Mom's Choice

My mother died in January. She was 95 years old. My dad died 25 years ago and in some ways my mom died with him. She was never really good at making decisions so dad did much of the decision making. Fortunately, that was one of his strong points. Unfortunately that left mom in a difficult situation upon dad's death. After dad died, my sister and I regularly spent one day every week with my mom, usually Thursday. She looked forward to those days with great anticipation. On those days, she had companions most of the day. On those days, we helped her do all the things she was afraid to do alone. On those days, we laughed and cried and shopped and had lunch. Her life took on some meaning on those days.

Most other days for her were spent at home. She was never a "social butterfly". She loved her family, her house and her garden. Her passions were her family and a "white tornado" clean house and yard. That was her work and her glory and she did a pretty terrific job with those things. Many of her days were lonely. She made choices that isolated her from the world. She would not call anyone for the simplest request. She would not initiate a visit with anyone. She would not go with the ladies who invited her to lunch or club meetings or just a ride or movie. She quit going to church because she might not look right and later because she could not hear it. She was so afraid of "looking stupid" that she would not even avail herself of the simple safety devices that could have made her more comfortable as she aged, walkers, alarm systems etc.

I had a particular gripe in this area. I am the mother of 3 deaf kids and thier spouses are all deaf as well. 3 of them really benefit from hearing aids but 3 are so deaf that it makes very little difference and in a sense is actually sort of annoying. Mom started to lose her hearing many years before she died. We dutifully went and got her a state of the art set of hearing aids at no small expense. She wore them for a week or two and then straight to the jewelry drawer they went where they remained useless for the rest of her life. She refused to make the effort to learn to live with them. I would have given anything for my kids to be able to benefit from similar aids and the fact that she would not use them gnawed at me. The plain fact of the matter was that mom did not like to try anything out of her comfort zone and she also thought they made her "look stupid". Did that mean that my kids looked stupid because they wore aids or did they look stupid because aids did them no good so they chose not to wear them? Though she didn't mean anything by not wearing them, I got the message that her feelings about herself applied to my children as well. I'm absolutely sure she never understood the pain this caused me. Why? Because no one, including me, told her.

I learned a powerful lesson from this little hang-up of moms. I learned how little we know about how our choices sometime affect others without our even understanding that they do. A pair of hearing aids did not come between mom and I because I made a choice not to allow that but her world was altered by that choice in ways she did not know. I still have those hearing aids where I can see them occassionally to remind me of this lesson.

Thanks mom. You were a terrific mom and I learned so much from you even if you did have some hangups! The fact is that I even learned from your hang-ups!