Today, Washed Clean
©October 29th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
The backyard patio is swept clean of leaves, the steep flight of front stairs leading up to the house are swept, the bulbs are in (maybe I’ll plant more today, since I have more — I’m turning into a bulb-freak!), and the rain has wiped the world clean.
I’m sitting with a cup of coffee here, at my favorite spot — the cluttered, unfashionable kitchen table, and contemplating life.
The dog sleeps, nose to toes, curled in a C, on the white, cushiony single-sofa-seat, which I had originally intended for my/our use when we got it. The dog simply decided that that was HER chair, and, without preamble, appropriated it.
Now that I see her in it, I see her logic. I fits her form perfectly. It’s C-dog-shaped. It’s cozy. Well-done, Holly! (Call me a fond and foolish person for letting my dog rule me. You are right. I am fond and foolish.)
Today, my husband is heading out to his mother’s retirement community home, which is two and a half hours away from here. He is preparing to move her to an “assisted living” facility. This is going to be fraught with a tumbling mix of emotions. We all knew the time would come, but hoped that it would not. For, you see, my mother-in-law is a strange blend of a cognitively high-functioning, highly intelligent, intellectual person and someone who is losing her memory. Add to this the fact that she is good at creating perfectly reasonable-sounding rationalizations for her lapses, and we have a very painful situation. She does not want to go. She called up my husband this morning and said that she would plead (plead!) with the administrators of the place where she lives to let her stay.
My heart breaks for her. She’s my esteemed mother-in-law. She loves me, and I love her. She’s been very kind to me since I arrived in the US in December 1988, and she’s been very generous to both her sons and daughters-in-law. And she’s no ordinary mom-in-law. She’s been a scientist, psychologist, professor and artist in her earlier life. She’s been a Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, been arrested in front of the White House, while protesting wars and inequities, been among the earliest to visit China, when the US and China reached a rapprochement in the 1970s. She was the founder of the Minnesota Plan for the Continuing Education of Women in the late 50s. She has a deep sense of integrity. Yes, she has her negative points, but then, who doesn’t? This is not the time for anyone to remember them. Right now, she’s the best of herself (except that she does not want to leave — the place where she lives currently is lovely, and she loves it with all her heart).
It’s going to be the most painful wrench, both for her, and for my husband, who has to be the one to take her to the new place. He’s not looking forward to it. I can only imagine his mix of emotions — for, who can really tell what someone else’s relationship is to his or her parents? Only we ourselves know who we are vis-à-vis our parents. All other conjectures are just that — conjectures. For him, as it is for many of us, a lifetime of interaction with our parents must follow some sort of pattern: Adoration followed by love, followed by admiration, followed by impatience, followed by strife, followed by more admiration, love, impatience and irritation. For others, it’s much more, probably worse. And, permeating through all this, must be a longing to be accepted, validated, admired and praised for one’s actions, choices, life, because ALL children want this.
I think about what it was like for my grandfather, who declined and died after six months following his fall from the stairs in my family home in India over eleven years ago. I remember that it was my mother who tended to him, and cared for him, even more than my grandmother. My husband was visiting India at the time, and he remembers holding his hand and singing softly to him at his bedside. It made my grandfather very happy. I wish I could have been there. When my own father was diagnosed with liver cancer, his condition did not land him in a nursing home — mostly, in India, that does not happen. He was at home, cared for, coddled and loved by my mother, and my close relatives (my Grandmother and Aunt). My brother was there towards the last few weeks to help, and bore the pain of seeing our father in terrible agony. My sister came over from California a week before his death to do the same. I could not make until three days before he died, but at least I saw him, and talked to him, and all of us held his hands till the moment of his death. In India, it’s a different kind of society from Western society, as far as I can see. Old age, disease and decline are accepted philosophically. It’s not easier, but it’s much more common to say, “What to do? Such is life!” Emotions are still emotions, and complex emotions remain so through the course of experiencing a parent’s life and decline.
When my father died of cancer, he was in the hospital for only three or four days, and ALL of us were there with him at his moment of passing away. And when my mother-in-law passes away, I hope we will be there for her, as well (fortunately, she is in the best of health, at age 92).
At the moment of death, all complex emotions will be swept aside. Only love will prevail. The pure and simple will remain. At the moment of death, all can be wiped clean, if we let it.
Much like the rain on the patio this morning.
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