“What would I do without you?” my mother says as she reaches
to hold my hand. She poses the
unanswerable question almost daily since the stroke. Before, she would ask me the same thing, but more as a way
of saying thank you. Then, I could
make a lighthearted remark such as “you’d manage just fine” or “you are doing
great, Mom.” Now, I feel only sadness and I don’t say what I am thinking. I squeeze her hand, give her a hug,
and tell her I’m here.
Each
day, I watch her struggle emotionally with the loss of independence. Her reality now is being dependent on
others for everything in daily life. No matter how hard she works at her physical and occupational
therapy and all the high praise she gets for “doing well” and for “improvement”…
it’s not enough. The therapists
love her because she will do anything asked of her and will give it her
all. I know how badly she wants to be in control. “It’s just so hard,” she will say in
rare moments. Most of the time she
doesn’t say anything but I know what she is struggling with this new development.
I
think about the little girl growing up in a secure and loving family in Des
Moines, Iowa in the 1920’s. Mother
always told us how she was “an accident”. My parents had built a new house with only enough bedrooms
for two children and then I came along and there really wasn’t room. My mother always told this story with her arms around me. Perhaps this is part of why that
little girl was never a complainer and never wanted to draw attention to herself. Could this be true? I’ve asked myself this often. Mother
always was one never to make a fuss - the
quiet, strong, and loving parent.
Then I wonder would
I have been as courageous at 24 as she was, to leave Iowa, the only place I had
ever lived, and travel by myself to Santiago, Chile to marry the fiancée I had
not seen in two years? In 1944 it took five days by propeller airplane to get
to Santiago, stopping all along the way because planes could not travel at
night. I grew up hearing this story many times. Nowhere in her detailed letters to her family does she ever complain
or have second thoughts about having traveled 5,400 miles to get married. I have asked her often why she never
wrote about the hard times and she replied, “I didn’t want to worry my
parents.”
We three children were each born in a different South
American country where hospitals and health care were not good and our mother could barely communicate in Spanish. When my brother was born, he was put in the wrong crib in the
hospital in Lima, Peru and my parents brought home a Peruvian
baby. If he had not had red hair and blue eyes perhaps we would have never gotten him back! Mother turns pale when that story is told again all these years later. My mother lived through two revolutions
and a polio epidemic in Argentina, entertained the highest officials and
oligarchy of third world countries helping my father’s career as a diplomat,
managed a household of maids, gardeners and chauffeurs, raised three children, and
found it all an adventure.
My role model for growing old with grace and always doing "the right thing" has been my mother.. But overcoming this recent stroke seems the hardest thing yet. I don't see her giving up as I watch her slowly accept a new stage of dependence in her life. I heard her say to my brother on the phone today "I used to be independent but now I have to remember to ask for help." She was reminding herself, of course.
