Birthday Presence

Earlier this year, for the first time in my life, I celebrated my birthday without the woman who birthed me.  

No hug. No kiss. No early morning phone call with a beautifully strained rendition of the birthday song. 

Today is my mom’s birthday, the first since she passed.  No birthday dinner at Salute. No crème brulee with “Happy 79^th Birthday!” written on it for dessert.

But I will have dinner with my dad tonight. And on my birthday, I received an early morning call from my dad and my aunt Jane. They both gave a strained rendition of the birthday song. It wasn’t easy on  the ears, but it made a tough day a lot easier. I am lucky to have them.

Someone else was there on my birthday and will be there tonight.

My wife, Amy. I don’t know what I would do without her. (Sometimes cliches are the best way to express a truth.) Sure, I would go on, I would live; but it would have been in a deep, dark hole.  

Her birthday was two days ago. I always thought it was interesting and maybe a little weird but also very meaningful that my mother and my wife had birthdays so close together. I believe in the power of symbols and symbolism. I didn’t know what it meant, but it meant something. I don’t believe in Zodiac signs and the accompanying personal attributes, but I don’t dismiss them entirely because what the hell do I know? Maybe there’s something to it. The time of the year in which we are born probably has some impact on who we are, and there are a lot of similarities between my mother and my wife. My mother was an educator in an urban district. My wife is an educator in an urban district. My mother and wife spent most of their lives in Connecticut. They were both raised Catholic. They both love animals and traveling and reading and watching tv/movies. They are both generous and loving. The list is long. 

I think that our parents, for better or worse, have an enormous impact on who we are, but also on who we seek as partners. One of the things that I appreciate most about my wife is that she’s willing to tell me things I may not want to hear. I may not necessarily appreciate it in the moment, but eventually I come to accept the wisdom shared and the courage needed to share it. It’s hard to tell the person you love something that may upset them or challenge them. But true love requires it at times. Blind, unquestioning support isn’t true love. Good mothers know that. My mother knew that. She had to tell me things I didn’t want to hear quite often, actually. Sometimes it took me a long time, years even, to appreciate what she said. There were times when she maybe could have said it in a different way, but she was a high school teacher in Hartford raising two boys, so her approach was generally tough and direct. Sometimes I responded defensively.

How we treat our partners and how a parent treats a child will (should) differ, so my wife has a different approach with me. Also, she worked with pre-schoolers, and in general her approach is more sensitive and patient. Of course, sometimes I respond defensively with that approach, too, so clearly the problem is me. But regardless of the approach, the fact is, my mother and my wife are willing to tell it like it is. To tell me like it is.

When she was about 70 years old, my mom had surgery and she needed a wheelchair afterwards. This was a huge shift in her life. At the time, I just knew that she would never walk again. Most people, including my mom, probably knew that, too, but she desperately wanted to believe she would. She expressed that hope for years afterwards. It never happened. My pessimism won out. How smart of me. Clearly, the lesson there was to always be pessimistic.

Although I had certainly experienced many moments of sadness and melancholy regarding my mom’s condition ever since she told me she had Parkinson’s when I was 16, this was a turning point. For so many years, the main symptoms of Parkinson’s were trembling and stiffness, hardly noticeable for the most part. Around the time she turned 70, she was still walking, and cooking family meals, but she was bent over almost 90 degrees and moving very slowly. It was now obvious that she had a degenerative disease. That word “degenerative” was starting to really sink in.

Probably the worst part of growing up is watching age take its toll on your parents. It was very difficult to see my mom in a wheelchair, with the feeling/knowledge that she wouldn’t walk again. Also, at this point in her life, any time she’d have surgery or some medical incident that required a hospital stay, her Parkinson’s medications would be out of whack, which would cause a variety of negative effects to her mental and physical condition. There were moments where she was so far removed from the person I knew that my brain could hardly process it. I also think this was when she started suffering from depression, or it was already there and it went to the next level.

When my mom was home, Amy and I visited for dinner about every other week. Through childhood and high school, I considered my relationship with my parents to be very close, but I was never much in the way of extensive conversations with them. I was the typical teen boy, sitting at the dinner table, shoving food down my mouth as quickly as possible, and answering my mom’s questions with “yeah”. After I graduated college and eventually moved out of their house, even though we saw each other less, we became closer. Maybe because we saw each other less? Anyways, our conversations were a little more robust.

But as my mom’s condition worsened, the dinner conversations at my parents’ house became more difficult for me. It was as if I had reverted to my teen self. Withdrawn. Sullen. I wanted to be there with them, with her. I needed to be there, but it was difficult.

One time when she was still in the hospital or nursing home, we celebrated her birthday, or one of my niece’s birthdays. I’m feeling the effects of aging, too, so I can’t remember exactly, but the whole family was there. We had pizza and cake at the lounge area. At one point, I got up from the table, and my mom said something to Amy about “cheering me up” or something like that. She’s in a wheelchair with a progressive neurological disease, worried about me. She could tell how I was feeling, how down I was. I didn’t want to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it. And for several months, probably longer, dinners with my mom were mostly quiet. On my end at least. Amy and my parents would talk. I didn’t realize it at the time, lost in my thoughts, but I’m sure it was awkward for everyone. And I’m sure it hurt my mom to some degree.  

Sometimes with sadness, a lot of the actual emotion is self-pity. Not all the time, not even most of the time for most people, but some of the time. Even then, it’s not necessarily the dominant emotion, but it’s there, especially with the sadness that comes with seeing a loved one who is ill or dying. You lost or are losing someone you care for, and part of you can’t help but ask, “Why is this happening to me? Why is my mother dying? Why do I have to experience this pain?” Then there’s the guilt from feeling that way.

Grief is a son of a bitch.

Watching my mother suffer (quietly, never complaining) and her body deteriorate was torturous. In her presence, it was about all I could think about and I never knew what to say.

After a while of uncomfortable dinners, Amy finally addressed my near silence. She brought it up gently, saying something like I noticed you haven’t been saying much at dinners with your mom. I responded with something like, “that’s just our relationship,” and referenced my teen years. I tried to make it seem like not talking actually showed how strong our relationship was. I didn’t need to say anything, she knew how I felt. She knew how much I loved her. And maybe that was true. But it didn’t make the situation better. It didn’t make my mom, or me, happy. I think Amy brought it up a few times, and my response was always the same. I didn’t want to change anything. I didn’t think I needed to. She just didn’t understand.

Then she finally said, well, I think your mom would appreciate if you talked more. And I think it will help you. You don’t want to look back and regret not making the most out of these moments. You should try to be more present.  

Even after that, I was still stuck in my head for a while. I couldn’t help thinking about how much my mom had been through and that she would be gone soon. I didn’t know how to break through that thought process. I also wanted to inexplicably hang on to this idea that nobody knew my relationship with my mom better than I did and nobody could tell me how to interact with my mom.

But I also realized that Amy was saying all this out of love. She knew how I was suffering, even if I wouldn’t say it. She didn’t want me to live with the regret of not fully appreciating the moments I had with my mom. And I realized how difficult it must have been to say all that to me. Would I have been able to say the same thing to her if our positions were reversed? I hope so. Looking at it from that angle helped me finally see.

Living in the moment often requires blocking out the pain of the future. For so much of my life, I would always think of the inevitable end of something. So I maintained what I considered a healthy distance from everything. Sure, my team is winning, but they're going to eventually lose, so why care? (I'm sure that being a fan of the Dolphins and the Mets had something to do with that way of thinking, too.) Why give my all to a relationship when it’s just going to end eventually? Everything good will end, everyone will die. That is undoubtedly true. But so what? The future is not more important than the present. Bad things will happen, sure. But why experience the pain before it happens? Why mourn the living? I thought that way of thinking made me superior, it freed my mind. I could see through the bullshit, not like all of those ignorant, happy people! But in fact, it was a mentality that restricted rather than liberated. It denied the importance and the value of the present, when the present is all we have.

Your loved ones will die. It is a fact. But the pain of that loss will be there, waiting. You don’t need rush towards it. You don't need to focus on it while they’re still alive. There will be plenty of time to mourn.

Slowly but surely, I was more present at our dinners. I engaged in conversation. Making my mom laugh was a joy I hadn’t known in a while, and it became sort of a mission. I didn’t always succeed, and there were plenty of moments of sadness, but I didn’t let those moments overwhelm me and interfere with the connection I had with my mom.

I would never have been able to get through the sadness and self-pity to connect with my mom in her final years by myself. I would probably have never even thought I needed to. But I did need to. And I needed my wife, the love of my life, to tell me.

My mom spoke at my dad’s mother’s funeral. She thanked my grandmother, E-Mommy, for “teaching the man I love how to love.” That line broke me and completely ruined my own speech, which immediately followed hers (thanks, mom!) but it always stuck with me.

My mom taught me how to love, but my wife taught me how to love my mom when she needed it most. She taught me, or reminded me, the importance of being present, not just being “there,” for those we love.

I hope I have the courage and strength to say what needs to be said when it’s difficult and needed most. I hope to always be present for her.

I hope I am the man my parents taught me to be.

I love you, Amy. 

I love you, Mom.

Two Angels, Mom and Nola. 

I Love You All...Class Dismissed.