Saturday, April 24, 2010
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Life
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About 25 years ago I made beaded jewelry as a hobby. Like most hobbyists, I had difficulty selling my creations. However, my hobby had the unexpected effect of bringing me closer to my mother. I mailed a package of my designs to her, and she put them out in the cafeteria at her job, and they sold. After that I sent all my jewelry to my mother, and she always sold it without a problem. I also started to visit her a little more often. During one visit we went to a bead warehouse in Providence and bought a lot of beautiful beads. It was a lot of fun.
Around that time she purchased a string of particularly beautiful Czech beads for herself. They were really quite lovely, and I was very envious of her for having them, though the beads were worth only a few dollars. There was an unusual quality to the beads, and I coveted them like crazy.
Shortly after that she retired, and I moved to another state and stopped making jewelry, and our relationship went back to the tension-filled thing that it had been before. We even became estranged, and I didn't visit her for about ten years. Ultimately she developed dementia, and in 2007 I moved to her home town to take care of her.
For 2-1/2 years I visited her about five times a week (she also had aides visiting her, so she was getting enough help). She was a shell of her former self, and in many ways she seemed like an entirely different person. During those 2-1/2 years she lost much of her remaining memory. Watching her lose her memory made me realize that memory is the foundation of identity. If we forget our past, then we forget who we are. Her home had always been a showcase of beautiful antiques, but towards the end she couldn't remember how she acquired them (or that she had refinished and reupholstered most of them). She once looked at her collection of 200-year-old Japanese prints (which she had framed herself) and wondered who it was who had collected them all.
During my many visits she would sometimes need something that I would have to search the house for. During one of those searches, I found those lovely beads. They looked just as lovely as they had 25 years earlier, and I still coveted them. Finally, in January of this year, my mother was moved into an assisted-living facility in another state. By the time she was moved, she had lost so much mental function that she could no longer operate any of the appliances in the house -- but she still had enough intelligence to object to being taken from her home!
My mother's slow slide into idiocy was disturbing to watch. When I first moved here, she could still make coffee, use the microwave, listen to music on the stereo, and watch the TV. Operating the stereo was the first skill to go. After that, she forgot how to make coffee. She still remembered how to use the microwave, but she lost her judgement about how long to cook things. Operating the TV remote was the last skill to go. She knew how to press the on/off button, but she couldn't remember how to change channels or adjust the volume. Her hearing and comprehension were failing also, so even when she watched, she couldn't understand what she was seeing and hearing.
Her ability to comprehend what she was reading also slipped. Reading had been her most active hobby. For much of her life she had read a book a week. She also got the newspaper every day, and reading it in the morning was an important ritual for her. She subscribed to the magazine Archeology, and she loved learning about man's history (as do I). During our visits she started to complain that the articles made no sense. Never having been willing to admit that her mind was slipping, she blamed the writers for writing poorly. Eventually she stopped reading altogether, and she would spend hours just daydreaming, staring at the ceiling. Without the ability to hear or comprehend, all of her normal activities became unrewarding, and she started to sleep for long hours.
The day after she left to go into assisted living, I used my key to enter her house, and I took that string of beads that I had coveted. I felt like a thief, though I really wasn't. Her possessions are now being divided up among her children, and those beads would have gone to me anyway. Even so, the irony of the situation was overwhelming. Simply by outliving her, I had gotten something of hers that I had wanted. Knowing that she had once loved the beads, I felt like I had stolen part of her identity. Yet if I had shown them to her in her final year at home, she wouldn't have remembered them.
Now that I own the beads, they don't seem so special; I have bought and sold more beautiful beads in the years that I've been in the jewelry business. What made them so special was that I couldn't have them. Now that I have them, they are so much less important to me than the intelligent mother that I lost. I would give a ton of them to have my mother back.
Actually, this story has ironies that I haven't mentioned. She wasn't a very good mother. She had seven children because she enjoyed sex, and because her birth control often failed (at a time when abortion was illegal), but she didn't have enough love for seven kids. I was her least-favorite child, and she never wanted to be close to me, except for that time when I was making jewelry. She lived in Providence at the time, and when I moved to Providence in my 30's, she seemed irritated to have me around so much. Strangely, it was her dementia that brought us together again, because it caused her to forget our history. Yet the closeness was unrewarding because she brought little intelligence to the relationship. What I really long for isn't the mother that I lost, but the mother I never had -- the loving, supportive, tolerant mother that my mother never was. It is an irony of my life that when I long for the past, I don't long for the life that I lived, but for the life that I wish I had lived -- which is perhaps why I don't long for the past very often. I'm lucky in a way. The world is full of people who long for the excitement and pleasure of their youth. It must be very painful to have had a glorious youth, and then to have lost it.
There are still more ironies. She always viewed me as something of a failure because I couldn't hold a job or make a career for myself. By the time I did become a success at running my own internet business, she was too demented to appreciate it. I brought her to the local library to show her my online store on their computer, but she didn't understand what she was seeing. Thus, her dementia robbed me of the satisfaction of showing her that I was not a failure after all. Yet -- and here is yet another irony -- if she had had all her intelligence, she would still have considered me to be a failure because my internet business didn't make me the huge salaries that several of my brothers were making. There's no way to win, is there?
Life is too long and too short, all at the same time. In twenty years, after I am dead or in a facility, someone else will open my drawer and take those beads. Those beads will probably outlast me, and they may outlast all of us.
Around that time she purchased a string of particularly beautiful Czech beads for herself. They were really quite lovely, and I was very envious of her for having them, though the beads were worth only a few dollars. There was an unusual quality to the beads, and I coveted them like crazy.
Shortly after that she retired, and I moved to another state and stopped making jewelry, and our relationship went back to the tension-filled thing that it had been before. We even became estranged, and I didn't visit her for about ten years. Ultimately she developed dementia, and in 2007 I moved to her home town to take care of her.
For 2-1/2 years I visited her about five times a week (she also had aides visiting her, so she was getting enough help). She was a shell of her former self, and in many ways she seemed like an entirely different person. During those 2-1/2 years she lost much of her remaining memory. Watching her lose her memory made me realize that memory is the foundation of identity. If we forget our past, then we forget who we are. Her home had always been a showcase of beautiful antiques, but towards the end she couldn't remember how she acquired them (or that she had refinished and reupholstered most of them). She once looked at her collection of 200-year-old Japanese prints (which she had framed herself) and wondered who it was who had collected them all.
During my many visits she would sometimes need something that I would have to search the house for. During one of those searches, I found those lovely beads. They looked just as lovely as they had 25 years earlier, and I still coveted them. Finally, in January of this year, my mother was moved into an assisted-living facility in another state. By the time she was moved, she had lost so much mental function that she could no longer operate any of the appliances in the house -- but she still had enough intelligence to object to being taken from her home!
My mother's slow slide into idiocy was disturbing to watch. When I first moved here, she could still make coffee, use the microwave, listen to music on the stereo, and watch the TV. Operating the stereo was the first skill to go. After that, she forgot how to make coffee. She still remembered how to use the microwave, but she lost her judgement about how long to cook things. Operating the TV remote was the last skill to go. She knew how to press the on/off button, but she couldn't remember how to change channels or adjust the volume. Her hearing and comprehension were failing also, so even when she watched, she couldn't understand what she was seeing and hearing.
Her ability to comprehend what she was reading also slipped. Reading had been her most active hobby. For much of her life she had read a book a week. She also got the newspaper every day, and reading it in the morning was an important ritual for her. She subscribed to the magazine Archeology, and she loved learning about man's history (as do I). During our visits she started to complain that the articles made no sense. Never having been willing to admit that her mind was slipping, she blamed the writers for writing poorly. Eventually she stopped reading altogether, and she would spend hours just daydreaming, staring at the ceiling. Without the ability to hear or comprehend, all of her normal activities became unrewarding, and she started to sleep for long hours.
The day after she left to go into assisted living, I used my key to enter her house, and I took that string of beads that I had coveted. I felt like a thief, though I really wasn't. Her possessions are now being divided up among her children, and those beads would have gone to me anyway. Even so, the irony of the situation was overwhelming. Simply by outliving her, I had gotten something of hers that I had wanted. Knowing that she had once loved the beads, I felt like I had stolen part of her identity. Yet if I had shown them to her in her final year at home, she wouldn't have remembered them.
Now that I own the beads, they don't seem so special; I have bought and sold more beautiful beads in the years that I've been in the jewelry business. What made them so special was that I couldn't have them. Now that I have them, they are so much less important to me than the intelligent mother that I lost. I would give a ton of them to have my mother back.
Actually, this story has ironies that I haven't mentioned. She wasn't a very good mother. She had seven children because she enjoyed sex, and because her birth control often failed (at a time when abortion was illegal), but she didn't have enough love for seven kids. I was her least-favorite child, and she never wanted to be close to me, except for that time when I was making jewelry. She lived in Providence at the time, and when I moved to Providence in my 30's, she seemed irritated to have me around so much. Strangely, it was her dementia that brought us together again, because it caused her to forget our history. Yet the closeness was unrewarding because she brought little intelligence to the relationship. What I really long for isn't the mother that I lost, but the mother I never had -- the loving, supportive, tolerant mother that my mother never was. It is an irony of my life that when I long for the past, I don't long for the life that I lived, but for the life that I wish I had lived -- which is perhaps why I don't long for the past very often. I'm lucky in a way. The world is full of people who long for the excitement and pleasure of their youth. It must be very painful to have had a glorious youth, and then to have lost it.
There are still more ironies. She always viewed me as something of a failure because I couldn't hold a job or make a career for myself. By the time I did become a success at running my own internet business, she was too demented to appreciate it. I brought her to the local library to show her my online store on their computer, but she didn't understand what she was seeing. Thus, her dementia robbed me of the satisfaction of showing her that I was not a failure after all. Yet -- and here is yet another irony -- if she had had all her intelligence, she would still have considered me to be a failure because my internet business didn't make me the huge salaries that several of my brothers were making. There's no way to win, is there?
Life is too long and too short, all at the same time. In twenty years, after I am dead or in a facility, someone else will open my drawer and take those beads. Those beads will probably outlast me, and they may outlast all of us.
2 comments:
I am not sure how I stumbled upon your blog... but I am very taken with this story. It is beautifully written. I have been writing about my wish that my father had been a different man, my wish that we could have had a different relationship--than the painful one he created. Your words in the second to last paragraph, summed up in words what I have been struggling to understand in my heart (about my father-daughter relationship). Thanks for sharing your story.
Thank you for your kind words! My mother died four months after I wrote this.
[Note: I made revisions to the article. The paragraph that Terri Mando was referring to is now the third-to-last paragraph.]
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