Mom
My mother turns 91-years old tomorrow. While she’s still fairly sharp, she’s definitely showing the signs of decline including the recent episode of compression fracture due to osteoporosis. She lives alone in a small apartment where she moved in with my late father 25 years ago after downsizing from a house. Thankfully, my older brother lives in the same building directly above her unit. He checks on her every day, but Mom complains he’s not much of a company.
Having grown up in a culture of “filial piety,” where children are expected to take care of the aging parent, I certainly struggle with the fact that I’m not around to help her on a daily basis. Sense of guilt definitely arises when she tells me all the issues she’s having in her life, like she can’t figure out how to change her password for the online grocery site. I try to help by communicating to the care manager, who dispatches the care givers that Mom is eligible of receiving. I’m so grateful I have a few girlfriends there, who are willing to help out by visiting or talking to her on the phone.
I keep telling her I’m coming to help, yet the reality is that I’m so engulfed in trying to keep my life afloat. My life is requiring a lot of me these days as I pursue my dreams and visions. So I found some solace when Trudy Goodman shared last Sunday a passage in a little book called, “Life Support” by Judith Cohen Margolis, that said, “Juggling all the different aspects of my life — teaching, worrying about money, pressure to write my graduate thesis, near terror about finishing the paintings for my exhibition, deadlines on the animation job, plus being a mom and wife and chores for Shabbat and holidays and just normal things — when do I get time to just be? I barely have time to go to the bathroom. And throughout is the heavy shadow of my mother’s illness, like a large cloud darkening every day. I feel guilty if I am just having a good time because I think, ‘How can I be enjoying myself when she can’t enjoy even the simplest things?’ Then I think, “How petty for me to feel crabby about family concerns or cranky about my work. At least I have a life.”
I do have a life, full and rich indeed. AND it’s good to know I’m not the only one dealing with something like this.