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“I will not be mean like
my mother when I get old!”
“I will not be mean like my mother when I get old!”
Dee* is outside a Barnes and Noble bookstore
soliciting signatures for a political initiative when she intercepts
me leaving the store. She and her husband, Peter, have been investment
clients since the early 1990s. I assisted them with long-term care
issues for her father during his last days at which time I became closely
acquainted with her mother, Maureen.
Maureen is a handful. Her meanness affects
other family interactions.
Dee and Peter are sensible, civic-minded
citizens who participate in local politics without financial gain.
Now in their 60s, Dee and Peter married young and started their family
immediately. Their two children are nearing their 40s and beginning
to show mature concern for their parents.
Dee tells of her daughter,
Silvia, hesitatingly approaching her about delicate end-of-life issues. “She was very tactful,
but she said she had realized that she did not know anything about
our finances or legal matters. At first I was a little taken back,
but then I said to myself ‘Hey, don’t act like Mother.’ Then I realized
I was glad that our daughter cared about us. I showed her the drawer
in my desk where we keep everything and told her to go there when the
time came. She was relieved that I trusted her enough to tell her these
things.”
However, her daughter does
have one strict requirement. “She said to me, ‘You must promise not to go before Grandma
does. There is no way I could handle Grandma!’”
Dee is Grandma Maureen’s primary caretaker.
As Dee talks of her troubles dealing with a woman she characterizes
as ‘hateful,’ a mixture of wearied emotions play across her face. Because
I am her financial advisor with years of experience dealing with elderly
clients, I am to Dee a ‘safe listener,’ an understanding listener who
will not judge her badly as she vents her seething frustration about
her mother’s selfish, short-sighted and demanding behavior.
“On the one hand Mother is very independent
and does not want help. But on the other hand, she wants tons of pity,” Dee
explains, “Much of it centering on her medical treatment.”
Dee tells of accompanying
Mother to a recent doctor’s visit. Unfortunately, Mother does not hear as well as she
should, but she is too stubborn to admit she has hearing problems.
The doctor’s comments about MRI photos of her spine “I see some old
damage but nothing too terrible that would require back surgery” comes
out of Mother’s mouth on the drive home as “Well, I’ll have to have
back surgery now!”
Dee recreates her reaction
to her mom’s statement “What?!
What did I miss?” to which her Mother answered: “The doctor said my
back was terrible and I would need back surgery.”
Maureen has good health
insurance that allows her to see different doctors. While such coverage
is normally a good
thing, for Dee it becomes a complication and burden. When Maureen’s
primary physician said Mother was doing okay and to come back in a
month for a checkup, Maureen took his instructions as rejection. Dee
scrunches her face and sticks out her lower lip in imitation of her
Mother: “‘Imagine that doctor not wanting to see me for an entire month!’”
Apparently Maureen complained about her heartless
doctor to her elderly friends, who set an appointment for her with
a new doctor in town. Of course neither Mother nor her friends bothered
to tell Dee until the new doctor ran all the same tests the previous
doctor had run and came to a similar conclusion: Maureen was going
to live.
“It’s so sad because my mother could enjoy
so many things these last years of her life,” Dee’s voice is tinged
with disbelief, “She has a great-granddaughter who is a wonderful little
girl. Her parents work differing schedules so one of them is with her
all the time. This makes their weekends special, when the three of
them can function as a family together. They live in _____,” (she names
a city two and one-half hours drive distant) “They are busy with their
lives there and so they don’t come up here very often. They have invited
Mother down to stay overnight. They have a room for her. But she won’t
go.” Dee adopts an officious attitude and speaks with a snippy tone,
mocking her mother. “ ‘They are supposed to come see me, I’m not going
down there to see them.’” She reverts to her normal voice. “Several
years ago she wrote them a letter, saying she had bought a nice present
for Easter for their daughter, but since they didn’t come up to see
her, she took it back to the store.” Dee recounts the story sadly,
shaking her head.
Clearly, taking care of
Mother drains Dee. As I listen to her stories, I wonder if the worry
lines on her face
would be less pronounced if she turned her back on her mother’s complaining
and self-centered behavior. But I know that is not a choice for Dee.
She is the Responsible Daughter, the one who will fulfill her familial
responsibility, whatever the amount of misery extracted.
However, Dee believes one
positive result will come out of her sufferings. “I will not be mean like my mother
when I get old!” she states emphatically. She does not want to inflict
pain and misery on them, but she also has a selfish reason: She does
not want to miss moments of happiness with her family that she believes
she can enjoy even to her very last days.
*names changed
Robert J Cullen
April 2004
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