As I drifted away in thought, looking at the squirrels playfully chasing each other on my front lawn, I felt no emotion. My mom has just passed — everything in life seemed unimportant; the world has stopped. Happiness was distant and unreachable.
It is as if I was here, but not. I felt like I was going through the emotions of daily life but had a disconnect to it. Cliche, I know. But, for me, there was an overwhelming realization that my childhood security was gone. Mom, who cradled me in her arms when I was sick, as well as being my confidant, and my sounding board, was gone. I cried, knowing that I would no longer hear her voice giving me advice. Whether good or bad, she loved me unconditionally – for when it really mattered most, she was there – to help weather the emotional storms.
My husband devotedly has been by my side during my grieving process, yet the depth of my grief was all absorbing, thereby creating a rift between us. I refused to allow anyone in, including him –the only one who has been the most supportive during this grieving process. Yet, I was determined to grieve the life I had with my mother alone; as the relationship that I had with her was exclusively mine. A life deeply bound, not only by my childhood, or the 10 years of taking care of her at home, but also with a magical and soulful connection to her now that she is gone, –which cannot be felt or understood by anyone else.
Care-giving Was Not In My Life Plans
The care, and then the untimely and angered death of my mother, quickly brought to the forefront I and my husband’s own life ending fears. We chatted for endless hours on how the system failed her and how the much her children meant to her in her time of need. My care-giving role with my mother was not something that I applied for – it was something that slowly progressed over the years. It started off with small things like, “when you are at the store pick me up a carton of milk” to “can you vacuum the rug before you leave”. As years passed, I found myself sorting out moms meds and making sure she went to all of her doctors appointments. Still more years and I found myself counseling her on daily activities, paying bills, comforting her on her independence loss struggles, and making sure that she ate and cleaned herself. Eventually I quit my job to take care of her full time.
It just happened, without forethought – it was as natural as breathing. I took the lead and became in charge of my moms emotional, health and financial well being and took on the serious roll of making sure that she was not taken advantage of by the health care industry or by the current societal social isolation craze of COVID.
Being the first born and a female, there was an unsaid and underlying expression of expectation that I would take on this care-taking role in the future. However, it was not always so apparent to me when I was younger. I was very independent and most often went my own way throughout life not wanting anything to do with my parents. Visiting her and my dad once every so often was the norm – and I was happy with that. Later in life, this youthful independent excursion became a sore subject with my siblings, as I now know that they often felt a sense of abandonment. It seems that they counted on me more than I realized. This issue often came to the forefront at family gatherings when I tried to rally “the troops” into helping to care for our mom. “Lori you were never there.” “Lori you were off having fun and left us alone”. True some of it was sibling pet peeves, but when it really came down to it, I was the one who could handle the bulk of our mother’s extensive handicap and emotional needs later in her life.
An Emotional Roller Coaster
Mom, who was born in 1940, became known as “Plucky Patty” due to her uncanny ability of being “high spirited and cheerful” in the most extreme of circumstances. She was most proud of her ability to live a ‘normal’ life after her leg was amputated at the young age of 7 in 1947. Her words, not mine. She wanted to be normal so bad that later in life, when she could no-longer do things we take for granted, and her body began to breakdown, mom often neglected herself and left others in the dark about her true medical and emotional needs. Mom was always good at hiding her most inner feelings and medical needs. The once active and spitfire girl began to fade and mom became depressed and wheelchair bound, only to end up in extreme daily pain from severe arthritis in her hands, arms, feet, back, legs and neck.
As I look back to those care-giving years spent with my mother, I sadly realized that I denied my husband the greatest of possibilities – children. This doubled my grief and created emotional storms between my husband and I, along with anger issues with other family members; which, given time, I hope to recover from. However, there still lies an underlying sadness on all sides– not only towards each other by decisions that were made, but also towards the loss of children and a future that will never be.
Moms care-taking created an emotional roller coaster. In the first place, full time care of an elderly parent takes a toll on a caretakers health and mental well-being. There was no way to hold town a full time job outside of care-giving.
When I first started taking care of mom I lacked important information about her health and medical needs. I had to spend hours researching her disease, looking over her medical records, looking up dietary needs and making special dinners that were balanced. I talked with and went to all of her doctors appointments – making sure she was not dismissed or misunderstood. Often times I found doctors prescribed medications that interacted with her other health issues – which I had to often bring to light (after researching each). For example; prescribing drugs that would aggravate her kidney disease – because they did not check her history before prescribing. I also had to fight for her rights to refuse the COVID shots as the doctors were pushing it – even without it being tested with the elderly population. It was amazing how little the doctors know about elder care. However, we did finally found one, who was a godsend. With others concerns were often ignored for most elderly patients. Most times it was pop another pill, sit them in a chair and let them be. Yep, that just about covers it. Most times for me it was fighting the system to get the care that mom wanted and needed.
Secondly, taking care of my mom absorbed me completely. It was a full time job; one that had me on autopilot. I lived, breathed and spent all of my time providing care to my mom; one crisis to another, playing games with her to keep her active and happy and counseling her so she does not become depressed. I felt my life was on hold and everything was up in the air because of my care-giving responsibilities. But I did not know how to stop or balance out the care-taking role with my mom with my own husband/family needs. So, I often came home after a long day at moms mentally and physically exhausted. Only to start another day of the same care tomorrow. It wasn’t so much a conscious choice, but one driven by unconditional love of my mom, along with her wishes to remain at home, the circumstances of me working remotely, and not having any kids at the time. It was also in my siblings persuasive voice of needing to relieve themselves of the enormous task in taking care of our mother by psychologically persuading me to do it with statements like, “you don’t have any kids, so you can do it.”, “you have no responsibilities and I do …” or “you owe us”. Being the oldest and a caretaker, did not help my situation, as my brothers and sisters could just pickup and leave, expecting me to pickup the slack.
Thirdly, it wasn’t something that happened overnight. My care-giving tasks and responsibilities increase with time. At the time, I wanted to do it all – I felt I had to. But felt there was no recognition for such an act, unappreciated with all of my efforts – by my husband, and other family members.
My natural instincts was a desire to “be everything” with my mom. Yet by doing so, it resulted with me giving up my own life, resulting in physical health decline and emotional distress. The stress of making the right choices in another one’s care was tremendous. Especially someone that you deeply love, that is depending on you and is a parent. Adding to the stress was the anger between my husband and I, and my siblings and I and the anger between my siblings and my husband. Main goal was to keep all of this stress away from my mother – which created more stress.
Not once, did I ask for help. I just plowed away and kept going. Don’t ask me how, I just did.
Working Through the Grief
So now, months after her death, and in reflection, there is a timely concern about the future care of my husband and I when we have no children and no support group. Yes, believe it or not, we survived. Anxiety over the future has now gotten us asking the most important of questions, ‘what is going to happen to us as we get older and age’ and ‘who is going to be there and act in our interests when we need help the most’. Mom had me. But again the fault of my mother’s care-taking cutting away at the possibilities for my own family and our future care is undeniably mine. There is no guilt for taking care of her, but only in that it let it so absorb me that I sacrificed my own family and my future for her care. Now I have to live with this sacrifice.
Undeniably, there are many feelings that still overwhelm me; the loss of identity, self punishment, regret, betrayal, rejection, un-surety, and loss of future all add to the grief. Each day feels like I just exist. Where do I fit in? Who am I? What do I do with my life? How do I make an impact? Who is going to be speaking up for me when I get old?
My mother had four children – proud of each and every one of them. At times I hear how people just want to have abortions and and get rid of children – using it as a contraceptive. I don’t think they realize that they are losing their chance for a support group later on in life. How disposable children seem at times. But how much I would give to have at least one. Women with children do not know how special they are to have children.
So, in 30 years, if I am a widow, who will really care about me to look after my interests. My brothers and I are strained and my sister and I are opposites in our health care thinking, nieces and nephews are non-existent. There is no one who will care about me. Especially now, during the COVID scare – creating unnecessary issues of loneliness and isolation in the lives of our elderly populations.
End of Part I.