I haven’t written since my father’s death. The sun still comes up everyday. Family and neighbors still need help and there is a never-ending list of things that need doing. My mother asked if she could stay with us, having sold their home in California to move in with us because she could not physically care for my Dad by herself. She still grieves for him. Not the withered shell that was left the few months before his passing but the vibrant man she built a life with. She exists now; not able to move forward. She depends upon me, my children and church members for activity and diversion.
I would like her to take responsibility for meeting her needs to feel useful and be of service. I would like her to find purpose and use the mind and health that she has while she can.
I am struggling to be compassionate; to give her time to heal and to stop pushing her to move forward. Change is constant in life and I have had a difficult time understanding WHY she won’t do what I think she needs to do. It occurred to me that changes for the young include adding new and better things as one leaves the nest and establishes an adult life. Spouse, children, grandchildren enlarge and enrich a life. But growing old involves the process of losing: health, capacity, spouse, sometimes children and grandchildren. My mother has lost her husband, her home of thirty years, familiar friends and neighbors. She has moved hundreds of miles into MY home, with a harsh climate that she abhors and without the energy to forge new friendships. She watched her husband deteriorate into a disoriented, helpless stranger. His relentless needs and demands increased until she wished and prayed for him to die. So did I. She wanted to die with him. Watching him lose his mind and physical strength was horrible. I found relief when he passed on. I picture him with his mind and eyesight restored. I picture him in a grand reunion with parents and siblings who preceded him. I am better with his death but the center has been torn out of the fabric my mother’s life.
Lord, please help me to be kinder, more loving, more patient. Intellectually, I know she has spent her life always feeling deprived of the love she craved. Her mother died at age 3. Her father found time to father two illegitimate sons but not to father her. Her grandmother took her at age 6 and then put her in a loveless home for girls where she fantasized what it would be like to have a family. She married at age 19 and walked her life on eggshells because her husband threatened to divorce her whenever she didn’t meet his expectations. She says he softened over time and she says she loved him and misses him terribly. She told me that her Aunt Edna said that the happiest time of her life was when she and her widowed mother lived together after both had lost husbands. I think my mother NEEDS that love and companionship from me. Yet, I yearn for time alone with my husband. I yearn for time alone. I am struggling with selfishness. I would like her to build a life, and although I say it is for her sake, I must admit my motivation is for my sake. Some day I will be a widow as she is and I vow now that I will be different. But surely I will struggle with the same emptiness. I need to be better and kinder; more loving, patient and compassionate. More like the Savior. Charity is a spiritual gift. I have received and been blessed by it in my life. I have had flashes of seeing individual people as the Lord sees them and feel His love for them pass through me. I have been negligent with the gift and am in need of repentance. I must seek forgiveness and seek to better keep my covenants that the Lord may let His love flow through me. I need Him every hour.
