The Point: 
Being a child is rough.  We need to depend on others to keep us safe and love us since we don’t know how to do those things for ourselves.  Sometimes those around us don’t know how either and are so struggling to keep themselves safe and feeling loved that they fail to be there for us.  Then they get old and we are supposedly the adults and they, the children.  But, they make decisions which often propel us back into the same feelings and fears we had in childhood relationship with them. 

What works for me:   
Just find a way to love them and love loving them.  Love them all the way to heaven.
 

The Stories:
I decided my parents made their choices because they are who they are, so I didn’t get mad at them.  Mother has been my best friend since I was about 22 and decided she would be my best friend, requiring me to forget I worked very hard at despising her my first 22 years.  I’ll be damned if she is going to die as my enemy after I made that major investment in our relationship.  The same with Daddy.  I was his ally and still am, one month after his death.  

So, I look at the situations my parents created and my relationship with them (now her) and decide what is missing that would make her life more pleasant and which I can execute without compromising my standards.  For a while I was her self-appointed social director.  It didn’t last long because her memory wasn’t good and her filters had so fallen off that her Alzheimers regaled one of her friends with her version of why Bob and I don’t have, couldn’t, in fact, have, enough sex.  She explained how worried she is about us because Bob goes to bed at 9:30 and I after midnight.  No amount of reassuring changes her mind that going to bed together is required as foreplay.  That little incident made it unnecessary for me to call Evelyn again for a delightful luncheon in the local tea room with Mother and me.   

You can tell now why Mother is my designated best friend.  We are truthful with one another and trust that we love each other, period.  She and I still laugh at the most ridiculous and unfunny things.  For years, we spent all day Tuesday together having lunch, getting her hair cut, banking, grocery shopping, refrigerator cleaning, sorting through closets and drawers.  One Tuesday before her Very Big Stroke, I went to the restroom and found her staring at her feet upon my return.  She said, ‘Well, look what I did.  It was so dark I got two different shoes.  They are the same color and similar but not the same.’  We laughed.  She commented about her memory loss and how we can still laugh at the funny things she does in old age.  Then I realized she was wearing two right shoes.  When she stood up, both her feet pointed the same direction.  We got so hysterical that the restaurant became absolutely silent while we screamed laughter until tears ran off our faces.  I kept asking her if her left foot in the right shoe didn’t hurt, but it must not have because she forgot it was there and wore those shoes the rest of the day.   

It may be disguised, but there really is a trick here for loving when it feels impossible.  I’m addressing this as if it were your Mother as it is now my Mother.  But it can be anyone.  You find a little place where you can be who you want to be with her on your own terms and you be That Role until That Role is no longer useful – sometimes as little as a few minutes.  Then you reinvent yourself.  You find some little thing you do well that honors your relationship with her, and you do it.  Then you gather her in your arms (literally or otherwise) and hold her safely.  She can trust you to respect her and her choices.  And you know, when she is gone (one way or another), that you and she were always just you and she.  

You smile at your creativity and recognize you are giving life to a relationship that could just as well die under the strain of angst.  Why let it do that?  Angst begets regret begets pain begets…..  Just love her.

 

 

 

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