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Feb. 25th, 2004 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleThe past two weeks have been difficult, but not in the ways that I might have predicted.
My mom has come through her surgery and is slowly but steadily recovering at home. Millari's mom died last Friday. It was my enormous privilege to be included as part of the family in the decision to let her die, and be there as it happened. It still doesn't seem entirely real that Ana is gone. She endured so much over the past seven months (well, I guess for most of her life, but I wasn't part of that story), it's strange to accept that she isn't just sick anymore, that this is more than another set back. She ran out of time, ran out of energy, ran out of health and maybe even out of will to live. It's possible that she's dead because of an incompetent doctor (it's hard to understand why you would stop antibiotics for someone so sick), but her diabetes had damaged her whole body for 50 years, so this may well be just shit happening.
Since that time, I have done my best to be loving and supportive for Millari and for her brother and father. I know that I have done an OK job, too, which is very gratifying. I honestly feel closer to Millari's brother Gb than I do to my own brother, because he's much more open to talking about his feelings and listening to mine. It makes me sad to write that, and I know it would hurt my brother to read it, but it is true. This is one unexpected realization.
Another came tonight, when I went back to Andover to cook dinner for my family. Last week, before Ana died, I was cooking dinner every night, to effusive gratitude and praise from my family, especially my mom, who has been stuck with the unsought task of cooking for several decades. I'm not a bad cook, but I'm no master, either. I just chuck stuff that seems like it will taste well together and apply heat until I think I should stop. Driving back tonight with Millari, I could feel myself becoming more tense, more miserable and more closed off than I have felt for days. Being with my family makes me unhappy, enough so that I would rather be in a house of people I still don't know well yet (and Millari) who in mourning.
The big problems at home start, I think, with my dad. He has always been prone to outbursts of rage, to venting his spleen in colorful language (a habit I have acquired and plan to keep, so that's not the problem in itself) but what has struck me on this visit is the ease with which his anger will erupt. Dropping an envelope, having trouble unscrewing a botle cap, not being able to find the book he just set down, provoke little temper tantrums. I find myself shocked by this behavior, not because it is new, or because I am not prone to it myself, but because it is childish and seems bizarre in a grown man. True, dad is 74 years old, but he's a fairly healthy 74, and this isn't senility or dementia.
I think that, at root, my dad is scared because he feels that he has lost control of his life, and thus anything that reminds him of that breaks the thin crust of his self-control. I may be wrong, but regardless of motive, dad's outbursts make everyone around him tense. In part, I think it's a feeling that he can't handle more problems, so we just don't tell him things that might upset him. And, getting into the rest of the family dynamic, his constant anger makes him extremely bitchy, and its making mom miserable. The first few days after she got home were especially difficult, because she just didn't have the energy to deal with his bullshit, and his little outbursts would just drive her to tears.
It makes me sad, and at times angry, to talk to my mom and hear the resignation in her voice. She deals with dad's behavior by shutting down and passively letting him go on. Once he's done she'll go on with her own thing, but in a timid way. She can't support him, he can't support her, because neither of them supports themselves. My brother, for his part, seems to me to emotionally withdraw from the whole mess. (An approach not dissimilar to my own when I lived there, which I found quite unsatisfactory, which is why I have opted to physically withdraw to a town 100 miles away. And, yes, I know, I live there in a glass house.)
I'm not sure how to go about addressing these feelings with my family. I could simply tell them what's wrong with them and what they should do to fix it, but since that's never worked for me when dad tried it, I doubt it will work the other way. Getting them to open themselves up emotionally, and to be more self-supporting, will take a lot of time and energy, and won't work unless they choose to change. I don't know if my parents will live long enough, or that I will be able to be home often enough, but I have to try. Expressions of sympathy and practical advice are both welcome.
(oh, the last surprise is how this post went. Not what I expected to write about at all. C'est la vie.)
My mom has come through her surgery and is slowly but steadily recovering at home. Millari's mom died last Friday. It was my enormous privilege to be included as part of the family in the decision to let her die, and be there as it happened. It still doesn't seem entirely real that Ana is gone. She endured so much over the past seven months (well, I guess for most of her life, but I wasn't part of that story), it's strange to accept that she isn't just sick anymore, that this is more than another set back. She ran out of time, ran out of energy, ran out of health and maybe even out of will to live. It's possible that she's dead because of an incompetent doctor (it's hard to understand why you would stop antibiotics for someone so sick), but her diabetes had damaged her whole body for 50 years, so this may well be just shit happening.
Since that time, I have done my best to be loving and supportive for Millari and for her brother and father. I know that I have done an OK job, too, which is very gratifying. I honestly feel closer to Millari's brother Gb than I do to my own brother, because he's much more open to talking about his feelings and listening to mine. It makes me sad to write that, and I know it would hurt my brother to read it, but it is true. This is one unexpected realization.
Another came tonight, when I went back to Andover to cook dinner for my family. Last week, before Ana died, I was cooking dinner every night, to effusive gratitude and praise from my family, especially my mom, who has been stuck with the unsought task of cooking for several decades. I'm not a bad cook, but I'm no master, either. I just chuck stuff that seems like it will taste well together and apply heat until I think I should stop. Driving back tonight with Millari, I could feel myself becoming more tense, more miserable and more closed off than I have felt for days. Being with my family makes me unhappy, enough so that I would rather be in a house of people I still don't know well yet (and Millari) who in mourning.
The big problems at home start, I think, with my dad. He has always been prone to outbursts of rage, to venting his spleen in colorful language (a habit I have acquired and plan to keep, so that's not the problem in itself) but what has struck me on this visit is the ease with which his anger will erupt. Dropping an envelope, having trouble unscrewing a botle cap, not being able to find the book he just set down, provoke little temper tantrums. I find myself shocked by this behavior, not because it is new, or because I am not prone to it myself, but because it is childish and seems bizarre in a grown man. True, dad is 74 years old, but he's a fairly healthy 74, and this isn't senility or dementia.
I think that, at root, my dad is scared because he feels that he has lost control of his life, and thus anything that reminds him of that breaks the thin crust of his self-control. I may be wrong, but regardless of motive, dad's outbursts make everyone around him tense. In part, I think it's a feeling that he can't handle more problems, so we just don't tell him things that might upset him. And, getting into the rest of the family dynamic, his constant anger makes him extremely bitchy, and its making mom miserable. The first few days after she got home were especially difficult, because she just didn't have the energy to deal with his bullshit, and his little outbursts would just drive her to tears.
It makes me sad, and at times angry, to talk to my mom and hear the resignation in her voice. She deals with dad's behavior by shutting down and passively letting him go on. Once he's done she'll go on with her own thing, but in a timid way. She can't support him, he can't support her, because neither of them supports themselves. My brother, for his part, seems to me to emotionally withdraw from the whole mess. (An approach not dissimilar to my own when I lived there, which I found quite unsatisfactory, which is why I have opted to physically withdraw to a town 100 miles away. And, yes, I know, I live there in a glass house.)
I'm not sure how to go about addressing these feelings with my family. I could simply tell them what's wrong with them and what they should do to fix it, but since that's never worked for me when dad tried it, I doubt it will work the other way. Getting them to open themselves up emotionally, and to be more self-supporting, will take a lot of time and energy, and won't work unless they choose to change. I don't know if my parents will live long enough, or that I will be able to be home often enough, but I have to try. Expressions of sympathy and practical advice are both welcome.
(oh, the last surprise is how this post went. Not what I expected to write about at all. C'est la vie.)
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 12:08 am (UTC)Finally, all of your family members, from what I can see, do have their issues and their barriers to greater emotional honesty in their lives. However, I see good intentions and sweetness in all of them, even your seriously grumpy dad. I was really touched when I realized, for example, that he had started calling me "sweetie," and hugging me everytime I came over; it seemed to be a habit he picked up from you; it also seemed really like an effort on his part to reach out to others.
I think there's hope for them all. You're right to say that you can't make them do it and that it'll be hard work, but you'll probably get farther by getting yourself to believe in them, to believe that they can do it. You yourself have often said that you respond best to praise and people having confidence in you. Walking around with the assumption that they want to be loving, emotionally connected people is probably a more effective step than lecturing them about how to go about it.
I love you. I'm proud of how hard you've worked on yourself.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 10:56 am (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 09:00 pm (UTC)I think that's very perceptive...I have seen my own, rather mild-tempered father get upset in a similar manner when he feels out of control. Ditto for Lefty, though he's a bit more cranky on a day to day basis. :)
I wish I had actual advice, but am sending lots of sympathy, and many good thoughts for both you and M.
HUGS
Fuschia
no subject
Date: 2004-02-26 10:01 am (UTC)