The days surrounding Jeremy’s birth
were also the days of the beginnings of my mother’s journey into her new worlds,
the worlds of epilepsy and, I now believe, dementia. What should have been, for
me, a wondrous, restful time of bonding with my newborn was suddenly the
opposite. Instead of snuggling with and gazing at my baby at home, I was forced
to turn my attention to my mother to address her needs and offer her support.
Jeremy was born on a Monday. The Friday
before, my mother experienced her first seizure and was wandering around
Greenwich Village, trying to find her way to St. Vincent’s Hospital, the same
place I would give birth a few days later. I was home drinking castor oil,
trying to hasten the onset of my labor. I was ten days past my due date and the
midwives were eager for Jeremy to be born. My mother found her way back to her
doctor’s office on 11th Street and revealed that she could not
remember his instructions, where to go and whom to see at the hospital. Her
kind doctor then walked her to the ER himself where she was seen and released with
an appointment to see a neurologist. Post dictal, (bewildered and
dysfunctional) she was in no condition to care for two year-old Elsa, which had
been our plan. My cousin and her nurse-friend, Carla, reluctantly called me and
together we arranged for my mother’s cousin, Evelyn, a retired physician, to
come to NY from Philadelphia to care for both Elsa and my mother.
I remember my astonishment upon
hearing the news that my mother was confused and disoriented at the same time
that I was about to give birth. I have to admit, I was furious with her ruining
my delivery, for causing me stress, and for once again upstaging me and
channeling everyone’s support and attention from me to her at this very special
time. I was angry with her for allowing her nerves to get the better of her to the
point where she literally fell apart. She was engulfed in worry about my baby
and me and all of the many things that she feared could go wrong with my
delivery rather than believing that all things could and would go well and that
she could, instead, be confident and
supportive of me, my capacity to take care of myself, my ability to give birth
for a second time, my midwives’ ability to deliver one more healthy baby and
the ability of my husband to make sure that everything went smoothly.
During the weekend, Evelyn came, Elsa
was cared for, my mother began to recover and Jeremy was born naturally in the
early afternoon on Monday. We were discharged from the hospital on Wednesday
morning.
Thursday afternoon, I sat in the
office of my mother’s first neurologist, Dr. Garafolo, with my mother, cradling
three-day old Jeremy in my arms. No
one could believe we were there, how young he was and how crazy it was to have
him out so soon.
This was the beginning of my dual caregiver
role: mother and daughter. Since that time, I have felt I have had to split my
energy and concern between my children and my mother. It didn’t feel good to
me. My job, as a mother, I believed, was to give my kids my full attention and
energy. But, with my mother, that has never been possible. To be honest, I felt
that my mother took advantage of me, manipulated me and allowed me to feel
guilty if I wasn’t attentive enough. Ever since that day in Dr. Garafolo’s
office, I feel I have had the life sucked out of me (the Dementor effect) because
of my overwhelming sense of obligation
to fill the role that my father’s sudden death in 1983 left vacant. My mother
was never able to recover, restart, reboot and re-gather in her hands of the
reins of her life. She grieved continuously, she was chronically depressed, she
was lost and she couldn’t get back on track. Plus, I always felt the eyes of
her sister and two cousins on my shoulder, peering disapprovingly at me from
long distances, because I didn’t do enough, visit enough, care for enough or
fulfill enough my mother’s emotional needs.
It was not until much later, much too
much later really, that I figured out that it was not my job to make my mother
happy. For one, I was failing miserably and she was always unhappy regardless, and,
at the same time, I was miserable and
I was making my husband and children miserable, too. Gradually, I decided that I would like to be happy, that life
is good and I have a lot to be grateful for. I began trying to see the bright
side of things and face each challenge or setback as an opportunity to learn
and grow.
Eventually, I began the work of
detaching from my mother, little by little. I called less frequently, I visited
less often, and I began making family decisions without consulting her and
began doing things with my family that she did not approve of, like traveling
to Africa. I stopped allowing her negativity affect my life and my choices. Feeling
freer of her, I began to notice little fun and beautiful things in the world
that I appreciated and which made me happy. I saw large ladies doing yoga in
Prospect Park one morning, I noticed the color of the lake water against the
sky, and I observed flocks of birds calling as they flew in formation. It
sounds really corny, but I began to feel a rebirth in a sense, a feeling of
being released from an emotional prison, separated from someone who only saw
doom and gloom, and I began to feel a new sense of glee and appreciation for
life. Of course, guilt is often sprinkled in and among my new feelings, but I
guess, being me, a female, that is unavoidable. In some ways, we are programmed
to experience guilty feelings whenever we take the initiative to take care of
ourselves before someone else.
I am embarrassed to say how very recently
my detachment occurred.
I long to retrieve the many evenings
I spent on the phone with my mother, listening to her drone on and on, dwelling
on the impossible-ness of her situation and sadness, evenings I could have and
should have been helping with homework, snuggling with my kids, reading stories
or singing bedtime songs. But dwelling on those choices and mistakes would mean
repeating her pattern-obsessing over my regrets. Hey, I did the best I could to
be a good daughter and a great mother. In my next life, I’ll do better.
And, with all of these recent posts
about my mother and her dementia, how detached am I really?
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