The Shock of Recognition
We are born. Our parents take care of us. We grow up and have children of our own and we take care of them. And later still, when our parents get old, we are once again caregivers, only now we are taking care of our parents. All too soon, we will be old and our children will be taking care of us. That is one of the cycles of our lives.
We experience a particular sadness in that part during which it becomes our responsibility to take care of our parents. The most obvious reason is that we have to watch the parents whom we love grow frailer and begin to fade, either physically or mentally. However, in some cases, we will feel a greater pain in discovering what sort of people our parents are. As children, we usually idolize our parents. Whatever they do or say, we do or say. Our parents set the standards which will play a critical role in our development. However, after we have gotten older and developed our own opinions and ideas, we begin to see our parents as they are. We recognize their flaws and defects. We discover their most irritating habits and sometimes, over time, will find them impossible to be around for too long a time. We must find some way to deal with our disillusionment with our parents. When it is our time to care for our aging parents, we discover that whatever sort of people they were, the most irritating of their habits are even more pronounced as they get older.
I am experiencing that now. My mother is 98 years old. At heart, she is a good person. But she is, and always has been, very selfish and self-centered. It has always been her belief that the world should wait on her, hand and foot. And she always wanted "only the best," even if the best of whatever she was buying wasn't something she could afford.. or even figure out how to use. Case in point: the Sony VCR she purchased, which was so overengineered that even I had problems using it. In the eight years she has owned it, she has yet to figure out how to play a VHS tape.
She has always wanted to live like the other one half of one percent lives. She never had the money to do that and as a result, most of what came her way in life disappointed her. As a matter of fact, there is not one person or thing or place with which she cannot find fault. My wife and I know that when the three of us go out to dinner somewhere, 99 times out of a 100, she will say she didn't like something about the restaurant, the meal or the service. We always steel ourselves for her inevitable comment, which casts a predictable pall on the evening.
Now my mother lives in a retirement high rise, probably one of the poshest in the city. Is she happy? Of course not, Since no one else on the planet lives up to her expectations, she has few friends and complains about being very lonely. She enjoys remarkably good health for someone her age even though she is suffering increasingly from dementia. She was never an easy person to be around. Now, she can be downright contankerous and irrational. My most enduring memories of my mother will be those of the time I have spent with her these last few difficult years. This is not how I wanted to remember my mother.
I am sixty years old now. Suddenly, I have become very conscious of who I am. I have made a lot of mistakes and have my own fair share of flaws. I wonder how my children see me as a person. Will my children be presented with an equally difficult challenge in dealing with me, when I can no longer take care of myself? Will I prove to be a real pain-in-the-behind that my mother has proven to be? I find that to be a truly sobering thought and a real impetus to make some important and probably difficult changes in my life while I still can. I am hopefully wiser now than I was earlier in my life. But just gaining wisdom is not enough to overcome whatever deficits I still possess.
How do we glean this wisdom? What has to happen to us so that what was incomprehensible to us in life, was finally made understandable? Bill Moyers, in an address he made just after the events of September 11, 2007, provides a clue to the answer. He was reminded by a friend of his that "...while the clock and the calendar make it seem as if our lives unfold hour by hour, day by day, our passage is marked by events-- of celebration and of crisis. They create memories which make in us a history..." The significant events in our relationship with our children and our parents will irrevocably alter the way we see them and the way they see us. Very often we will have to abandon illusions we had about them... to accept their flaws and their fallibility. More importantly, we will also have to accept certain truths about ourselves and to forgive ourselves for not being perfect either.
By its very nature, life is going to be challenging, at every step of the way. I have accepted that at some level I am going to disappoint the people I love the most. There are going to be moments that I will be unreasonable or difficult to deal with. As I see it, the ultimate challenge in the journey from birth to death, is to build loving and supportive relationships and to never take myself or my own importance too seriously. What is one measure of a successful life? It is to be able to be someone who can be taken care of or who takes care of others, with humility and grace. To be able to do that is no small feat.
We experience a particular sadness in that part during which it becomes our responsibility to take care of our parents. The most obvious reason is that we have to watch the parents whom we love grow frailer and begin to fade, either physically or mentally. However, in some cases, we will feel a greater pain in discovering what sort of people our parents are. As children, we usually idolize our parents. Whatever they do or say, we do or say. Our parents set the standards which will play a critical role in our development. However, after we have gotten older and developed our own opinions and ideas, we begin to see our parents as they are. We recognize their flaws and defects. We discover their most irritating habits and sometimes, over time, will find them impossible to be around for too long a time. We must find some way to deal with our disillusionment with our parents. When it is our time to care for our aging parents, we discover that whatever sort of people they were, the most irritating of their habits are even more pronounced as they get older.
I am experiencing that now. My mother is 98 years old. At heart, she is a good person. But she is, and always has been, very selfish and self-centered. It has always been her belief that the world should wait on her, hand and foot. And she always wanted "only the best," even if the best of whatever she was buying wasn't something she could afford.. or even figure out how to use. Case in point: the Sony VCR she purchased, which was so overengineered that even I had problems using it. In the eight years she has owned it, she has yet to figure out how to play a VHS tape.
She has always wanted to live like the other one half of one percent lives. She never had the money to do that and as a result, most of what came her way in life disappointed her. As a matter of fact, there is not one person or thing or place with which she cannot find fault. My wife and I know that when the three of us go out to dinner somewhere, 99 times out of a 100, she will say she didn't like something about the restaurant, the meal or the service. We always steel ourselves for her inevitable comment, which casts a predictable pall on the evening.
Now my mother lives in a retirement high rise, probably one of the poshest in the city. Is she happy? Of course not, Since no one else on the planet lives up to her expectations, she has few friends and complains about being very lonely. She enjoys remarkably good health for someone her age even though she is suffering increasingly from dementia. She was never an easy person to be around. Now, she can be downright contankerous and irrational. My most enduring memories of my mother will be those of the time I have spent with her these last few difficult years. This is not how I wanted to remember my mother.
I am sixty years old now. Suddenly, I have become very conscious of who I am. I have made a lot of mistakes and have my own fair share of flaws. I wonder how my children see me as a person. Will my children be presented with an equally difficult challenge in dealing with me, when I can no longer take care of myself? Will I prove to be a real pain-in-the-behind that my mother has proven to be? I find that to be a truly sobering thought and a real impetus to make some important and probably difficult changes in my life while I still can. I am hopefully wiser now than I was earlier in my life. But just gaining wisdom is not enough to overcome whatever deficits I still possess.
How do we glean this wisdom? What has to happen to us so that what was incomprehensible to us in life, was finally made understandable? Bill Moyers, in an address he made just after the events of September 11, 2007, provides a clue to the answer. He was reminded by a friend of his that "...while the clock and the calendar make it seem as if our lives unfold hour by hour, day by day, our passage is marked by events-- of celebration and of crisis. They create memories which make in us a history..." The significant events in our relationship with our children and our parents will irrevocably alter the way we see them and the way they see us. Very often we will have to abandon illusions we had about them... to accept their flaws and their fallibility. More importantly, we will also have to accept certain truths about ourselves and to forgive ourselves for not being perfect either.
By its very nature, life is going to be challenging, at every step of the way. I have accepted that at some level I am going to disappoint the people I love the most. There are going to be moments that I will be unreasonable or difficult to deal with. As I see it, the ultimate challenge in the journey from birth to death, is to build loving and supportive relationships and to never take myself or my own importance too seriously. What is one measure of a successful life? It is to be able to be someone who can be taken care of or who takes care of others, with humility and grace. To be able to do that is no small feat.
posted by hfireman | 9:54 PM
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