Mother

 “My mother is driving me absolutely crazy,” Jenny begins. “I know that’s an old story, but it’s getting worse. I’m trying to get ready for my 50th birthday party and she can literally call me a dozen times a day. She’ll ask me how she can help me with the party and if I give her anything to do she keeps calling with one question after another. ‘Is it okay if I invite my sister? What about my neighbor? Are you having kids come? What about kids under 12? Under 5?’ And those are all separate calls. It’s driving me nuts! I’ve asked that she text me these questions but she just won’t do that. I’m at my wits end.”

“What’s your guess as to why she’s calling so often?” I ask. “Is she having some anxiety about you turning 50?”

“I never thought about that, but maybe. If I’m turning 50 she has to be getting older too. She’s always dreaded aging. But I don’t know, it also just feels like it’s what she’s always done, pretended to be helpless so I would take care of her, which has obviously gotten worse since my father died. I’m tired of being her caretaker. I have enough of my own headaches, my daughter floundering, my husband dissatisfied at work. It’s too much. But my mother is always the one who throws me over the edge. I guess that’s because I see her as so narcissistic and self-involved, never really seeing me or wanting to know what I want.”

“That’s obviously been true throughout your life.”

“Definitely! That’s why it’s so maddening. Even these questions about my party. It’s she who wants to invite her sister – and of course I’m inviting my aunt. She wants to invite her neighbor and it’s she who probably doesn’t want kids at my party.” Pause. “I’m sick of talking about her. I feel I can’t ever get her out of my head. Now she even calls about questions about her money, about her checkbook, about whether she deposited her social security check, which is of course on direct deposit. I guess she’s getting more and more infantile, wanting more and more for me to take care of her.”

Alarm bells go off in my mind. “How old is your mother?”

“Seventy-six.”

“I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but is it possible your mother is beginning to have cognitive problems?”

At least a minute passes as Jenny sits staring at me as though in shock, a deer caught in the headlights. Then she bursts into tears. “I’m terrible! I’m a terrible person, a terrible daughter. My first thought when you said that was, oh no, now I’m really going to have to take care of her! Isn’t that awful?”

“No, it’s not awful of you. It’s an understandable first thought. You’ve spent your life taking care of someone who didn’t need to be taken care of and it would indeed be horribly ironic if that person does need caretaking at the end of her life. But we may be getting way ahead of ourselves. I don’t know if your mother is having cognitive problems.”

“It’s just that it makes too much sense for it not to be true. I mean I know we all – especially as we age - lose words occasionally or misplace things – but as soon as you suggested it about my mother I knew it was true. That bit about her social security check did throw me and there have been other things. She didn’t seem to know who the President is although she’s always stayed up on current events. And it wasn’t only that she didn’t know, she didn’t seem to care either. And when she called to ask if she could invite her sister, I got short with her and said, ‘Of course I’m going to invite Aunt Mary.’ The way she reacted, I wasn’t sure she really knew her sister was my aunt.” Jenny pauses and shakes her head. “This is so terrible. What an awful way to end a life! And I’ve been getting so pissed at her lately and I’m sure you’re right, she just can’t help it.”

“But your getting pissed at her makes sense. You’ve seen her constant calling, questioning as a continuation of her playing at being helpless to elicit your caretaking.”

“But it’s not! Or maybe sometimes it still is.”

“Yes, that’s possible.”

“This is going to be hard.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I think I’ll make an appointment with her neurologist. Maybe he’ll be able to tell me how bad she really is. And if anything can be done.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“But they really can’t do anything, can they?”

“My understanding is, not much, but it never hurt to explore possibilities and get an idea of where she is at this point.”

Compassion

“You don’t understand!” Morgan screams at me through clenched teeth, hitting the sides of her head with her fists. “I hate myself! I hate myself! I’m stupid and ugly and awful. Bad! Bad! Bad!”

“Stop it, Morgan,” I say raising my voice. “You know you’re not allowed to hurt yourself in my office. Stop and try to calm down.”

Morgan brings her fists in front of her eyes and bursts into tears. I silently breathe a sigh of relief. She continues to sob.

“I’m here, Morgan,” I say gently.

She nods, still crying. 

“She’s such a bitch,” Morgan manages to say through her tears. “But why am I such a mess? I should know it by now. She’s the golden child. Everything good comes to her. And me? I’m just bad and deserve everything I get.”

“Morgan, is there even a little part of you that knows that’s not true, that knows you were a small, helpless child who deserved to be cherished, not beaten?”

“Nope! You just said it. I was small and helpless, by definition that made me bad.”

“But all children are small and helpless, Morgan.”

“But not all children are illegitimate.”

“That was hardly your doing.”

“Tell that to my mother. I was born, ergo it’s my fault. And then Prince Charming comes into the picture and the golden child is born and I’m even more worthless than before. And now not only does Mom get to beat up on me, but my sister does too. You should have heard her gloating. Gloating! I mean I get it. She’s happy she’s pregnant. I should be happy for her. But gloating. Like it was a contest. I can’t even get a relationship and she and Rob are going to be the ‘happiest people in the world. You’ll know what I mean when it happens to you.’ Gag! I thought I’d throw up. But that’s because I’m bad. Because I can’t love my sister, because I can’t be happy for her.”

“It’s very hard to be happy for someone who smiled sweetly after she got you in trouble and watched you be beaten.”

“But I deserved it! I did pull her hair, or steal her doll, or punch her. I hated her! I still do. And that makes me really, really bad.”

“Does it?”

“Doesn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to love your sister? Aren’t you supposed to turn the other cheek?”

“Your rage at your mother had to go somewhere.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean. I was a rageful brat. And if I couldn’t rage at my mother, I turned it on my sister. Charming!” 

I sigh. “I always feel as though I’m arguing with you, Morgan, always trying to convince you that you need to have compassion for yourself…”

Morgan interrupts me, snorting her disdain. I continue talking.

“…that you need to have compassion for yourself as the scared, helpless child you were and understanding for yourself as the angry adult who keeps turning that anger on yourself.”

“Compassion doesn’t exist is my vocabulary, let alone in my experience.”

“If you read about a child who was beaten with a belt, who was locked in a closet, who was repeatedly sent to bed without food, wouldn’t you feel compassion for that child?”

“Maybe. But for me, for me I feel only hatred. I was bad. My mother was trying to beat the badness out of me. If my mother was bad she would have beaten my sister too. But it was only me, only me who needed to be beaten.”

“I do understand, Morgan, that you have to hold on to the belief that you were the bad one because as long as you’re the bad one you still have hope you can be different and win your mother’s love. But if she can never love you – perhaps because of the circumstances of your birth, perhaps because you reminded her too much of her – then the hope of her loving you is gone and you’re left in mourning, without the only mother you ever had. And that’s sad, Morgan. Very sad. And you need to find compassion for yourself.”

“There’s that word again. You don’t get it. There’s no word like that for me. It’s as though you were speaking Chinese.”

“I do understand that compassion feels entirely foreign to you. But you need to find your compassion for yourself, perhaps by first taking in my compassion for you. Your life has been terribly painful and unfair and you need to be able to feel sad for you.”

Losses

“I couldn’t wait to get here today,” Carol says, practically breathless. “I had the most awful dream. It’s not as though anything so awful happened in the dream, but it felt awful.”

I have been seeing Carol in intensive treatment for many years. She entered therapy her mid-40s, terrified of being depressed and non-functional like her mother. She felt overly anxious and unsure of herself and although by all external appearances she had a successful life, inside she felt like a scared little girl.

“In the dream,” she says, “I was back in the apartment I grew up in as a child, which of course was awful in itself. I was sitting at the same shabby kitchen table I sat at as a child. We were having dinner. It was just me and my parents. I don’t know where my sister was. Maybe she had a fight with my father and stormed out. My mother was her usual depressed self, beaten down, defeated. My father was stuffing his mouth, but I had the feeling he was fuming. Of course he was always fuming, so that’s no surprise. I felt terrified. I don’t know if I was waiting for my father to explode. I don’t know, but I hated it! I hated that I was dreaming of that place again.” 

“What comes to mind about the dream?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It seemed to come out of nowhere. You know I’ve been feeling really sad since Thanksgiving. I would have thought I’d be dreaming about that, all the losses. You remember, sitting around my daughter’s table and thinking of all the people who weren’t there.”

I did indeed remember. Thanksgiving brought up similar feelings for me, an awareness of all the absences, all the people who had died. 

She continues. “My husband dead of pancreatic cancer, my son killed in Iraq, so many of my friends. I’m only 50, how can there be so many people in my life already dead. I mean I love my daughter and she made a beautiful Thanksgiving, but the losses, the losses overwhelm everything.” 

She pauses, dabbing tears from her eyes. “So what am I doing dreaming about my childhood apartment? That’s one thing I don’t mind having lost. I guess I felt sad when my mother died, but in many ways I thought she welcomed death. Now at least she could be at peace. And my father, I know it’s terrible, but truthfully his death was a relief.”

“So why do you think you’re dreaming of your childhood apartment at this time?” I ask, a thought forming in my mind. I also used to dream of having to leave my idyllic home and adult life and return to the apartment of my childhood. For me those dreams were about my fear of loss, of losing what I so cherished in my present, adult life. For Carol many of the losses have already happened. 

“I wish I knew.”

“Is there a connection between the losses you felt so acutely at Thanksgiving and the dream of returning to your parent’s apartment?” 

“What I just thought is, maybe there’ll be no one left, maybe everyone will die, maybe there’ll be no place to go. If there’s no one left, maybe the only place I can go is to go back to them! I mean I know that doesn’t make logical sense because they’re dead too, but maybe that’s how it feels. If everyone leaves me, I’m back to being an abandoned child, a helpless, dependent child who has to go back to my parents.” She starts sobbing. “No,” she whispers. “No, that won’t happen. I have you. And as long as I have you, I don’t ever have to worry about going back there. You’ll remind me I’m not that helpless, dependent child. And if I do slip into that helpless place, you’ll be here to help me back up.”

I hesitate. We’re near the end of the hour. This has been a difficult session for Carol. But… “Carol, I wonder if you realize how much you’ve been your own therapist this hour, how much of me you’ve taken in over the years…”

“You’re not leaving are you?” she interrupts, panicked. “You’re not retiring? You’re not dying?” Her fear is palpable.

“I have no plans to go anywhere. But as you well know, we never know what life has in store for us. I do know I won’t live forever. And I also know that you’ve taken in so much of me. Did you recognize, even just in this session, how much you were able to do your own therapeutic work?”

“But…” she begins.

“We’re not ending, Carol. I’m not going anywhere. And it is also important that you recognize your own strengths. They don’t reside in me. They live in you.” 

Alone Again

Cynthia collapses heavily in the chair across from me, as if she doesn’t have the strength to hold herself up. Sadness exudes from her every pore.

“My son told me yesterday he’s not coming for Thanksgiving,” she says, barely holding back tears.

Although I’m not surprised - Cynthia has been disappointed by her son many times before – I do feel badfor her. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “What happened?”

“He said it’s too expensive to bring the whole family.” Pause. “I know it is expensive to travel during the holidays. I wish I could help him, but I’m just not in a position to do so.” Pause. “I wonder if he was waiting for me to offer. But he should know my circumstances. He knows his father left me next to nothing. I’m not even 65. I have to be sure I have money to last my whole life.” Tears run down her cheeks. “I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving alone. It’s supposed to be a family holiday.”

I can feel myself wanting to go into “helper” mode – making suggestions, asking why she has to be

alone. It’s a place I have been many times before with Cynthia, usually ending in frustration for both of us. Her helplessness is hard for me. I want her to do something. She wants someone to do it for her, to take care of her.

“It is hard to be alone for the holidays,” I say, empathically.

“But what should I do?” she asks, crying harder. “What alternative do I have?”

Feeling as though she is unconsciously setting a trap for me I say, “It sounds, Cynthia, that you’re asking me for suggestions, but usually when I make suggestions you reject them, always finding a reason they’re undoable.”

“But there isn’t anything I can do. Paul isn’t coming. I can’t change that. I have no other family here. So I’m alone.”

“Sounds like you’re feeling angry at Paul.”

“Okay, so I’m angry. What does that get me?”

“Sounds like you’re angry with me too.”

“I just don’t see where this is getting me anyplace.”

I hear that almost as a positive statement, a desire for movement. “Where would you like to get, Cynthia?”

“Not alone again.”

“So what might you do to not be alone again?”

“You think I have control over this, don’t you?”

“You know, Cynthia, you feel more angry than sad to me right at this moment and I wonder if that’s
helpful to you. Maybe it can give you the push to figure out what you might do to not be alone again.”

“You sit there so smug. You’re probably surrounded by family – kids, grandkids – all getting together and having a great time. You don’t care that I’m alone,” she says crossing her arms in front of her.

Although this is definitely not my reality, it is clearly Cynthia’s fantasy about me. “So you’re envious of the life you see me as having.”

“Yes!” she practically spits at me, with venom. “You’re just like all of them. You have it all. You gloat while I suffer!”

“All of whom, Cynthia?”

“My sisters, my mother. They were prettier, smarter, able to get it all, while I was the shmuck who
married an even bigger schmuck who left me in the position I’m in today.”

“So you felt lousy about yourself, felt you couldn’t compete, couldn’t do as well. You gave up. Also, and I’d really like you to think about what I’m going to say, I think you now unconsciously punish them – and me – but remaining the “schmuck,” as you say. It’s as though you’re getting back at them by saying, see what you did to me, I’m miserable and it’s all your fault.”

“So what do you think I should I do?”

“You could fight back. You could do things that would make you feel better, make your life more fulfilling.”

“A little late, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. You said yourself you’re not yet 65. You still have a lot of living to do. And I’m not
talking about become a millionaire or discovering a cure for cancer, I’m talking about not needing to
keep yourself in a one down position.”

“What about Thanksgiving?” she asks.

“What about Thanksgiving?” I reply. “You still want me to make suggestions. But I know you can come up with your own suggestions, you could thrive, if you could allow yourself not to punish yourself as a way of getting back at the people who have hurt you.”

She shrugs. “We’ll see.”

“Yes,” I reply, “we’ll see.”

Until Death Do Us Part

Bob Samuels looks as though he would once have been a handsome man. Now his disheveled white hair, creased brown pants and too small plaid shirt, along with his sad eyes and almost shuffling gait, gives him the appearance of a man who has grown old before his time.

“I read your book,” he begins. “I thought maybe you could help me. You know about loss. But I worry that you don’t know about regret. You don’t mention it much.”

I immediately flash on some of the regrets I have regarding my husband’s treatment of prostate cancer and heart disease: Should we have chosen surgery rather than radiation? Why did no doctor ever tell us about the possible false negatives from chemical stress tests? Yes, I have regrets, but they don’t plague me. I accept that no one is infallible; no one can anticipate or control everything. I say nothing and wait for Mr. Samuels to continue.

“My wife died of ovarian cancer five years ago. She was diagnosed five years before that. In the beginning she put up a valiant fight, although I always wanted her to pursue more alternative treatments in addition to the chemo. I don’t mean anything way out there. Stuff like nutrition. I thought she should become a vegan, try juicing, stuff like that. But she couldn’t deal with it. And then in the end, when the cancer came back again and then again, she called it quits. Said she had enough. She stopped all treatment and just died. I wanted us to go to Europe and try some of the experimental treatments that aren’t available in the States. But she said she couldn’t, said she was done.”

I think about my husband’s words when he too decided to stop treatment: “It’s enough already.” He had fought for years to stay alive. But he reached his limit. Although I was grief stricken, I understood his decision.

“Sounds like you’re angry at your wife for giving up,” I say to Bob.

He startles. “No, no,” he says. “I could never be angry at her. I’m angry at myself for not being able to convince her, for not being able to make a good enough argument. I’m inadequate. I couldn’t make her see.”

“You couldn’t make her see what?” 

“That there was a chance. That there were still things we could do.”

I believe that Bob is angry at his wife for letting go. I also believe that he can’t let himself feel that anger, that he blames himself rather than her. And he can’t tolerate the helplessness we must all deal with in the face of death. But these interpretations are all too premature.

“It sounds as though you miss your wife tremendously,” I say instead.

He sobs. Reaching for the tissues he tries to control of himself. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice breaking.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” I reply.

“It’s five years. I shouldn’t be like this anymore. But I keep tormenting myself. What if I’d done X? What if I’d say Y? What if I was enough of a husband for her that she wanted to stay?”  

“You think if she loved you enough she would have fought harder?” I ask, wondering if his wife’s decision to stop treatment felt like a narcissistic injury to him.

He cocks his head and puts a finger to his lips, pondering my question. “I think I always loved my wife more than she loved me. I mean, she did love me, but I adored her. She was the only woman who really ever mattered to me. So do I think if she loved me more she would have continued to fight? Maybe I do. I don’t like to hear myself say that. It sounds so selfish, so much about me.”

“You know Bob, in the end, none of us can defeat death, no matter how much we might love or how much we might want to stay.”

“I know.”

“I wonder if you do. I mean I’m sure you know intellectually that we all die, but I wonder if on a gut level you feel that if only we do enough, if only we try harder, somehow we’ll be able to continue on.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bob, my sense is that we jumped right into this very painful, difficult topic because you’ve obviously been struggling with these feelings for quite some time. But I wonder if we could go back a bit so I can get some sense of you, of your life, of who you are.”

He takes a deep breath. “Where would you like me to start?”

“Wherever you’d like.”    

So Much To Do!

“There’s just so much I have to do. Mom’s sister is coming from LA. Her best friend is coming from New York. I have to get food in the house. The house is such a mess, especially with Mom’s hospital bed in the living room. And there’s Melissa, getting her to school, to swimming, to play dates. I’ve tried to keep her life as normal as possible.”

These words rush from Chelsea the moment she enters my office. She continues:

“I’ve thought about asking Melissa’s father to take her for a while, but I don’t know, I don’t know how she’d feel about being sent away.”

“How do you feel, Chelsea? How do you feel about sending Melissa away? How do you feel about your Mom?” I ask, interrupting the flow.

“I don’t have time to feel. Except for stressed. I’m plenty stressed. There aren’t enough hours in the day. And I don’t want to leave Mom alone. I know the hospice nurse is there, but she’s a stranger. Mom doesn’t know her.”

“Chelsea, can you slow down a bit, can you …”

“I can’t slow down,” Chelsea interrupts. “I don’t have time as it is.”

I’m discomforted by Chelsea’s agitation. I know about anxiety taking over during times of impending loss, being propelled into action to escape the sick feeling in one’s stomach, hoping that doing something, anything will decrease feelings of helplessness.  But it’s possible – in fact, helpful – to remain aware of the ever-present sadness.  Chelsea is using her incessant activity in an attempt to rid herself of her feelings, an impossible task that only increases her anxiety – and mine.

“But you have time here, Chelsea,” I say. “You have time to feel. Your Mom is dying. She’s been living with you for several years. You’ve been her caretaker. You have feelings about losing your Mom.”

“Of course I have feelings,” she replies. “But what’s the point of dwelling on it. And her sister and best friend are coming. I can’t very well tell them not to.”

“Are you saying you’d rather they not come?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. They want to come see Mom and they certainly have a right to.”

“But you can have a preference, a feeling about their coming, even though you understand their need to say good-bye to your Mom.”

“I guess I’d rather they not come. But they’re still coming.”

I feel myself becoming increasingly sad, although I don’t know why. Is Chelsea becoming more aware of her own sadness? Is she less aware and projecting her sadness onto me?

“Do you know why you’d rather they not come?” I ask.

“It’d be a lot less work.”

“Any other reason?” I persist.

Suddenly Chelsea is still. Her blue eyes fill with tears. “I know this is silly, but I’d rather have my Mom all to myself. I hadn’t thought of it, but I wonder if that’s why I considered sending Melissa to her father. I want it to be just Mom and me, just like it was when I was little. Oh God! I knew I didn’t want to go here! I can’t stand it! I’m not sure I’ll make it without Mom!” Tears stream down her cheeks. She buries her head in her hands, her body wracked with sobs.

My eyes well up. I remain silent, giving Chelsea her time.

After several minutes she reaches for the tissue box, blows her nose and wipes her eyes. “I’m sure I look like a mess.” She pauses. “But I actually feel calmer. Isn’t that weird?”

“No, Chelsea, not weird at all. You spend a lot of energy running in circles, trying to avoid your sadness. But when you stop and feel the sadness, although it’s very intense, you feel grounded again and you don’t have to be frantically worrying about things that don’t matter much at all.”

“But sometimes I’m not sure I will survive without Mommy,” she says in a whisper.

“I understand that’s your fear.”

“We were so close. It’s even been hard these last few months when she’s really not with me anymore. But I can pretend. I can pretend she knows who I am, that she hears me, that she responds to my voice. And maybe she does. But soon I won’t even have that. I don’t want to start crying again. I have to go soon anyway. Oh, I can begin to feel myself starting to rev up.”

“Good that you recognized that.”

“But better to be running around like a whirling dervish, than to be afraid I won’t survive without Mom.”

“Well, hopefully we can help you feel less like a helpless child who can’t survive without your mother. I’m sure you’ll miss her and grieve a lot. But you will survive.”