Yesterday I took my mother shopping, and for the first hour and a half, it was a relatively drama-free experience. That was, until she got impatient with the cashier in Williams Sonoma because she did not hear the amount correctly. And then she got annoyed with me in Macy’s for telling her how to pay for an item. Then she got short with me during lunch. Then she was rude to a woman in the Nordstrom bathroom. Then she yelled at me and insisted that we had not just spent the last two hours at the mall doing any of her Christmas shopping.
How am I supposed to handle these situations?
Well, for the second time in a matter of days, I let her have it. I asked her why she had to get mad about everything, even after having a good time. Then she responded with a litany from her bag of tricks: her stomach hurt so she was in no mood to talk; I am such a know-it-all; she just wanted to be left alone; just take her home; etc. And I decided to pull out a few rabbits of my own: were you sick before or after we ate lunch; how am I being a know-it-all; what did I say that made you mad; and do you plan to lock me out of the house and claim not to recognize me like you did before; etc.
She yelled louder and flashed her rage face, and after taking the Lord’s name in vain a few times, I calmed down and told her that since she was trapped in my car she did not have to talk, but she did have to listen. And then I gave her the I-love-you-no-matter-what-you-do-or-say speech. It worked for the next hour.
And while none of this has anything to do with Christmas because this scenario just as likely to reoccur in April or August, I first became acquainted with that rage face at our ruined Christmas Eve dinner from last year when she baited me into an unnecessary argument. At issue then was her offense that I had taken over things while she had been out all day shopping. How dare I provide the family with a meal without her approval!
Perhaps Christmas has become the embodiment of what I hate about this entire situation—no matter what I do, it will never make her happy...or better. My mother will still be unpredictable from hour to hour and I am the person whose existence she loathes the most. I could devise a way to make Christmas perfect and she would find a way to hate me. I take her shopping and she finds a reason to hate me. She hates how I drive. She always finds a way to call me fat. She criticizes my breathing.
Perhaps Christmas has become the embodiment of what I hate about this entire situation—no matter what I do, it will never make her happy...or better. My mother will still be unpredictable from hour to hour and I am the person whose existence she loathes the most. I could devise a way to make Christmas perfect and she would find a way to hate me. I take her shopping and she finds a reason to hate me. She hates how I drive. She always finds a way to call me fat. She criticizes my breathing.
She will find a way to make me feel like that six-year old who never wanted anything more than to be loved but no matter what I did, there was always some negative response. Her dementia is just another way for her to torment me.
And so I hate Christmas. More accurately, I hate my mother at Christmas.
Of course I don’t really feel this way, but my mother could be cruel without the excuse of a debilitating mind-altering illness. But now that I have turned to blogging as therapy, I need to be honest. I need to say it all, even if it does nothing to relieve the guilt I carry around for even harboring these awful feelings. She is my mother. And in spite of this current ring of hell she is currently putting me through, I would rather endure her daily unnecessary tantrums than mourn day when she is no longer here.
No comments:
Post a Comment