The Godmother
As someone born to a Catholic mother, I have a Godmother.
A woman that is to have custody of me if anything were to happen to both of my parents. Fortunately, this was never necessary, but this woman is still in my life because this woman is my Aunt. My Aunt is a fierce lady that always has something to say. She doesn’t seem to get much out of silence most of the time. She talk talk talk talk talks. About what? Anything about people she knows and whats happening with them and what has happened to them or what they plan to do. She’ll talk about anything she has a photo of in her iPhone. She has a story for everything. Anything that comes to her mind she says. She has absolutely no filter.
This often comes out as her giving instructions too. She talks so much and to so many people that she has a catalogue of information that could be written into the “For Dummies” series of books. By that I mean, she has little tips and tricks for every project and problem you could ever mention. I think she has somewhat of a compulsive urge to speak, as though when the air is stagnant she must hear her voice. With all of that being said, she likes to come over and tell us how we should rearrange our lives to better cater to my grandpa. Now, I beg your pardon, but fuck that.
As she gave us a lecture in the kitchen on how we should better compose ourselves when addressing our poor patriarch, I trembled. My tremor intensified to the point that I realized she was pushing a button in me. Its right next to the button Grandpa used to press that I disengaged and covered with a plastic box. This button she was pressing had me defending Grandma, once again. The scene: My Aunt and Grandpa went to buy Grandma roses for Mother’s Day, which I’ll admit was a sweet gesture that Grandpa very likely initiated. I know this excited my Aunt and they had a fun little adventure together. But she doesn’t know the hell we’ve been going through lately with him. From her perspective, Grandma was being snippy and cold.
My response to my Aunt’s scolding, which does not quote what she says, but documents the feelings I have for her unsolicited advice. “Excuse me, ma’am. We are doing everything we can here to not go absolutely insane, and for you to come over here and stay one night and assume that you have it all figured out, that we are actually the ones to blame for not recognizing he’s suffering from a condition called Alzheimer’s and that we should just walk away when he gets in our face (when in some cases that might not even be an option)… the audacity. You can only know how this one day can be solved, but navigating this Dementia is not something for which you can plan ahead and there’s no instruction manual.”
Grandma is having a hard time dealing with Grandpa’s antics to get attention, especially as she navigates her own journey to the unknown. So she wasn’t as appreciative of the flowers, noticing instead the rotten oranges he’d picked out. I’ll admit, this makes my heart sink a little. Grandpa only has so much light left in him that on the days when he does try to let it shine, we should really encourage that. The other part of me knows that Grandma has every right to still feel disgusted by his behavior over the past few days. His attempt to resolve it with flowers was only appreciated for a moment, we’ll say. She’s dying too. Its difficult to see her living out her last days like this: walking on eggshells, not able to really do very much at all. I may be projecting a lot, especially because I do feel like their relationship reflects to me a life that I would be living with my ex in the future.
All that aside, my Aunt really struck a nerve in me. As she told me that when it comes to Grandpa, I should just walk away, I took her advice as she took a call, and just walked away from that conversation with her. I knew I needed to process the situation and see where I was wrong and why it felt tense. The tension arising from my assumption that my Aunt is not seeing from our perspective, only Grandpa’s. My assumption that Grandpa is playing a mental game of getting my Aunt on his side, of course powered by his dementia. My belief that Grandma is completely innocent in all of this and my assumption that my Aunt thinks that we are all provoking his condition. Thinking about my mother, feeling into her duty to defend her mother but also fight with her to no end, and how that very relationship is reflected in ours. This one nerve is shooting off in many directions.
Taking myself out of the situation to sort it out, to see everyone’s perspective so that I can approach from a place of fore giving, so that I might receive forgiveness. Forgiveness for overreacting, for not being kind and gentle, for allowing myself to react to someone who is not fully-operating mentally, for accusing someone I love of blaming me for not providing care properly, for numbing myself to the reality, for abdicating my responsibilities as a carrier of Light.
My objective response to my Aunt that is glazed with love. “I know that what you are saying is true, it’s just difficult to always convey how it feels when there is a build up of rage radiating from this man. He takes out his pain on everyone else and its a thick fog of disgust that looms in the house. Its difficult to be around him and to observe him in this state. Often times it doesn’t even feel like its him, as though some monster is taking over that is both terrible and jolting. We will continue to do what we can to keep him comfortable, while taking time away from him. Shift work has become a normal installment of my life. I love you for your tenacity and your ability to always say what needs to be said”.
I know my Aunt is right and that we should be gentle and caring. I know I am right in saying it is really hard to always be gentle and caring. It is what it is, we are where we are. Everyday is something new and we can try the best we can to be the best we can but again, like I said yesterday, sometimes you have to be your individual self for the collective. If Grandma has residual anger for Grandpa left over from his attitude this week, she isn’t just going to snap out of it. My Aunt has an incessant need to fix things and share information, so she will do that even when it is not asked for and its not meant to be accusatory. We all are humans and we have emotions and natural reactions that we don’t control, but we can choose how we experience them and how we react or respond to them.
The lesson from my Godmother: step away and sit in silence sometimes. She didn’t teach this to me exactly, but I learned it from her best.
