Saying Good-Bye to Our Parents
Joyce Zonana
Not every boomer spends a lot of time helping aging parents, but so many do, we thought it would be useful to read the reflections of just one, writer Joyce Zonana. What she is going through is in one way unique, but in another way it’s precisely what so many baby boomers are facing right now.
The mothers of four different friends have died in the past month, and my own mother, 88, has turned her face to the wall.
“I’m finished,” she says when I urge her to join me for a walk in the park that stretches invitingly just outside her windows. “I’ve had enough.” Although The New York Times recently published a story on adventure travel for seniors (90 and hiking in South Africa, 89 and wing-walking across the Atlantic), my mother will have none of it.
“I could do that,” she assures me, “but now I am too tired.”
Ten years ago, when she was 78, my mother had spent a decade nursing my father through his advanced Parkinson’s disease: bathing, dressing, and feeding him devotedly. Until the very end, she sat beside her husband of more than fifty years, urging him to eat, holding spoonfuls of ice cream to his lips, singing, cajoling, clinging to his dwindling presence. After his death, we feared she might fall into despair, but following a year of deep mourning, she rallied – planting a garden, swimming daily, making new friends, and exploring New Orleans, the city she had moved to to be near me.
But now, after relocating in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, her usual fortitude has crumbled. She does not have any major illness, no life-threatening disease, but chronic pain and the beginnings of dementia have debilitated her. A woman who never before buckled in the face of adversity—anti-Semitism in her native Egypt, immigration, privation, a cruel mother-in-law, rebellious American children—she insists her time is over.
As I watch my mother retreat from all activity or desire, I wonder: should I be at her side, as she was with her husband, urging her return, or should I gracefully, graciously, wish her godspeed? The words of Dylan Thomas’s plea to his father, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” resonate as I too rage against the dying of her light. But was Thomas being selfish, speaking more of his needs than of his father’s? “Curse, bless me now I pray,” he had demanded. What is it that I seek? What is my role in the drama of my mother’s decline? What blessing or curse do I crave? What might I bestow?
As is true for so many women of my generation, my relationship to my mother has been deeply conflicted, at times appearing to be nothing less than a desperate struggle for survival. “You will kill me,” she said when I was growing up, and now these words—prophecy or threat?—return to haunt us both.
So, when my mother tells me she doesn’t want to see another doctor, a specialist who might help diagnose and treat her latest symptom, I am stumped: should I insist or acquiesce? When she admits that she forgets to take her medications but refuses to accept help, what is my responsibility?
Is it my fault that my mother wants to die? Is it something I have done or failed to do that has caused her so profoundly to withdraw? For me now, at 60, life has unprecedented value. After many years of struggle, I have found my stride as a college professor and writer, I am back in New York City after thirty years away, and I have stumbled into a stunning, surprising new romance. How lovely it would be to share these pleasures with my mother, to make up for our lost time. But two thoughts compete within me: she wants to die because she knows that I am happy and she can abandon her vigilant efforts to sustain me, or, she wants to die because my happiness is destroying hers.
And then the third thought, for so long unthinkable, arises: she wants to die for her own private, unknowable, good reasons. My mother and I are not inextricably bound; our fates are separate, our lives (and deaths) our own. Here then is the “chill wind” Sophocles wrote about in Oedipus at Colonus, the encounter with separateness that Dylan Thomas so dreaded. I can hire all the aides and consult all the doctors I choose, I can redress all the wrongs, admit all the faults, heal all the wounds. But the abyss we each must face remains unchanged.
Once, hiking by myself on Elk Mountain in Oklahoma’s Wichitas, I came face to face with an old buffalo who had separated from the herd to die. On that windswept height we stood for a moment not twenty feet from one another, looking into one another’s eyes. Now, alone with my mother, I again find that grace. It is her path to walk, mine to witness. No curses here at all. And her blessing, too, comes to me at last. Godspeed.
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Category: Baby Boomer Culture, Joyce Zonana
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I really enjoyed this article, and can feel your ambivalence in this situation. However, I think life is about personal will. As your mother has aged, she feels she has accomplished what she needed to do. She took care of children, husband and had some good times along the way. Her wishes have only to do with herself. I have dragged myself into the mud more than once trying to take blame for things I cannot control. Important to know that you have been there for your mother and her choice…is her choice.
Joyce dear, Honor your mother’s process as she chooses it to be. It is our nature to try to understand, to be helpful & console. She may not even know her own true feelings at this time in her life. Just do for her what you are able to do & what she is willing to accept & surrender the rest. This is a passage that is very difficult & she may very well be tired. And remember, there is no death, just a change of worlds. Sending love to you both.
I thought about my own death today, in relation to how my children would feel, so I think it’s weird I should read th is! I am only 48, but think of my own death often. I have three adult children, since I started early! The older I get, the more I realise how little they know me…or care to. They will be dying for information once I’m gone, I’m sure. But for now, should I die today, they do not know who I am. None of us know our parents, but we certainly can judge all of their actions and decisions as though we were in the sidelines and just not being asked our opinions at the time. how much we know about their quandries, yet not our own…i guess it is easier in hindsight.I hope in the end I am in the care of my beloved dog, and should be treated as she was while in my care.
Thank you for sharing this Joyce. …Have you shared this with your mother?
So many parents are dying of friends and relatives….Most of them are dying of illness, heart attack. Some are continuing to live but with dementia, altzeimers. Janet Adler’s (Janet is an authentic movement therapist) mother chose to consciously end her own life by not eating and Janet stayed by her side, assisting her mother and following her wishes. It was her time to die and her daughter supported her decision. My own mother, at age 96, was adamant that she wasn’t dying and had much to live for….but needed to come to terms with the fact that she was, indeed, dying. Everyone has their style, their path. Given the distance many of us live away from children and parents, it is a blessing to be given the opportunity to be close near the end. Blessings to you and your mom on your journeys!
Thank you Joannie for the story about Janet Adler. That would be something I would want, and in a way I think my mother does too. Perhaps I will try to discuss that with her . . . . and, yes, being able to be “present” is the greatest of blessings. Much love, Joyce
Emily — you ask a very interesting question. I haven’t yet. I’d like to.
Joyce
Thanks for writing, Regis! So, I guess it’s time to share who you are with your children! I think that’s what children really want from parents, actually . . . to know and be known.
Much love,
Joyce
Thank you Mary Ann for your wisdom.
Joyce
Thank you, Carol, for your comment. Yes, I think my mother feels she has accomplished her “job(s),” and now she is ready to go. My perspective, of course, is so different. It’s always a challenge to differentiate!
Dear Joyce, I loved your book Dream Homes, given to me by a mutual friend of Pam Hildebran’s. They both knew I’d love it as I’ve spent my life involved in Middle East issues and understand not quite belonging in any particular group. But that’s not why I’m writing. Your article on your mother was very meaningful to me. I have lost both my parents in the past few years and at the age of 56, I still feel like an orphan – and one who lives 10,000 miles away in Australia with family all back in the States. One of my closest friends, who lives in Chicago, has been fighting cancer for many years and she feels as your mother does. I’ve fought her and begged her to stay with me because I love her so much, but your article helped me. It is time for me to say, “Godspeed.” Thank you for your writing.
Robyn –
I just saw this comment today. Thank YOU so much for writing, and “Godspeed” to us all!
Best wishes,
Joyce