Rather than have a real conversation in which being honest would involve disagreeing with her, I go into my fake, submissive, yes-woman persona to get through these visits. While I love my mother, there are times when I have to face the grim fact that I don’t enjoy her company. An ugly sludge builds in me during my days when I have to give half my work day over to caregiving. She doesn’t get this, and blithely calls at the last minute for help getting to long-standing appointments.Ĥ. To survive juggling a staff job for 30 years while parenting three children as a single mother - I had to kiss spontaneity goodbye in favor of planning, organizing, and scheduling. My mother didn’t work for a living and so has always prioritized spontaneity. “Okay, Mom, we’ll look into it,” I said and I canceled the doctor I’d just found.ģ. But then she decided it wasn’t her shoulder that hurt, it was her groin. I recently went to some effort at her request to find her a new orthopedist because she disliked how her original one rushed through appointments. Also, she eats only the gooey inside of a wedge of Camembert and leaves the rind for others.Ģ. Mom “forgets” her cane when I take her out in the world (she doesn’t want people to think she’s old, she once confessed) so she makes like an albatross on my elbow. ![]() Mom “forgets” to bring her wallet to restaurants, so I’m obliged to pay. Here’s my list of what I call the Four Stages of Hating Caring for an Aging Parent:ġ. Especially aged baby boomers who feel entitled. I used to do elder care, but I came to hate it because old people complain too much. I complimented her on how nice she sounded with them and she replied, “I like young people. “They were so polite and nice,” the cashier said to me. I was at the grocery store the other day in line behind two lovely teenage boys. To echo Nora Ephron, I feel so bad about my feelings! The kind of shame that wakes me at three in the morning to beat me up. When it blows over, I feel enormous shame about my anger. This dramatic meteorological phrase perfectly characterizes my category-five internal weather at times. I’m not talking garden-variety annoyance, though I experience that, too. ![]() Who could say such things about her own mother? How My Aging Mother Provokes Me From my point of view, she’s self-absorbed and inexcusably dependent has been her whole life. She’s 92, and bravely facing her twilight, a widow just doing her best to get by in the familiar comfort of her home of 40 years. ![]() “My first resolution for 2019 is to stop complaining so much about my fucking mother,” I said to my significant other on New Year’s Day this year.
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