I HAVE a friend, I’ll call her Elizabeth, who was one of two children of a woman who was an attentive mother but also very critical of her daughter. Apparently she had great expectations of Elizabeth, who attended two Ivy League schools and then went onto have a reasonably successful career in public relations but did not become a superstar. For some reason, her mother was disappointed and thought she should have succeeded more. I’m not clear as to why, but it was true because I saw them interact. I remember being shocked, having never experienced this kind of disapproval myself. The mother often interrogated Elizabeth about her job prospects. When Elizabeth got married, the mother was disappointed again. She didn’t like the husband.  Elizabeth and her husband sadly divorced after a short time and Elizabeth had no children.

By that time, Elizabeth lived on the West Coast and her mother lived on the East Coast. As the mother was widowed and grew old, Elizabeth grew very anxious for her welfare. After traveling back and forth for years, she finally decided she had to be closer to her mother. So she left the friends and life she had created on the West Coast and moved back East to be near her. She got a new job and her mother entered a nursing home.

What impressed me most was their relationship in those years when her mother was dependent on her. The care Elizabeth showed her mother in the time she was in a nursing home was exceptional and was not lessened in any way by their difficult relationship in the preceding years. Every weekend she went and ran errands for her mother and spent the day with her even though she had a very hectic and pressured job during the week. She took her to the doctor when she needed it and monitored her care closely so that everyone at the nursing home knew Elizabeth well. Though Elizabeth’s life was pressured, she gave up a normal social life to care for her mother. She did not complain.

It was a beautiful thing. For it seemed her mother loved her more in that time than she ever had before. She realized what a treasure her daughter was in ways that she never did before when she was always judging her by the standards of the world.

Finally the mother died. It was very difficult for my friend. There can be such an emptiness when all the chores are done and you are no longer needed. It took a long time for her to recover. I admired Elizabeth. For a time, she had been both mother and daughter to her mother. This grief was one of the unfortunate consequences of having loved her mother so well.

— Comments —

Texanne writes:

I continue to contemplate the up-ending of authority in our culture and the devastating consequences. Your narrative about the child/parent relationship is instructive. The Commandments are given to us for our happiness.

David Klinghoffer gives an account of the importance of what we might call “the great chain of being” with respect to familial bonds. To honor father and mother has a much greater significance than the particulars of familial compatibility.

Paul writes:

I visit my mother twice a week at her superb “mansion” where (for over two years now) she has had a little “condo” in a gorgeous first-class memory care facility. I take her to her doctors; I expect I use about two weeks of vacation every year doing this. Instead of paying the facility, I fill her prescriptions to save money. Her still-new facility is laid out like a mansion. So I encourage this idea in her, but she knows better despite her dementia. I am lucky to have so little to do.

At our last visit a few weeks ago, I asked her psychiatrist what to expect because I saw a drop from one of her plateaus. He said she has now constructed a fantasy world. She will stop getting out of bed and eventually stop eating. This is the progression of Alzheimer’s, a fatal disease. (I saw it with her oldest sister.) So he said no more four-month visits. We do not have to return for a year. He would refill her prescriptions, which have never included progression-delaying drugs. I still take her to her internist (and other specialists when needed) every four months to make sure she does not develop a painful symptom. He is excellent. I allowed blood pressure medicine recently because high-blood pressure can cause painful symptoms.

I feel somewhat guilty because my father, with her sitting there, told me never to allow them to live when they became “goofy.” He said they would come back to haunt me. It was about the time they gave me their powers of attorney. They knew I was strong and could make the right decisions for either of them in a crisis. They had seen me behave calmly with my two grandmothers, when I took control of the situations immediately before and after their deaths. But I am restricted by the law. Dr. Death was still active back then. And my mother is not yet totally “goofy.”

I understand why tough men on the battlefield call for their mothers when wounded or dying.

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