Folks been wonderin’ where I been. Well. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s been a rough couple of weeks. First off, starting maybe four weeks ago, my mother went back into the hospital, this time seemingly to stay. Then Sally got sick. Then Emma got sick. And then, finally, Hannah got sick, and she was the worst of all. And on top of that, there’s work and triathlon. It’s been a lot. I mean A LOT. So anyway, let’s start with my mom.
Look, I love my mother, but I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that we had some great relationship. The truth is that I wish we had a better relationship, but there are reasons that we don’t, and that’s kind of the way it is. My mother is a life-long smoker, she married a man who turned into an self-destructive alcoholic, and she made absolutely NO effort to improve either her own health or her personal fitness. So by the time she was in her early sixties, her body was absolutely shot. This was an avoidable circumstance, but she chose not to avoid it.
The same was true of my father. He was a good man, but he developed a really vicious disease in alcoholism, and he made absolutely no effort to get it treated. He was nonetheless a magnificent natural athlete, and as a career infantry Marine officer, his physical fitness was almost part of his religion for most of his life. He was in GREAT shape when he developed alcoholism. But the disease will kill anyone if left untreated long enough, and so while it took ten full years, my father did—eventually—manage to drink himself to death. I still find the whole thing hard to believe, but there it is.
My mother is a little different. I mean, you can’t possibly be married to an alcoholic for that long without also being a co-dependent, but even more than that, she was a person who just utterlyrefused to take care of herself. She was actually belligerent about it. In fact, she was pleased when a psychiatrist diagnosed her as a passive-aggressive “caretaker,” and she embraced that role, doubling down on unhealthy mental behavior as a kind of internal badge of honor. She ignored completely doctors’ orders, orders for rehab, and any other medical or health-type advice that anyone near her cared to give if it was even mildly inconvenient or demanded the most rudimentary commitment. She didn’t have time, didn’t want to make time, and ultimately wanted us to feel sorry for her sorry state.
Well, it wasn’t unexpected.
Which is to say that I knew my mother. It’s been a while since she’s fooled me about who she is. This is the woman who refused to tell me where she thought I ought to go to college when I asked but then never missed an opportunity to tell me that I’d made the wrong choice after I’d already graduated. Who introduced me to my first wife, then turned on her and decided that I shouldn’t marry her but then never actually told me… until after we were married, at which point she wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. Who had to be hospitalized and given morphine for back pain the week before I went to Korea. Back pain that mysteriously cleared up as soon as I left. Who literally broke out in hives the week that Sally and I got married.
Now that she’s actually, permanently hospitalized, I’m starting to learn exactly how bad it was. I mean, I should’ve known that she’d never let me see the worst of it, but still… She’s been on Xanex for more than 15 years! She survived lung cancer but kept smoking, working all the way back up to a pack-and-a-half or more every day!
It’s frustrating to me. I simply cannot understand my mother’s mindset.
Mom’s probably not going to live much longer, and lately I’ve been trying to think of the good things about her, to focus on the positive. Truth: I love my mother, but I cannot remember many times when I was actually happy to have her around. It’s not that I have NO happy memories of my times when my mom was around. There are plenty of those. It’s just that she’s always a spectator in them, hanging around in the background. The closest I can come is thinking about the time I had my Wisdom teeth pulled out, and the dentist mis-measured the anesthesia and almost killed me. I was in High School. Mom took me to the Emergency Room, had the doctors give me whatever that shit is that they give overdose victims, and basically made sure that I lived to tell the tale. And afterwards, she was really great. She was comforting, and she didn’t give me any shit about anything at all. It was great, honestly. I didn’t love her then because of my obligations, I loved her because, well, she was just really, really nice to me.
And then, there was the time she made me the Winnie the Pooh cake when I was three. That’s my first memory, and it’s dim, but it seems happy. I’m sure there were a lot more times like that, and I just can’t remember them well. That I’m not being fair because I’m now really, really pissed off that both my parents have essentially committed long-form suicide. But there it is. I never needed them to take care of me, really, but it would’ve been nice if I could’ve counted on them to take care of themselves. Maybe stay together, see a couples’ counselor, work their problems out like adults…
Eh. Who am I kidding?
This is America. Land of the dumbest, most self-entitled motherfuckers on the face of the earth. My folks were nothing if not patriots.
Ugh. Enough. Let me stop. It’s true, I’m frustrated, but life goes on. I wish my mother would’ve lived her life differently, but it was her life, and I’m quite sure she wishes I’d live my life differently, too. It is what it is.
Anyway, suffice it to say that triathlon has been my out lately, my way to stay sane. I don’t know what else to tell you.
And yeah, Sally's been sick, too. She had a sinus infection. Then Emma got a cold. Then Hannah got the flu. Ugh. Been a rough couple of weeks.
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