Blog
29.3.15
My mother and I go through our lives, now, in a kind of
dreamy haze. Each day plods by the same
as all the others. Everything is such an
effort for Mum. Just getting out of bed,
washed, dressed and up to the living room into her chair, is a major part of
the day. A shower day, Mondays and
Fridays, has to be planned for and courage summoned. The drainage from that bathroom is all wrong,
so we can’t make it into a wet-room, all on one level, so Mum has a scary step
up and step down from the shower. She
lies in bed first thing after I go into her room in the morning, doing her
breathing physio exercises. These exhaust
her so much, she needs a break before attempting to get up.
We both pass our lives in a dream. She watches telly, listens to music while
dozing, listens to her audio book when she feels up to it. I dream of the
future, looking forward to the new phase of my life, but dreading all that I’ll
have to go through to get there.
In some ways it’s an easy life, in spite of the frustration
and lack of freedom. Compared to the
anxiety over lack of money that blanketed my life before I moved in with Mother
and choked any pleasure I could get, this relative financial comfort is such a
relief. Mum isn’t well-off. Her pension, (widow’s pension from Dad’s
scheme, basic state pension and attendance allowance) is not high when compared
with an average family income, but the fact that there is no mortgage or rent
to pay means that compared to a younger family living on the same income, she
is quite comfortable. It is a relief no
to have that fear from not having enough to get by each month, but I hope I don’t
lose my skills at living on very little, for when I am on my own again. As long as I can live rent- and mortgage-free
in the future, I think I’ll be ok.
But I ask myself, is this all that life is? We grow up, beget children, then just
maintain ourselves, keep comfortable, potter along, then slowly fade out and
finally die.
I see life as continuous growing and becoming. I feel, in spite of the restrictions of my
present life, that inside I am coming into the fullness of myself. I am deepening and grounding myself, and all
this is preparation for the next stage, where I will be ready to build something,
and add something into the whole. I’ve
always tried to live my life by putting something back into the world , but in
the past I’ve done it in a way that sacrificed myself, and dissipated my energy
trying to meet everyone else’s needs rather than my own. I don’t mean that I’m going to just live for
myself in future. I can’t see any point
in that. What reason is there for us to
be here, as embodied beings on the Earth, if not to try to add into the
whole? But I think I have learned to find
some balance with my needs and others’. This
time with Mother is helping with that as I have to keep my boundaries firm with
her, and I find it easier to do that than I’ve ever done in relationships.
I hope that when I reach the stage Mum is at, of being too
frail to do much physically, of needing to be very still and quiet, that I
could still expand and grow in spirit.
Still be connected, come into deeper connection with Spirit. But this can only happen if I’ve developed a
spiritual practice before I get to that stage – I think. The foundations need to be laid, and to become
habitual. I’m longing to get back to
that. I need my own space for it and it’s
been too many years, decades even, since I’ve had that. You can’t do your thing if you are living
with someone who is hostile to it or just doesn’t get it.
Mum was trying to do this too, in her own way. She said she thought being on her own and
being older would be a time when she could get closer to God. Her way of doing it was to read the Bible
every day. But really, what is there to
get out of that bizarre collection of grotesque, tedious and very occasionally
sublime writings? There are too many
ugly things in the Bible, even the psalms and other passages that are
reflections on relationship with God, usually end up calling down curses on
their enemies or something like that. No
wonder Mum has given up, even though I did get her an audio version.
For Mum, her great achievement in life was having us. She doesn’t really see herself as anything in
her own right. But we can’t all say we
are here just to give birth to the next generation. It calls into question what is the point of
it all? At some point someone’s children
have to actually do something, apart from just begetting the next
generation. If you live your life only
through others, you never develop your own centre.
This takes me back to my puzzlement at not really having any
particular feelings of connection with Mum.
I mean, I can feel a sort of impersonal compassion and caring for her,
or impatient, or disgusted by her coughing up gunge from her lungs, I can feel
stifled by the slow round of toileting and meals, I can feel afraid of what it’s
going to be like at the end, or anxious when I’m on a day off and I don’t know
if the carers are doing their job. But I’m puzzled by the lack of any sense of
connection with this woman who I’ve known all my life and from whom I have half
my DNA. But now I wonder if it’s because
– on a deep, deep level – there is nothing actually to connect with. How can there be if she has such a vague,
vestigial sense of self? If she sees
herself solely as someone’s wife and the mother of her four children? Only
someone in relation to others, a grandmother and great-grandmother.
Maybe this aspect of her is just more pronounced now, even
though she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or anything like that, she is kind of
fading out anyway. Do we all go like
this?
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