrent to this, I received word the other day that I have been given the assignment of doing an article on Smith Women and Blogging for the Smith Alumni Quarterly. I have a September deadline. I will receive $0.80 per word, for 1500 words. you do the math.)