Lots has been happening lately, not the least of which is my mom was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The diagnosis comes with little surprise, since her mother also suffered from the disease. My mom has been very ill for the last couple of weeks…so ill that she actually cried, which I’ve seen her do maybe, um, twice. Once for each parent.
Well, you can’t count horrible romantic comedies as “crying.” She loves those. The sappier, the better. Oo, and someone should beg someone else to just “love them the way they are,” or someone should die. Perfect.
It’s weird, watching her deteriorate. We are very much alike in a lot of ways, one of which is we hate to be incapacitated. We hate feeling helpless and useless, and most of all, we hate waiting for things to get better. So in some respects, I understand her frustration, but in other ways, I will never understand her pain or her fear of this disease.
Her mother was in pain most of the time my mother knew her and I only ever knew my grandmother in a wheelchair or in her bed, often too gnarled to hold a fork or change the channel on the remote. My grandfather cared for her selflessly for years, never seeming to mind that her pain turned her into a nasty, biting woman; a twisted, poisoned thing that rarely spared a kind word or gesture of thanks for the multiple times a day he fed her, bathed her, washed out her bedpan.
I think my mom is less afraid of the pain of RA and more afraid of the way it may change her. I don’t know that anyone would immediately describe my mother as a kind woman, but she is fair, even-tempered and practical, a woman whose good deeds are always seasoned with a bit of gruffness. She has taught me a great deal of what it means to know who you are and to make no apologies for it…only work to compensate for weaknesses…though, why be weak when you have so many great qualities.
She and I used to be very close, until her practical nature was affronted by my divorce. She still does not understand why we “just didn’t work it out.” There are actions she took in the name of “tough love” that still rip me to my core when I think of them. There are slights in the form of withdrawal and silence that I will never quite recover from. And yet, she’s still my mom, and it hurts to see her hurt.
Family relationships are often sick like that.
The whole ordeal has been strange, watching a parent seemingly fall to pieces. There are more tests to come, more worries that have yet to be assuaged, and of course, more sitting and waiting for results. We can only be patient for her.
Saddest sight in the world? No one signed in to G-mail chat. Siggghhh.
