A Stranger Becomes Real

It’s strange but in many ways I am closer to her now than I have ever been. I leave her place feeling like my visit has been useful, meaningful and most of all truthful. It is odd to say this when our conversations are disjointed and they travel from one end of the place to the other. If I try to piece it all together it’s not a conversation that makes a whole lot of sense, yet they are the most meaningful I have ever shared with Mom and I hold these opportunities close to my heart while they are there.

I had a visit with Mom yesterday. I spent three hours with her. We shared some laughs together. There is nothing I love more than to see her burst out in an uncontrollable laughter. I so rarely saw that in her before. It doesn’t happen all the time. Lots of times she’s grumpy and I have to work hard to even get a smile out of her. But when she does laugh it is real and it is often at herself when she realizes she said the wrong word or a word that she never dared say before comes barrelling out of her mouth.

She’s so much more real now than she ever was and I can handle real no matter what it looks like. It’s the pretence I had a hard time with, could never handle and still can’t. The pleasure now is in seeing her authenticity come through. She is more authentic now than she has ever been. Her guard is down.

It has become too difficult or she no longer knows how to pretend about being or not being pleased or happy or mad. She just is whatever she is and it is so beautiful to see this. It means I no longer have to decipher a secret code and rack my brain trying to figure out what she meant or what she is feeling or why because the actions and the underlying current did not match the words. I haven’t had to rely on my sonic radar because now what you see is what you get.

Poor Mom. It’s sad in a way because she can’t verbalize things as easily as she once could and sometimes it’s a heck of a struggle to get any words out, yet I know more about her now than I ever did before even if she can’t articulate what wants to come out like she once could. She often gets lost between the ideas that go through her head, with what she hears on the TV that’s playing in the background, or what is being said down the hall, or between what happened 50 years ago or yesterday.

But even with all this happening I feel she is more true than she has ever been. One by one the masks have fallen away. I might only get pieces of her when I visit now but I feel I am finally getting what are the real pieces of my Mom and somehow it is so much easier to love her. Before she held her guard and erected a barrier like the Great Wall of China and I never quite learned how to climb over or get through.

Like many others, I don’t remember ever being physically close to my Mom as an adult or a child. I don’t remember my mother ever kissing me, or touching me or saying, “I love you.” As an adult to discuss anything personal was unheard of and the word “love” was never spoken. I always felt I couldn’t or wasn’t allowed to love her because if I tried to get close to her she became very uncomfortable. She became tense, ill at ease and did not know how to deal with any sign of affection I might have offered her. Now the tables have turned.

The two years she lived with us in our home she became more and more resentful each day about how dependant she was becoming on our care. As much as she fought her growing dependence with a vengeance I think her greatest battle was having to allow people to get close to her and having people care. When it became impossible for both her and us and she had to go into residential care things changed again. At some point Mom’s defences one by one slowly fell away to the point where she is now and in an ironic, twisted kind of way, I feel I can finally see and be with my real Mom.

A shade has been drawn and another has lifted. She is less and less who she was and more and more who she is. Now when I go see Mom I do things and say things I never would have dreamed possible before. Now I hold her hand, I rub her back, I pamper her, wash her face, brush her hair, do her nails, lotion her dry skin and I do whatever else needs to be done like bathroom calls, dressing, undressing, bathing and helping her to eat. I push her in her wheel chair, I tuck her into bed, and I kiss her goodnight or goodbye. The game is over. I can even tell her I love her now.