At the last minute

As a child, I had a troubled relationship with my mother. She wasn’t physically abusive, but she had a nasty tongue. She called me a “big lummox” and, alternatively, a “little ninny.” Those words forged my identity, and even at 67, with a lifetime of competence behind me, I struggle to shake the shame and self-loathing they invoke. Sticks and stones may break your bones—and words may cripple you forever.

 That’s not the whole story. Our relationship improved when I grew up and moved 3,000 miles away. Visits back and forth provided pleasurable episodes that helped the old wounds scab over. But her quick trigger and uncanny aim with verbal bullets remained—though I was no longer the target.

 My mother is dying now—in slow motion—and it has fallen to me to help oversee her care. Now that she’s old and enfeebled—literally and figuratively defanged—I find myself trying to understand her. I’m learning to detach myself from the ugly labels I grew up with. And perhaps that detachment is helping me to see my mother more clearly. Though strokes and dementia have emptied entire areas of her brain, and she’s shriveled six inches in height, the old temperament is largely intact. But now when I see her puff up with rage or glower contemptuously, I recognize these as signs of fear and weakness. At such times, I feel tender toward her, as I would a child trapped in a tantrum.

 I wish I had been able to view her with such empathy before, but I think it took our role reversal—she sometimes asks me now if I’m her mother—to open my eyes to her vulnerability. Some insights can only come at the last minute.

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