An Afternoon With My Mother and Reflections On What Really Matters

Every day that I arrive to visit my mother I never know what I will walk into. There are the good days and the hard days. And every day is a gift.

Saturday was a hard day. I came during the end of lunchtime. Everyone else at my mother's table had left or was leaving. My mother's plate had barely been touched. And I noticed right away that she was leaning far to the left side in her wheelchair. I pulled her wheelchair back and attempted to help her into an upright position. I struggled several times ― moving her feet to be more centered, trying to help her left elbow rest on the arm of her wheelchair, lifting her up a tiny bit to shift her position in her chair. Nothing was working. I asked a staff if they could help right her, but was told that servers are not supposed to assist with things like that. And I knew that. It was just painful witnessing my mother leaning so far off to her left side that her chin was barely above her plate, which was slightly to her right on the table.

I continued to watch my mother struggle to eat. I had already switched a spoon for her fork when I noticed Mom attempting to bring the spoon to her mouth. There was no food on the spoon.

"Mom, how about if I help you eat today?" I had never done this before. "Okay," my mother responded. Slowly she accepted each spoonful of her lunch that I brought to her mouth as she continued to lean way over to her left. I tenderly fed my mother and whispered in her ear how much I love her. "My beautiful daughter," my mama said.

I was determined to address how my mother appeared to be placed in a non-centered way in her wheelchair. I brought this to the attention of her caregiver as soon as we returned to her apartment. Her sweet and compassionate caregiver smiled and nodded and took my mother to use the bathroom. I tried to call Ron to share my sorrow about what I was witnessing today.

When the caregiver emerged from the bathroom, I noticed right away that my mother was still leaning to her left. The caregiver told me that she had tried to use a pillow to prop my mom up, but said that my mother did not want to use a pillow. So we just went ahead and put on her fleece and I handed my mom her sunglasses and covered her with a blanket. (This is the prayer blanket made by Suzi Maley and Suzi's church group in California five years ago when I was engaged in the legal battle with a former stepson to bring my mother home to her family here in the Pacific Northwest). Then we headed outside to the garden to a cooler but lovely day.

*****

Once in the garden area, I sat to the left of my mother and pulled my chair right up next to hers. This way I was able to use the arm of my chair for my mom to rest her left elbow on. She was so tilted and simply unable to use the arm of her wheelchair to keep herself from slanting sideways. So we just sat there, snuggled in together. I alternated between holding one of her hands or both hands with both of mine. It is a meditative experience, this sitting in silence with my mother.

Mom broke our silence a few times. "I'm thankful that you spend this time with me." "Are you warm enough?" "I was just thinking the same thing." (This in response to my commenting on how lovely the breeze was.) "Are you warm enough?" "It's so wonderful that you can spend all this time with me."

I leaned gently on her shoulder and nestled my face into her hair, quietly saying how much I love her, how this is our special heart-to-heart time together (while tenderly touching her heart), how she is my priority (affirming that the only person I see more of is my husband), how our time together is such a precious gift. Mom would nod or quietly say yes... 

*****

I reflected on how these are the moments we were never supposed to have together, my mama and me. Her mental illness and severe narcissism had been a wall that had made giving and receiving love and compassion an impossibility for my mother. Others had existed as extensions of her and were there only to serve, mirror, and affirm the fragile but brutal and tortured reality that my mother lived in.

As I began to heal and open my own heart, things shifted for my mother and me. It took me four years back in the 1980's of therapy and sobriety and support before I could bring myself to stand up to my mother's abuse and insist on healthy boundaries. I was also shifting from fear, rage, and long neglected grief and loss related to my mom to understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and love. And I simply could no longer feed her narcissistic supplies if that meant colluding in her abuse of me or anyone else. This is something my mother found intolerable. 

Still, my mother's periods of refusing to see me or to have any more than limited contact with me and her only grandchildren did not begin in earnest until she married her third husband, who was the only husband out of four who fully enabled her abuse of me and even both of his own two children. When I realized that this husband was going along with the abuse, I was angry and upset and also relieved, relieved knowing that in selling his soul he at least was also protecting himself from being a victim of physical abuse. I'm sure that he also acquiesced because he thought this was what he had to do to keep my borderline mother from committing suicide. 

When this husband died, his son took over feeding her narcissistic supplies and began the long journey of grooming and weaving a web around my vulnerable mentally ill mother, puling her away from me and fueling our estrangement so that he would one day be the one to benefit from her will. It took close to a year, and a legal battle that cost a total of nearly $250,000, to pry my mother loose from the hands of narcissistic greed and entitlement and bring my mom home to her family.

*****

I believed that I was prepared five years ago to receive, care for, support, and love my mother. My eyes, mind, and heart were wide open. I understood and, as best as I could, accepted her mental illness. I also now had a loving and incredibly supportive husband. My three loving adult sons were here and able to help. I had beautiful and deeply caring friends. I was surrounded by the support I needed to care for this mother of mine who had been so brutal for much of my lifetime. Most importantly, I had done 30 years of healing, strengthening, deepening, and expanding my heart. I had been gifted with these decades of heart-work which have blessed me beyond my wildest dreams.

Through all the years of grieving the loss of my mother, I had just never dreamed possible that there would come a day of a homecoming that would become a mutual homecoming of our hearts, the hearts of my mama and me....

I weep right now for all the years lost to us, all the years where my mother was incapable of loving or being loved. I used to experience this shame that I wasn't done, just moved on, just okay with never having been loved by my own mother. And my compassionate heart-centered therapist would gently remind me again and again that the most primal need any of us have is the love of our mothers. He helped me to be tender and gentle and compassionate and loving with myself and how hard it is to experience and come to terms with such profound loss. There is simply no time limit in the grief any of us hold in our deepest hearts if we have not been loved by our mothers.

And this primal need was also what my twin brother gave voice to the last time we spoke on Thanksgiving 1977. John told me that his latest "plan" was that he was going to hold out and just be himself ― no more pretending to be some false self to please her ― until Mother finally loved him for who he was. Just over two months later my brother committed suicide, dying without ever knowing the love of our mother.

*****

So this was not supposed to happen for my mama and me. This sitting quietly together outside holding hands, feeling the gentle breezes, and speaking of and sharing the love in our hearts. I wasn't even holding out waiting for that love. 99.9% of me had given up on ever being loved by our mother. I had come to understand my mother's illness and hold her with deep compassion and forgiveness. And love. This was a love that I never believed would be returned or shared.

But I was wrong.

There simply are no words to adequately describe the power of love...

When we peel everything away down to the very essentials, I agree with my wise and compassionate teachers who have helped me over the years to see that just these three things will matter when I die: 
     - Did I become who I truly am? 
     - Did I learn how to let go (especially of resentment, bitterness, blame, shame, anger, unhelpful belief systems, etc.)?  
     - Did I love well?

*****

I need to get ready to see my mom for lunch and time in the garden today. Gratefully, when I spoke to the nurse in charge at Glenwood yesterday, she checked in with my mother and called me back and said that my mama was not having a sideways kind of day. I have no idea what this afternoon will bring. Other than love, the love that my mom and I are gifted with sharing today. 

May we all awaken to the Love that is there within our deepest being. 

May we be at peace.

May our hearts remain open.

May we know the beauty of our true nature.

May we be healed.

❤

With love and blessings,
Molly

Pictures I took in the garden at Glenwood Place.