The Odd Duckling

Mother-dear is dying and I want to tell somebody about it. I have a gnawing in my guts because she is so feeble. It is hard to believe that no family and none of her many friends are around to hear my complaint as she fades from life. My muddled thinking, plus feelings of guilt tend to color my mood darkly. I think family and friends would be here but-for my personal standoffishness. I think it's all my fault because I am a notorious stickler about minding my own beeswax. I am in my 70’s. I’ve learned that the last thing I want to do is manage your life and mine too.

I must remember that this situation is not about me. It is all about her. She couldn't pick her children, but the missing throng of hangers-on are 100% hers. She chose them and now they have deserted her. My sister had multiple heart attacks last year, and that more or less excuses her absence from the bedside of Mother-dear. Brother Bob is the medical power of attorney.

He is useless or all but useless. When things are not right he makes noise (a lot of noise) to the higher-ups. When he can buttonhole a maid he berates and brow beats. He wants me to be more like him and starts getting into my face about it. His heavy handed approach might help, but I don't trust it to actually get things done. He has been doing it for years now but he is the only one who thinks it works.

I see him creating his own brand of sycophancy in others. I see his wife giving him the "yes, sir; right away, sir" treatment. People who will accept bullying from him secretly delight in ye olde art of back-stabbing: Et Tu, Brute. He steadfastly believes in the 'squeaky wheel' theory, no matter how dysfunctional our entrenched bicameral political structure demonstrates the error of that theory.

I am at Green Gables nursing home at 5:00 p.m. daily to help Mother eat. I don't miss. If I'm not there, the poor dear will not get food from the plate to her lips with enough goo left on the spoon to feed ants. I had a family emergency and left town for 20 days. When I returned she (already 99 years frail) had become shockingly skeletal, sunken-eyed and self confessed, "I’m just so hungry".

I am teary eyed these days, but who can I get mad at? For all the big noise that brother Bob is making for 5 years now, mom can starve for her 7G's a month. Sometimes you simply have to hoist the cudgel and get-er-done. That is the simple truth of the matter that I learned from Mother.

It irks me that none of her old crowd is around. They are MIA, decidedly not present. Day after day there is no evidence of other visitors when I arrive. The odd box of candy or fresh flowers sitting on her counter are absent. There only is my little 99 years and 5 months old mom slumped in a wheelchair and she is, "just so hungry".

She continually has her head nearly in her lap, her thin gray hair flying wispy and Einstein like about her head. All of her nice lounging wear is disappeared. She is draped in hospital gowns or someone else's ill fitting garb. Ever present diapers. It is a sad situation. How could this have happened at all, and why has it happened to my sweet Mother-dear.

She was an exceptionally popular local personality just 10 years back. A much revered member of the local religious establishment. She is largely abandoned at this time as she enters stage-right for what is most clearly her final performance. I think that the idea about life being a performance is at the bottom of the maltreatment that mom must endure.

I know, I know! I am a harsh realist. I always pegged mom's crew as phony, but even then I refused to judge them because mom taught us better. I quietly dismissed their behavior as fakery, but then again who was I to judge. I did not mind so much because that was mom's lifestyle too. I feel guilty now. I have no precise idea why I feel guilty but I do. I kept hoping she was happy, but all the folderol surrounding her did not make me hopeful.

Bless my Mother's pea-picking heart because she is a master of disguises herself. Mind you now, being less than "real" is not as bad as being an ax murderer. Many people spend their entire 70 year stint being fakirs in this modern world.

I do however bare witness that the down side of small stage fame is brutal. I think it hurts those whom at some point have imagined themselves at the center of the small stage. When you can no longer "fake the funk" in efforts to gain center stage position, people move on from you. I imagine that it is the same thing that happens to the aging rock star or past their prime super model.

I'm reasonably certain that this is what has happened to Mother-dear. Her so called friends of 50 years or more have simply moved on to another pacesetter. I dare to say that they probably are talking badly about her while I write this lamentation. My sentiments say more about them than her.

You might think I was describing fundamentally bad folks. I am not. They are good folks in so many productive and laudable ways. They are hard working, big spenders who flaunt it because they've got it; or at least they get some big boost from convincing themselves and others about the genuineness of their ever present vivacity. They don't really care is what I think. Deep down inside, they don't care at all. Maybe I feel guilty because I am being such a harsh judge?

It is as a part of their game of pretense, that these folks do many good works and support charitable causes. The good works and charitable aspects of their very public performances are the demonstrably caring aspects of their personas. These folks are a much needed and socially productive part of all things in our community. Then there is the dark side of their play acting. These are the same people whom will put their mother in an old folks' home to forget about them. Their fault shows as a lack of genuine concern and caring. They lack authenticity.

They are modern day Pharisees as described in the good book by Lord Jesus. And now my mom is in Green Gables nursing home! How did they get their clutches onto her? This is not what mother wanted for herself! She did not want this for anybody. I do recall her criticizing such folks when she was young, beautiful and fully aware of a personality that she could identify as 'herself'.

None of my siblings wanted a nursing home for mom. I never dreamed she would demand such a demoralizing existence. I suspect she was not so much her well-centered self when she made the decision (indeed demanded the right) to allow strangers to care for her. She has seen enough folks treated badly in "old folks' homes" and other public or private institutions. Why did she not trust her children? How did we become so unrecognizable to her as extensions of herself?

She did not trust any of us to make intelligent decisions for her. Our advice was ignored. It was rejected unceremoniously and outright. She has changed her final papers and powers of attorney several times in the last 10 years. We have no idea about who is in charge and supposed to do whatever. She was so much the boss of us that no one could take control and make the hard choices for her when the chips were down.

At 94 years old she broke a hip, and underwent several hours of surgery. After the anesthesia she has never been the same old girl. Until the hip replacement she was a veritable "Julia Child" in the kitchen and everywhere else. She blew in and out of life's scenarios and immediately seized control of every situation. Mother-dear always got the job that needed doing completed in memorable fashion. I noticed (or thought I noticed) that she became addicted to the praise that followed these successful forays into leadership adventures.

Her church community called upon her when they needed the big guns to 'get-er-done' no matter the size of the task. In a way she was used and became the victim of personal vainglory. I wonder where we, her children, went wrong. Did she not feel loved enough? I hear myself say these harsh things. I can easily imagine that even I would turn to strangers for care rather than to a son like me. Have I said I feel guilty.

Mother-dear cared for dad's mom and her own mom in their own apartments right to the end. That's how our family did things. There is no way that one of my grandparents generation would be permitted to die in other than their own bed.

When my grandfather decided that 95 years was enough, he asked the Lord to take him. No depression or infirmity was involved. He was just old enough to understand that it was time to hit the dusty trail, heading for the big Ponderosa in the sky.

"I've asked the good Lord to take me, boys. Don't nothing hurt, but I have used it all up and it is time to go. I expect to be gone by Christmas -- New Year's at the latest".

He transitioned this life on December 29th, 1977. That's how we do things! We die at home surrounded by large family, all of whom are sitting randomly perched for days waiting for the big announcement that this one or that one has finally given up the ghost. Upon hearing the news we breathe a big breath simultaneously, wipe our eyes and head for our individual automobiles. That's how we do it. I should say that's how we used to do it.

Have times changed that much in less than a generation? There is no need for me to be coy about this matter. Of course things change! What kind of humongous rube does not recognize that change is constant. Such a person is a liar, plainly and simply, he or she is lying. I mean the ringing of a telephone used to startle my grandmother. Times' have changed. These days one takes a mobile device everywhere. You house it next to your boob or in a pants pocket. It takes pictures for you, falls down rabbit holes with you and plays music of your personal choosing as you descend.

It is too bad that the contraptions of modernity cannot make Mother feel loved. If the mobile device could do for her what she did for so many others, my pangs of conscience would be significantly less. How do you make someone feel loved to the extent that they will trust you to care for them when they no longer can do it for themselves.

I am guessing of course, but is that what happened to my Mother. Did she feel so unloved that she simply drifted away from us. She couldn't trust what she was getting from those closest to her, and she drifted away from us. Maybe it is we that lost track of her. Modern society is making 'we the people' more reliant on society's smooth functioning than upon the well-being of one another. I am certain we are not better off as a result of this fundamental change in social relationship structure.

At first it was the pursuit of higher education, and a new found freedom it gave to her that coaxed Mother from our home. She obtained a Doctorate of Divinity in her sixties, a Master Degree in early childhood development, in her fifties, an undergraduate teaching Baccalaureate in her forties and an Associate of Arts and High School Diploma in her thirties. She never finished high school until I was in high school. She wanted to tend her children first.

She gained a lot of herself in those educational pursuits, but did she loose her soul in the process. She out-grew dad and his patriarchal ceremonies. Her marriage of 40+ years finally failed. I guess that is a question that modernity thrusts upon all of us at this point. The positive evolution of sentient beings is informally in question. We have to decide if modernity is worth the costs it imposes upon its constituents.

Brother Bob poo-poo's my over-thinking of this situation. However, for me Mother's condition deserves a proper inquiry. If her situation is symbolic of our larger social milieu, I can accept that fact far easier than being the proximate cause of the situation. Either way I look at it, somebody needs to know why poorly performing strangers are caring for my Mother-dear. I guess that it is me that needs to understand this situation when you get right down to it. For my answer, I ask myself whether she would do it all over again. What would mother do the second time around?

I honestly think that she would go for it. I say aloud that she would put the needle on repeat and go for it again. She would escape a mediocre marriage to obtain a quality education to help those who needed the help most. That's her idea of real adventure. My Mother has guts.

When I was a lazy high schooler, I asked her why all the going to school business was necessary at her age. She told me that women, children, aged and otherwise infirm people needed help. So I am positive that she would do it all again. She would put on her splendid smile, determined to 'be the change' she wanted for the world. She would do it for a chance to make life better through direct action.

Hands on caring is what Mother-dear has believed all of her life, so I guess I get it naturally.There is nothing simple or easy about compassionate change. A poster at the gym reads: Old Age Is Not For Sissies.

I am glad to have considered my Mother's condition 'out loud', and so I thank you for listening. I can hear her saying, "Boy, stop that sniveling and go take back your fire truck. Toys do not grow on trees. Now get going." Yep. I definitely feel better now while remembering her being young, strong and determined.

Mother-dear wanted her freedom. It is that complicated, and yet it is that simple. As a woman and as a citizen she needed freedom to participate in the betterment of herself and the society that tried to cancel her. I am like her, I think. Sometimes you simply have to hoist the cudgel to get-er-done. That is a simple truth that I learned from my Mother. Thanks sweetie. I love you more.