Took off work to take care of Mother’s needs three mornings a while back. Monday was to meet with the accountant to get her taxes prepared; Wednesday was the dentist; and Friday was back downtown to the eye doctor. She’s like the energizer bunny and I plan to do everything I can to make sure she says that way. It’s interesting to observe, at the doctors’ offices, the women my age who are there with mothers her age. It’s been my opinion for a number of years of observing the public and my clients that children of all ages in our culture generally do a poor job of respecting and caring for elders. Certainly the statistics lay that out in front of us. In my work with Alzheimer’s patients, it was not unusual for one or more of the adult children to ‘disappear’ when a dementia diagnosis was given to mom or dad. Of course, it isn’t always that dramatic. Sometimes kids just decide to tell parents off over real or imagined wrongs or slights. Unless the parent is abusive, I think this is a sad loss for all parties. Sure there are parents who are drunks, molesters, and absent but these are the more extreme cases. More often it’s that these folks had no good parenting role models themselves, pressures the kids have been ‘protected’ from knowing about, and sometimes everyone is just experiencing generational differences or misunderstandings. The reasons are endless and varied. And I think I’m really not an exception to the rule as there have been periods in my life where I found my Mother just too hard to deal with and we’ve certainly had our challenges. One only needs note the book store shelves filled with volumes on the mother-daughter relationship.

But, (and here’s the thing) I’ve grown to understand where she was coming from the more I’ve walked along her path. As I became a mother, I began to understand the challenges of parenting. As I experienced divorce, I found I was no longer as judgmental about her divorce. I got an up close look at the challenges that go with a broken marriage, not just a broken family. As I experienced moving around the country with my husband’s company, I no longer felt so abandoned at crucial times in the past by her having ‘abandoned’ me because she too was traveling with her husband’s job. I only knew that she moved to another country and I was left with a brand new baby and no family to instruct or help me ~ it was a completely self-centered point of view. I never knew what her loneliness in later years felt like until I found myself utterly alone. Not until that moment did I understand the deafening silence of a phone that never rang or the dinner invitation that never came or the deep gratitude felt when it did.

Life tends to soften us over the years and make round our sharp corners. Our youthful self-centeredness, judgmentalness and self-absorbtion give way to a kinder and deeper sense of grateful connection and belonging touched more by forgiveness and understanding. In her old age, my mother has rewritten our history and I feel no need to challenge or correct any of it. It’s actually quite a nice history. She believes I’m perfect and always have been and is glad we never raised our voices to each other ….and just in case you’re wondering; I was completely potty-trained at 4 months old. If you don’t believe me, just ask my mother. I love you, Mom.