Carol Mithers - Final Gifts

When I was deep in the craziness and trying not to drown, I wondered why there was something about it that felt so familiar. Then I got it: taking care of the old is just like parenting an infantonly on really bad acid.

That acid trip was my life for five years, the length of time my husband and I cared forsequentially, simultaneouslya series of aged relatives as they passed through the relatively new life phase that is the prelude to death but not active dying. First came my mother-in-law, then father-in-law, my aunt, my mother. All were over 80, with a dizzying array of ailmentschronic obstructive lung disease, dementia, type 2 diabetes, miscellaneous heart conditions, high blood pressure and cholesterol, vertigo, diverticulitis, macular degeneration, gout. All lived far from our Los Angeles home, my mother in north San Diego County, a two-hour drive, four at rush hour; my in-laws in Fort Worth (three hours by plane, 45 minutes from the airport); my aunt in upstate New York (six hours on the plane, two on the road). My sister was also there for our mother, but my husband was an only child and my aunt was childless. Which meant the bulk of the care was on us.

It had been over a decade since Id given birth, but the feelings of early motherhood came rushing right back: the boulder-weight exhaustion and fractured brain, the claustrophobia, the demands, smells, tasks that had to be done over and over without ever being complete.

Also, and even more strongly, the sense that I had entered a whole new universe. Motherhood at 40 had been utter dislocation. One minute I was the fit, driven journalist Id always beenat the gym, on the trail, the pregnant pro, proudly hauling my seething, about-to-pop belly to the Bel Air Hotel to interview a movie star, and the next, I was a flabby, hairy-legged wretch who couldnt hold a thought beyond God, please let her sleep tonight. I wept as I pushed my new daughters carriage through my suburban neighborhood, wondering what the hell had happened to me.

This time, it was as if my whole lifeas writer, mother, wifehad been swept into a hallucinatory other place, where I did what Id always done, yetnothing worked. I accepted magazine assignments but struggled to write them because my attention was shattered by a constantly ringing phone. I could live physically in my own house, but psychically, I was scattered across four cities and 3,000 miles. Id wake up to a brilliant blue L.A. morning that I wouldnt see because I was worrying about the hail due in Texas, the northeaster approaching New York, the brush fire to the south. (If I leaped out of bed and out the door immediately, could I reach my mother?) Arrangements that seemed fixed on Wednesday wavered by Thursday like a roadway heat mirage. Conversations veered from Earth to ether in seconds; by the time Id finish a sentence, its beginning was gone.

All right, sport, Ill see that new doctor if you think its so important, my father-in-law says, resigned, after Ive spent a full half hour explaining my reasons.

Finally. I exhale. I do think its important, so But he is shaking his head as I reach for the phone.

Hey, hey, wait a minute now, what are you doing? See a new doctor? Why should I do that?

Of course, intellectually, very little of what happened was a surprise. I knew that America was aging, that life spans had stretched, that the people gerontologists called the old-old were sick, frail and needed extra attention, and that providing it would be hard.

Emotionally, I was completely unprepared. Friends whod already watched their parents age and go might have murmured their sympathy, but no one offered details, a guidesome perky little What To Expect When Moms 90 would have been nice. No one was honest enough to tell the truth about what was coming: a nightmare, a farce, the blackest black comedy imaginable. No one warned me that at one moment I might find myself fantasizing about dumping a fatal overdose of Valium into someones coffee, and the next, be tenderly stroking her back, promising, I will keep you safe. No one warned me that this drama, whose ending was never in doubt, would still leave my heart in tatters. No one told me that it was also a love story.

I took care of the old people in my life because they needed me, because it was the right thing to do. I never imagined that when my time with them was done, Id struggle to put it, and them, aside. I lived in a different universe, and four years after the last funeral, Im still a long way from home.

A question: Can I find a way to come back?

Another: Can I make myself want to?