Whatever faults my mother has, my whining exhaustion should not be her elegy by Devon Miller-Duggan

Last week’s assignment in my Intro Poetry Writing class was an elaborately phrased prompt for an elegy (I cannot recommend the prompts in Challenges for the Delusional from Jane St. Press highly enough. I only use a couple of them in the course of the semester because the real reason I have my students buy the book is so that they can take the marvelous thing away from the class with them…). I don’t normally write with my students, which is kind of dumb. Or it’s a reality-based function of the kind of energies involved in teaching. Or, or, or… But I decided that the elegy was timely, at the very least, given that last week my mother came home from the rehab following her back-to-back life-threatening infections (septic pneumonia and c-dif). I’ve been doing a LOT of processing, emotionally since she was ambulanced into the hospital with the pneumonia 6 weeks ago.

Short background: my mother was diagnosed with MS and epilepsy 3 months after the birth of my (developmentally disabled) sister when I was 15. She’s 80 now and in remarkable shape (she was still driving more or less safely until a year ago). I have no other siblings. Except for the year she ran off to California with a couple of grifters (I swear.) in an interesting attempt to “not be a burden” to me, there hasn’t really be a year in which I didn’t spend some time taking care of my mother, even though she has been largely independent for most of it. She’s lived with us full time for the past 11 years.

There aren’t a lot of 80-year old MS patients out there, and the ones there are are in much worse shape than my mother. Which does not mean she’s in terrific shape. She’s frail, has really lousy balance, truly terrifying toenails, no appetite, and a pretty bad attitude. Her speech is impaired, but mostly functional. Her brain’s been sliding away really noticeably for a year now. Hearing’s iffy and interestingly selective. But she’s on no meds and her heart’s strong.

Here’s the thing. I am the core and focus of my mother’s life. Always have been. According to her, every major decision she’s ever made has been made in the context of me. Every. She stayed with my (toxic to/with/around her) father for me. She divorced my father for me. She took up with her long-time incompetent alcoholic boyfriend for me. She stayed with him for me. She moved with him to Cape Cod for me. She had my (sister against all medical logic because she believed she’d have another me. She moved into my house because I wanted her to (nothing to do with the fact that the aforementioned boyfriend drained her finances to the point where she couldn’t keep her house on the Cape…). I am her greatest accomplishment. Otherwise, according to her, her life is a long list of disappointments. She never got her novel published. Or her diet book. She never wrote her second novel. She never got to take enough classes. She never got to travel enough (several trips to Europe and various National Parks notwithstanding). She never got to marry the Great Love of her life (wouldn’t leave his wife). She never got to have a Ph. D. and teach teachers.

She has never understood that I don’t particularly want to be the focus and core of her life. Not fully. She understands, on some important, but subconscious level, that I can’t be an actual grown-up without some sort of separateness from her. But she doesn’t like it. I’ve spent decades having a semi-comic conversation with her about the definitions of passive-aggression and guilt-mongering. Makes me feel better. Rolls off her like water off a charmingly twinkly duck’s back. I love her to pieces, but not quite the way she loves me.

And it’s been a largely highly functional relationship. She’s, of course, generous to a fault, and funny and smart and tolerant of my occasional bouts of bitchery and bluntness. We have a kind of system that has worked pretty well for a long time.

But the past 6 weeks have just about broken me. The hospital was a nightmare—I stayed the first 4 nights to keep her from getting up and falling on her face repeatedly (the nurses couldn’t get there fast enough, even with a bed alarm—she’s weirdly fast for a wobbly 80-year old—as it was she did rip out her lines once…). The rehab was worse. Good rehab, great care, still the most depressing place I’ve ever been. Now she’s home and I’m functioning as her caregiver until we get all the home-health stuff settled and in place. I’m also teaching and caring several morning a week for our 3-year old grandson (a more joyous human never walked the planet) and trying to spend enough time with my brand new granddaughter (oh, yeah, my daughter was in labor for a week in the midst of all this—but she won and got her VBAC and a gorgeous 9.6 lb. baby). I’m tired in ways I have never been before, and angry with my mother (like she timed this on purpose…) for still being alive, for believing that she needs to stay alive because her love is so magical that it somehow sustains me and all the air around me (that’s not actually a very exaggerated version of things she has said), and for needing me so very, very, very much.

So I’m having a little trouble with the elegy. I’d like it to be about the absolute animal joy of my mother bodysurfing with her granddaughters on a beach on Cape Cod Bay one perfect summer day when the normally mild waves were just energized enough to be perfect for it. I’d like it to be about how, even now, when she looks at trees, she’s trying to figure out whether they’d be good to climb (she was a great tomboy as a kid). I’d like it to be about the ferociousness and generosity of her love for her family. About her playing Rummy with my husband most days and the two of them squabbling like siblings. About how, at Yosemite and Bryce and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Acadia and Zion, she thanked us over and over and kept saying “I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life!”

But right now, all I can think about when I wake in the morning is how, no matter what else the day holds or needs, it will be another day of begging her to eat and cleaning up her messes and having her ask me repeatedly “What do I do next?” and telling me—achingly and repeatedly—how very much she loves me. Another day of one knife in the heart after another. Another day of realizing that my love has limits, that it can be worn down, wrung out, drained off, and then telling myself that caring for her body is, right now, enough of whatever ultimately indefinable thing love is. And kind of loathing myself for whining. Whatever faults my mother has, my whining exhaustion should not be her elegy.
Last week’s assignment in my Intro Poetry Writing class was an elaborately phrased prompt for an elegy (I cannot recommend the prompts in Challenges for the Delusional from Jane St. Press highly enough. I only use a couple of them in the course of the semester because the real reason I have my students buy the book is so that they can take the marvelous thing away from the class with them…). I don’t normally write with my students, which is kind of dumb. Or it’s a reality-based function of the kind of energies involved in teaching. Or, or, or… But I decided that the elegy was timely, at the very least, given that last week my mother came home from the rehab following her back-to-back life-threatening infections (septic pneumonia and c-dif). I’ve been doing a LOT of processing, emotionally since she was ambulanced into the hospital with the pneumonia 6 weeks ago.

Short background: my mother was diagnosed with MS and epilepsy 3 months after the birth of my (developmentally disabled) sister when I was 15. She’s 80 now and in remarkable shape (she was still driving more or less safely until a year ago). I have no other siblings. Except for the year she ran off to California with a couple of grifters (I swear.) in an interesting attempt to “not be a burden” to me, there hasn’t really be a year in which I didn’t spend some time taking care of my mother, even though she has been largely independent for most of it. She’s lived with us full time for the past 11 years.

There aren’t a lot of 80-year old MS patients out there, and the ones there are are in much worse shape than my mother. Which does not mean she’s in terrific shape. She’s frail, has really lousy balance, truly terrifying toenails, no appetite, and a pretty bad attitude. Her speech is impaired, but mostly functional. Her brain’s been sliding away really noticeably for a year now. Hearing’s iffy and interestingly selective. But she’s on no meds and her heart’s strong.

Here’s the thing. I am the core and focus of my mother’s life. Always have been. According to her, every major decision she’s ever made has been made in the context of me. Every. She stayed with my (toxic to/with/around her) father for me. She divorced my father for me. She took up with her long-time incompetent alcoholic boyfriend for me. She stayed with him for me. She moved with him to Cape Cod for me. She had my (sister against all medical logic because she believed she’d have another me. She moved into my house because I wanted her to (nothing to do with the fact that the aforementioned boyfriend drained her finances to the point where she couldn’t keep her house on the Cape…). I am her greatest accomplishment. Otherwise, according to her, her life is a long list of disappointments. She never got her novel published. Or her diet book. She never wrote her second novel. She never got to take enough classes. She never got to travel enough (several trips to Europe and various National Parks notwithstanding). She never got to marry the Great Love of her life (wouldn’t leave his wife). She never got to have a Ph. D. and teach teachers.

She has never understood that I don’t particularly want to be the focus and core of her life. Not fully. She understands, on some important, but subconscious level, that I can’t be an actual grown-up without some sort of separateness from her. But she doesn’t like it. I’ve spent decades having a semi-comic conversation with her about the definitions of passive-aggression and guilt-mongering. Makes me feel better. Rolls off her like water off a charmingly twinkly duck’s back. I love her to pieces, but not quite the way she loves me.

And it’s been a largely highly functional relationship. She’s, of course, generous to a fault, and funny and smart and tolerant of my occasional bouts of bitchery and bluntness. We have a kind of system that has worked pretty well for a long time.

But the past 6 weeks have just about broken me. The hospital was a nightmare—I stayed the first 4 nights to keep her from getting up and falling on her face repeatedly (the nurses couldn’t get there fast enough, even with a bed alarm—she’s weirdly fast for a wobbly 80-year old—as it was she did rip out her lines once…). The rehab was worse. Good rehab, great care, still the most depressing place I’ve ever been. Now she’s home and I’m functioning as her caregiver until we get all the home-health stuff settled and in place. I’m also teaching and caring several morning a week for our 3-year old grandson (a more joyous human never walked the planet) and trying to spend enough time with my brand new granddaughter (oh, yeah, my daughter was in labor for a week in the midst of all this—but she won and got her VBAC and a gorgeous 9.6 lb. baby). I’m tired in ways I have never been before, and angry with my mother (like she timed this on purpose…) for still being alive, for believing that she needs to stay alive because her love is so magical that it somehow sustains me and all the air around me (that’s not actually a very exaggerated version of things she has said), and for needing me so very, very, very much.

So I’m having a little trouble with the elegy. I’d like it to be about the absolute animal joy of my mother bodysurfing with her granddaughters on a beach on Cape Cod Bay one perfect summer day when the normally mild waves were just energized enough to be perfect for it. I’d like it to be about how, even now, when she looks at trees, she’s trying to figure out whether they’d be good to climb (she was a great tomboy as a kid). I’d like it to be about the ferociousness and generosity of her love for her family. About her playing Rummy with my husband most days and the two of them squabbling like siblings. About how, at Yosemite and Bryce and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Acadia and Zion, she thanked us over and over and kept saying “I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life!”

But right now, all I can think about when I wake in the morning is how, no matter what else the day holds or needs, it will be another day of begging her to eat and cleaning up her messes and having her ask me repeatedly “What do I do next?” and telling me—achingly and repeatedly—how very much she loves me. Another day of one knife in the heart after another. Another day of realizing that my love has limits, that it can be worn down, wrung out, drained off, and then telling myself that caring for her body is, right now, enough of whatever ultimately indefinable thing love is. And kind of loathing myself for whining. Whatever faults my mother has, my whining exhaustion should not be her elegy.