I Have No Response to That

[akirlu]

Over the years, I've done a lot of work to reclaim my emotions to the point where I feel them in the moment, and show them as I feel them, rather than stuffing them down so deep that I don't even quite notice them go by. But clearly, I still have some way to go.

I got an e-mail late last night from my dad. My mother has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. As my dad notes, in some sense, this is not a surprise. At various times alcohol has been one of my mother's primary and heavily leaned-upon means of self-medicating her bi-polar disorder (she's a poor responder to lithium, you see). Dad goes on to say that they don't know how bad it is, yet. They've got a new primary care doc, and he hasn't been at all forthcoming with details. Dad's going in to see him later in the month, and plans to pump him for information then. Mom, meanwhile is both depressed and physically debilitated; apparently her energy levels are lower even than they were in March.

I have no idea how I feel about this. I really don't. Well, I'm in denial, I know that much. My mother is eternal and unchanging. She has to be. As a child I adored and worshipped her, and had night terrors that she might someday grow old and die. But she and I have had a rather rocky relationship ever since I moved out of the house and became a separate person. At one point I had to cauterize my responses to her criticism purely out of self defense. Lately she's been working very hard at showing how much she loves me, and leaving off with the criticism, but I have not been so quick to respond with letting down my guard. I have a very deep-rooted cringe response still. Now I need to peel off the cautery scars and figure out what the hell is down there under them. Intellectually I know I must love my mother. Just as I know there must be something like terror at the thought of her mortality. I really thought I had forever to recover from the years that hurt too much. I may not have much time at all, as it turns out.

Ah, look. I appear to be crying. Well, that's a start.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that. Dealing with the sudden realisation that parents are mortal is probably the hardest thing that adult can have to deal with.

If you want a neutral shoulder drop me a line - I'll be back in town in June and Vegas next week.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Oof.

I think that even if you hadn't been in the habit of stuffing your emotions, this one would fall under the "stunned and unable to react immediately" category.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I wish you well on this particular journey of discovery, and I hope you and your mother find some peace together.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I agree with trinker that this is the kind of stunning news that it's hard (and probably a good thing) not to have an immediate reaction to, and with tamiam that crying is good.

I also vote for finding peace with your mom -- I was able to do that before she died, and I think it made everything easier for the both of us.

So I guess this is just a big elaborate ditto from me. Hah! Good luck to you and your mother.

[missfairchild.livejournal.com]

Thinking of you all. I can't yet imagine how hard this must be, but I wish you strength to work through it.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I hope you find the path you're looking for.

A branch of the family was patriarched by an uncle we didn't much care for. When he decided to trade in his wife, we were happy not to call him a relative any more. Some years later, he was trying to get back together with his kids, and I happened to be living in the same town with one of them. He asked what I thought he should do, and I kind of shrugged and said, well, we never liked him, but he's your dad and there won't be another, and then I kind of trailed off. Ex-Unc managed to reconcile with the kids, and be a burden to some of them off and on before he died. I think they are glad they'd let him back. He was no bargain, but they didn't have to feel bad about anything they'd done.

This is not advice, merely incontinent nostalgia. I have no idea in the world how any of that maps to you. I put off posting it because I was too chicken to dive in first with my ham-handed sympathy.

I wish I could finish with something non-mawkish about good thoughts and stuff, but all I can find are well-meant cliches. (I rejoined RASFF because you did -- could that count?}

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

It's true that you have to love your mother, even if you hate her, but you don't have to like her in any case. It sounds as though you (moving from the general you to the particular you, here) don't hate your actual personal mother, and there's the possibility that you might like parts of her in controlled doses, given time.

We are none of us given time. What we have is enough, nevertheless. It really is; it has to be. Do the best you can with it. Your particular best is damn fine.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You know how to find me. I have an ambivalent fondness for my mother, but you know that, and I'd be gobsmacked to find out she was in peril of, even relatively, imminent demise.

And, for all that it's no comfort, there's nothing you can do about it. Heck, in some ways (and this is colder comfort) this might be better than were she to just die in a sudden moment of coronary weakness.

And what Kate said, you do all right; when you get a chance to ponder.

TK

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Hugs. I love you.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

The mother/daughter relationship may be the most fraught we have. I've begun to wonder myself if my emotional distance from my parents is going to survive their last illnesses.

So um, good luck I guess.

MKK

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

I see some similarities in how you feel about your mom to how I feel about mine, and some differences, of course. I felt both a huge dependency on making sure she was okay after my father died (when I was a teenager) and an enormous need to separate myself from her.

My dad died very suddenly; Mom will go on for a long time yet, gradually falling apart at the seams, like the rest of her sisters. But I keep expecting the first shoe of desperate illness to drop.

My sympathy and best wishes, of course, are yours.