For the past dozen years, my family has been constantly growing until we now number 15. But this year's addition isn't a new daughter-in-law or grandchild. At 87, my mother has finally come to live with me. It wasn't an easy move for her. And the timing, at the beginning of November, meant integrating her into daily life during the holidays, when most families experience additional stress as well as the joys of the season.
Since my father was killed in an automobile accident in 1978, my mother has lived on her own in a small apartment next to her sister-in-law in Albuquerque. My dad's family has treated her as one of their own for 30 years. When she could no longer drive because her eyesight was failing, my Aunt Elsie and Cousin Margaret drove her to buy groceries each week. And they included her in all family celebrations when she could no longer travel east to be with us on Thanksgiving or Christmas.
My mother's life has never been an easy one. She was nearly killed in a devastating car crash that broke her back and shoulder and left her with a hole in her skull and pins holding her ankle together. Three of her children have died: my younger sister of kidney disease when she was just 6 years old, my older half-brother in a car accident when he was barely 15, and another half-brother in his 50s. She has survived the loneliness of widowhood and the pain of breast cancer. Yet, despite tragedies that would have left others in despair, she has remained resilient and optimistic.
As independent as she has been, however, I've always known that one day she would live with me. I couldn't imagine shunting her off to live with strangers, even though I know this has become far more socially acceptable today than in the past when adult children assumed the responsibility of caring for their aged parents. But even as she began to lose her vision from macular degeneration and became frail with the aches of old age, she's resisted making the final move.
Finally I quit asking and told her it was time.
My aunt was 87 and couldn't be expected to chauffeur my mother around much longer — and even my cousin was now in retirement, with her own health problems. And I worried that if I waited until my mother's eyesight was completely gone or until she was too sick to care for herself, the move would be even harder on her.
Her first week was difficult. She worried about the new doctors I'd line up, fearing I might insist on going into the exam with her (of course, I didn't) or that they would tell her she needed to eat differently or make friends her own age, advice she'd ignored for years. But once she realized I'd let her buy her Milky Ways and shortbread cookies and wouldn't try to interest her in the local senior center, she settled in nicely.
The key has been allowing her the independence she so values. Yes, she is dependent on me for driving her on errands, but she wants to prepare her own meals and set her own schedule. She's invited to join us in family events — grandkids' and great-grandkids' birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations — but she's also free to retreat to her apartment when it gets too noisy or decline the invitation if it involves a long car ride or she's not feeling up to it.
Most days she spends lying on the couch in her sitting room listening to the Game Show Network or Fox News Channel. She keeps the shades down and the TV volume and heat up. She eats like a bird, taking only tiny portions of meat or vegetables, but she always has room for dessert. Her main exercise is pushing the cart through the grocery store once a week. But she remains trim and still beautiful after all these years — and more important, happy.
I can't possibly know how long we'll have her with us or what new challenges the years ahead with her will bring. But I do know that bringing her to live with me was the right decision. In an age when the elderly are often seen more as a burden than a benefit, it is important to remember what our parents have done for us and what we owe them. Taking care of each other is what family is all about.
Linda Chavez is the author of "An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal." To find out more about Linda Chavez, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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2 Comments | Post Comment
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Linda,
Your article Taking Care of Family was very touching and sensitively written. You and your mother are both blessed. Thank you for writing this. Did you mean she is living in her own apartment near you, or living in an apartment attached to your home (when you said she came to live with you)? The solution fits her needs.
Paulette Paradiso
lrparadiso@bellsouth.net
Comment: #1
Posted by: Paulette Paradiso
Sat Dec 27, 2008 7:38 AM
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Ma'am; I would agree that you are fortunate to have discovered your family, and your obligation to it... And I would say that you seem so typically blind to the way our law, and our culture have destroyed our families, our obligations, and our expectation from our families; and just so, that is what you support... Look at who does well in this society... In every respect, it is immigrants... Certainly they work harder; and by that I mean, THEY work harder; the whole family together... Labor laws don't apply... Mom and pop have a gas station, and they are always there, or some member of the family... The kids are not saying when am I going to get paid... Their tradition is that blood is thicker than water... When they sit down to a meal together, papa talks, and the kids listen, and they are arranged by age with more given and more expected from the old... Even the hispanics coming here have a rigid family hierarchy that tells what the mother will do, and what is expected from the father, on down the line... We have suffered, rather than enjoyed, a thousand years of corrosive effect of law on the family and community... Children soon learn they have rights, and must be bribed, or cajoled rather than directed to do their duty in the family... Even teachers run scared of kids... Who benefits from this situation besides the legal community??? Look at our economy... Could it survive without driving women to work??? I think it is great that women can support themselves, but where is the allowance for raising children??? My father's generation could support their wives and children, and now very few could survive or make headway without the wife's wages... Who raises the children??? Who gives them the sense that they belong to a larger unit than themselves, that they have rights and obligation within the family and community- by blood???They don't get the sense that they get rights by family, but by law... It makes them legalistic, and as useless as an attorney... Parents may have influence but no authority... Our families are made disfunctional to make the economy functional... We don't have living wages, and we don't make enough to support our children as they should be, personally, and we do not have enough to support our old, as we should, personally... Now look, honestly, and not through the lens of pangloss... Primitive peoples working only by daylight with only the most ancient technology could support their children and old... Certainly they might have to leave an old person behind in their travels; but how many do we leave behind??? We cry about one person supporting two on social security, but one person can produce ten time what they last generation could produce per person... It is all to make more rich people rich that our families are facing destruction... Modern capitalism would not be possible without the protection of law on every side, but then, not a part of the injustice people suffer from capital would be possible if we lived in powerful, healthy communities and families... Where families are powerless they are powerless by law, but the family is the first, and best defense of society from the outlaw individual... Look at what we go to war to export... We want to give the Muslims the Rule of Law... Those people have had law for far longer than ourselves, but their law supports communty and justice as our own does not... Our export of Western Law is really an assault on the power of their families and communities in their lives, to tear down their natural defenses, and make them all victims... You are fortunate to see your obligation to your mother and even more fortunate to be able to live up to it... How many mothers who must abandon their children to their lonliness and fears to make their living is exactly the number who will suffer loneliness and fear as their children go about their lives... We have no love, and so we have no obligation...Do we expect the larger society will assume the obligation it has pledged to accept??? That is not likely... Our old would be better off with a blanket and a few pieces of fire wood to ward off the cold and the wolves... Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #2
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:12 AM
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