Zhivago Did Me Dirty

Zhivago Did Me Dirty

I’ve been living with my dying mother for months. I strongly recommend it.

In the 1960’s, my 21-year-old mom was grieving the death of her own mother and found herself a divorced parent with a toddler, a high school diploma, and no job. She bucked the odds—moved in with her dad, started chain smoking Winstons, and put herself through nursing school. Sometimes she dragged me to class, sometimes she found a sitter via the married student housing bulletin boards. The dean told her she’d never make it. The car dealer grudgingly sold her a $3500 VW Fastback but asserted she’d never pay off the loan. Multiple apartment managers rejected her applications because she had a child with no husband. Surely she couldn’t reliably make rent, plus her little imp of a daughter might prove a menace to the other tenants.

My mother modeled the best way to say “screw you” while staying true to your Norwegian heritage is to ignore the idiots and simply achieve what they consider undoable. Graduate. Pay your loans. Keep looking until you find an apartment close to your kid’s high school (though that place was kind of a dump, I’ll admit) and pretend you don’t notice the gossip.

Here’s the thing about my Scandinavian household: none of her challenges were discussed. We didn’t talk about anything of import, to my recollection, until sixty years later when my mom found out her kidneys and heart had decided to close shop. Dinner discussion might have included the JFK assassination or Nixon leaving the Presidency in disgrace, but premarital sex, drugs, divorce? Certainly not. My best friend Annie thought the picture of my uncle Larry on the piano was my dead father until we were twenty. And isn’t it odd that it never occurred to me to ask my mom about what had happened to the man who’d swept her off her feet in high school and then deserted us?

There were simply no revelations in my home. Personal anguish and doubts were not up for discussion. We cleaned and scrubbed a great deal. As long as there were no extravagant culinary overreaches, planning meals was acceptable. We did not draw attention to ourselves—silent overachieving was expected, and neither big dreams nor dashed hopes merited mention.

We could let loose about the weather, though. It was vital to hash out what the temperature would be, how wnidy it had been earlier, and, in a real stretch of imagination and frivolity, what might be in store weather-wise next week. We covertly released all our pent-up emotions, all our envy and lust and fury, with robust talks about a good tornado or an above-average snowstorm.

Mom instilled Nordic independence in me early. She let me visit my absentee father when I was twelve, and after a week of observing his alcohol-fueled life I returned home with gratitude for our quiet stable home. You won’t be surprised to find that we didn’t discuss the visit in any detail. I just remember saying “You never said a bad word about him. Not one word.” Remarkable.

Mom let me live my life. When my pricey college informed my mother that there would be no scholarship money for my senior year, she informed them that I wouldn’t be returning and could they please start transferring my credits to our local university. Somehow an immediate monetary miracle occurred. I was never the wiser until her reminiscences a few weeks ago.

She didn’t complain about the infrequency of my letters and phone calls during my college and med school years. There was no bragging at home, likewise no fussing over nuisance details like chauvinist car salesmen or alcoholic ex-husbands. I liked it like that, mostly.

I loved her during those years; I just never thought about her. It stings me when I watch my grown sons doing the same thing to me now. When I moved back home in my thirties and settled with a husband and kids, I saw her frequently enough, but we lived separate lives.

The birth of my boys changed that. It was the greatest gift I could have ever given.

She’d chide me about some of my child-rearing techniques, which I tolerated because she could silence their screaming. I’d be sweating, milk let-down soaking my shirt, helpless with the beloved newborn in my arms, when she’d come in the back door, take my boy and trundle him with a quick tuck of a baby blanket. Such blessed, immediate silence. She told me I might be pushing frugality too hard when my toddler son asked her for purchases at Target since “Mom doesn’t have any money…” But my God, when those little boys would climb out of our van on a pitch-black winter’s night, tearing off their snow suits as they ran to Grandma’s bed at our cabin, the look on her face as she held out her arms to them and wrapped them in her comforter was pure bliss. “I have the electric blanket on for you boys!” She, like all great grandmothers, embodied coziness and safety.

While I was doing all the working mother things, she brought malts for sick grandkids and came along on our family vacations. I ran a busy surgical practice, stifled my fury at an alcoholic husband, and put the learned behavior of stuffing down emotions to excellent use. Mom and I had our rare terse arguments when she would criticize my spouse for “making me shovel.” I would reply, “I like to shovel!” There. We certainly got that out of our systems.

She started to become ill during the pandemic. To my great shame, I didn’t notice. I didn’t want to give her Covid (Let’s not kill Grandma was my exact phrase…) but didn’t realize how malevolent isolation could be. One day, I drove over to bring her to church, masked and with squeaky clean hands. I noticed food stains and crumbs on her kitchen floor.

Impossible.

My mother did not have food stains and crumbs on her floor. She stood at the door leaning heavily on her cane, but not going to the car.

“Mom, are you okay?”

“I don’t think I can go to church.”

Our world shifted with those words. We drove to the ER instead of the little Episcopal church she’s attended her whole life. After a two-week hospitalization (stents-angios-CCU-labs-ultrasounds-hematomas) she moved in with me and my family. She slept on my son’s pitiful foam bed for months--God, I’m cheap--until I bought an actual mattress. She went from a cane to a walker. I went from bringing a couple pairs of undies over from her house to moving her bedroom dresser to my place. From imagining she’d eventually move back to her house to checking her home’s value on Zillow. From bringing her to medical appointments all over town (we inject people’s eyeballs? Seriously?) to trying to find her lab results on the zillion unique portals doctors established to punish the adult children of elderly parents.

From hoping maybe her kidneys would perk up, to enrolling her in hospice.

So I’m only finding out the good stuff now, when Mom knows time is pretty damned short. She’s let me in on the things that maybe I should have known all along about my clan. Unnamed babies born and given up. Miscarriages (twins!) and lesbians. Infidelities overlooked, but always noted. Liquor. Bankruptcy. Tons of speculation, because not only did my family never talk, neither did the previous generation. It kills my writer’s soul to think of all the steamy affairs and glory and wipeouts and mischief experienced by my people that will remain unknown because we were so stoic and tight-lipped about real life.

Well, not anymore. My mom is dying, and she has some things to say. In between Jeopardy! and the local news, of course. She’ll nod off from time to time, but that’s renal failure for you.

Mom’s introduction to mortality was when our real conversations began. I’ve spent hours in that little room of hers, getting in a routine of setting out her meds with juice and opening the window shades in the morning. When the strains of “Perry Mason” pipe through the walls, I know it’s 9 am. I perch on the couch’s arm to listen to Whoopi preach her no-nonsense opinions on “The View” with her. I eavesdrop when her beloved friends come by for a visit.

And I’ve loved introducing my mom to movies on her enormous screen in that back room. The glory of streaming services has brought so much fun into her life! I started with Tom Hanks, then risked Matt Damon’s The Bourne Identity, sure she’d reject the violence. Instead, as the credits flew by, she asked “Any more of these?” Now and then I’d hear “Why’d they end up at the casino?” or “I don’t think she’s wearing a bra.” Mostly she’d have a little catnap and pretend to follow the plot when she’d wake up.

I’ll admit to a gargantuan swing-and-a-miss with my selection of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. We sat in silence while the frigid Emma Thompson character eventually gave herself a satisfying, long-awaited orgasm in the company of a young stud she’d hired. (Note to self: do not watch movies about sex workers with your mother, dying or not.)

In a different misstep, I thought we’d relish the luscious Omar Sharif romancing both Geraldine Chaplin and Julie Christie in the epic Doctor Zhivago, but I’d forgotten the opening scene. Young Yuri, with his platter-sized brown eyes trudged behind his mother’s open coffin in the Russian winter. I flinched as the pall bearers pounded nails to close off her face forever. They lowered the casket into the frigid ground, and I could barely breathe. The worst, though, was the icy twig clacking, clacking on the child’s frosted window. The little boy, cold and alone, buried his mother as I sat with mine. It’s winter here in Minnesota, and I’ll never again see a tree shiver in the wind without a sliver of sorrow.

I’ve been grateful to feel these deep emotions for the last year. My mom can’t walk even the shortest distances, but there is still pleasure in her life. She eats practically nothing, but bliss might take the form of half a grapefruit. With sugar, I’m reminded from the back room. A lovely sky or a heavy piece of fudge can trigger her grateful smile.

High blood pressure was probably the culprit behind the ruination of her kidneys and heart, and the ophthalmologist suspected it also caused the degradation of her vision. If there is a God, I hope to meet her and ask a couple things. I’d like to know why my mom, who has done nothing but take good care of her family and nurse her beloved patients, should have to die an ever-so-gradual death from muscle weakness AND have her vision taken. She can see, yes, but she can’t read anymore, even large print.

But she can see Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! She’s learned to ignore her sister’s ridiculous daily call, perfectly timed to interrupt the show. (It is very difficult for an 80-something-year-old to ignore the phone. I am proud of her for this.) My mom loves Jeopardy! and now so do I. She adores Ken, as we know him in this house, as he casually skewers yet another player with a genial “No, that’s wrong. You’re confusing Constantinople with a different dynasty…” Good times, I’m telling you.

There is such glory to watch my enormous oldest son embrace her tiny body and ask if he can make her a special coffee. “Ooh,” she squeals, “that would be nice!” I can barely breathe when our rector leans down to place a communion wafer on her outstretched palm. And I already told you about the pleasure she can find in a morsel of an acceptable rendition of a hotdish I make from her falling-apart cookbook--the one with “Adeline’s recipe—good” penciled in the corner by her mother. I wrote her obituary, and it is righteous! She scolded that it didn’t need to be so glowing, and certainly not that long. That’s Norwegian for “I like it.”

You know what gratifies me? I’m guessing the whole silent childhood thing lead me to take a different child-rearing approach. I am up in my boys’ business all the time, and when she’s around to observe it, it’s better than an action movie for her. “You talk to them about everything!” she told me recently.

I laughed. “You mean not every mother interrogates her son’s girlfriends about which contraception they use, or asks if my kid is a respectful partner?” There are worse ways to emotionally scar your children.

Still, despite stoic appearances and repeating “I’m fine,” sometimes I want to scream.

I want to buzz out and shop for clothes, even though I hate shopping. I long to go for a walk, even though it’s 13 degrees outside and it’s pitch black by 4:30. I want to travel, despite being sick of people posting their stupid “OMG I never knew how great the Galapagos Islands could be! So blessed to be the last tourists allowed to see this pristine wilderness!!!” I crave things I can’t do because at some point she’ll call from that back room, “Are you there?” and I will be there.

It’s irritating how much she hates my poorly trained dogs. I want to be free of scheduling medical personnel visits and doing all the food prep and hearing her chastise my book clubs and Board work and League of Women Voters events…the blur of my mind exhausts my mom. I remind myself not to overshare what I’m planning, else she’ll sigh, and I’ll get crabby.

My latest conflict was my annual New Year’s Eve afternoon party. It’s a ton of work, but I love it. And this year? Impossible, I thought. No way I can subject her to the hassle, even though everyone is gone by 5pm. I’d be crazy to have a crowd of people in this Minnesota winter, pent up indoors. Circulating viruses had filled our emergency rooms and hospitals. Don’t kill Grandma, remember?

“I can’t help,” she informed me from the back room. The firmness in her voice was about as close to fighting as we come. My mom can barely push herself up out of the bed, cannot walk up a single step without a scoot from behind, cannot see to read or drive, and eats only bites of food during the day. Of course she couldn’t help.

“Mom, I don’t expect you to help.” I’m equally firm, which I know damned well she correctly interprets as fury. The decision sealed by her stubborn Norwegian daughter to go ahead with a foolish party, she pursed her lips and prepared to point out flaws in the menu or tsk-tsk at the inevitable spilled prosecco.

“There’s no place to sit when it gets crowded. You invite too many people.”

“It’s a cocktail party, Mom. People don’t plan to sit for dinner at 2pm.”

“The weather is supposed to be terrible. Maybe a storm.”

“They’ll wear coats, you know. And the party is done by five.”

Silence.

Finally, “Where will you put the punch bowl?”

And with that outburst, she’s shown her hand. My mom, weak and spent, is still in the fray. She ponders the appetizer choices. She remembers what worked well in the past and keeps me from repeating previous mistakes. Despite herself, she helps.

I thought of this during the party, with the vigor of people laughing, stories being told and friends greeting each other before the new year, all while my mom lay in her bed just on the other side of the wall. As I helped one of the last guests out to her car, the twigs from the tree by my house were clacking as they hit the window. Oh, Yuri, we’re both losing our moms. Freezing without a coat, I gasped and grabbed the railing to stop crying before stepping back into my party. All the stoicism and years of terse love can’t protect me from what’s to come.

But it’s okay. As she slips away to the next place, I see she’s been preparing me for it all along. Her tales of her younger years of badassery followed by her poised, understated support of me and my little family are her gifts of love that I’ll rely on when she’s gone.

I’ve been living with my dying mother for months. I strongly recommend it.