Something to Think About

 

I have by necessity drawn a hard boundary between myself and my mother.  I am not lacking in compassion nor empathy about her age or her loneliness.  I am, however, more compassionate of my own need to be protected from protracted contact with her.  I have much on my plate at this season and a heaping side dish of emotional torture, from inside or outside is not in my best interest nor the interest of those for whom I must care at the moment.  So, I'm severely limiting my visits and the amount of time I'm spending in that negative critical atmosphere.

Recently, coincidence or whatever, I came across a Shorts vlog by a hospice nurse who was featuring another hospice nurse.  The subject was how, towards the end of life, as death looms near, the narcissist becomes more deeply narcissistic and demanding.  In fact, the two nurses agreed 100% on the fact that what a person is like in real life is deeply enhanced at end of life.

Which moves me off the subject of my mother and onto the subject of my father.  

I wrote on my routine blog about the last few months of his life.  Looking back now at how he acted and what he was at that time, I realized afresh that my relationship with my father was as skewed by my mothers point of view as every relationship in my life had been.

At the end of his life, my father was still deeply respectful of my mother.  The sole negative statement wasn't truly negative.  It was a statement of fact.  He said quietly to me one day, after asking after Mama, "Does she see her friends?" and I replied, "No, not really..." and he said thoughtfully, "She doesn't really have friends.  She has acquaintances."   That is and was the truth.  But he never said anything mean or derogatory about her personally.  He never made snarky comments.  He never spoke of her in a demeaning manner.

My father was not a perfect man.  He was prone to isolate himself from family.  From this perspective I understand more and more why he did so.  For the very same reason we all isolated from one another.  We were all being told constantly that one or the other had said something hateful or mean about us.  It was repeated as though it had truly been said.  I suppose he heard from Mama things we children were supposed to have said and we all, blindly, accepted her word as truth.   

So my father was distant and could be harsh and abrupt with his words, prone to push one away.  He was bristly.  He was a horrible procrastinator, with lots of good intentions but seldom any action.  That's facts.  He grew to be very self-absorbed over the years.

But in his final three months, he spoke lovingly of my brothers and lovingly to me.  He recalled family times, and the family he'd grown up with.  He spoke of Mama as someone he knew well but again, he never spoke ill of her or her nature.  

And if we are, in fact, more of ourselves when we creep close to the edge of death, then I see now that my father was a respectful, nice man.  I'm just sorry that it's only now I'm discovering that fact.