Dear J.,
Thank you for your condolences. I want to recognize the time and effort C---'s staff and members have put into my parents’ lives. My father considered L. a good friend and source of consolation to the end.
I received your voicemail on June 30. You alluded to concerns for my father’s care and your desire to express them to me. I called you back within the hour and left a message of my own, but we were not able to connect before you took your sabbatical. Had we spoken then, I would have relayed some of the following.
Recently, I went to my parents’ house and noticed one of their hall closet doors had been removed. It had been in need of repair for years, but it still worked. When I asked my mother what had happened, she said that on a recent visit you had noticed the door was broken, tried to fix it yourself, and, in the process, it had come off completely. Larry came by subsequently to see what he could do and quoted her $150 for a new set of doors. It’s hung again, but it remains malfunctioning.
The analogy was so strong.
Anyone who knew my parents knew they were broken. I grew up maintaining them as best I could; it was my life’s mission. While I did not fix them and am still painfully learning the extent to which they cannot be fixed, I helped keep them functioning. I kept the peace. I loved them. I sacrificed for them in ways that altered my life’s course. Besides the years I have given them, the suffering I have endured because of them will take more.
You stressed to me, more than a decade ago, I needed to be prepared to “leave and cleave.” I remember you encouraged me to set boundaries, foreseeing how disruptive my broken parents would be to my fledgling marriage. As you predicted, I struggled keeping them at a healthy distance. They clung to me, and I dragged them along.
As they aged, more people began to see them as helpless. They had been in desperate need for a long time, but their needs became more superficial as their hair thinned and wrinkles deepened. Out of compassion, many people offered them a hand. My parents clung to them, too. Well-intentioned people saw something they could fix, so they set to work.
At some point in the course of the repairs, it became evident to these strangers they lacked the tools and the capacity to make my parents right. They had drastically underbid the job, and it was jeopardizing their other commitments. So they packed up and, on their way home, would call me to express their concerns as though I was the rightful owner and was being derelict.
I was and am well aware. No one knows better than me that something is wrong with my parents. No one has ever done more for or cared more about them than I have. I was there before the service call, and I’ll be there after the repairmen drive away. I cannot fix my parents any more than the strangers could. My parents cannot be replaced. If only it were that simple.
Rather than make a point, I’ll close with another story rife with analogical meaning. The doctors were unanimous: there was no cure for my father. Having already taken his cognition and coherence, my father’s brain tumor was staking claim to his mobility. When I visited him at the nursing home one evening after work, I found him on his hands and knees. He was naked, pawing at his mattress. He was in a puddle of urine. I bent down, lifted him into a nearby wheelchair, and toweled him clean. I dressed him with the help of a nurse aid and wheeled him to dinner. He sat stooped, barely able to look up. For twenty minutes, I offered him food. For twenty minutes, he refused. The last thing he ever said to me as he swatted at the spoon I offered him was, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” I said it was okay. I said he looked tired. I wheeled him back to his room. I hoisted him up, and I laid him down. I laid down, too, and watched my father sleep. I stroked his stubbly cheek. I did what I could, and it wasn’t enough to save him.
Sincerely,
M.
