"Life — and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison — is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal." ~Neil Gaiman
I've hit a strange and somewhat depressing season in my life: a significant percentage of my father's siblings are dying off.
Now, before I go any further, I should offer some counter-perspective: my father himself seems healthy; he had heart surgery some years ago, but he pulled through just fine and seems to just keep moving along. Similarly, my mother suffered a broken arm a couple of years back, but she's as close to fully recovered as it's possible to get, and seems healthy as a horse otherwise. Admittedly, she had polio as girl, and her legs are paralyzed; so any long-term forecasts for her health should keep in mind that there just isn't much information on how post-polio affects long-term lifespan and quality of life. Still, my parents look set to continue on indefinitely. The same is true for my dad's younger brother, and my mom's two sisters.
Still... a couple of weeks ago, one of my uncles died. He wasn't actually a blood relation - he was married to my dad's sister - but he'd been part of the family for so long that he might as well have been. Dad's older brother is still in a holding pattern with some sort of circulatory/pulmonary issue, which leaves him physically listless and mentally incoherent. He can still talk, but it's very slow, and it's sometimes hard to tell if he's answering a question you actually asked; he isn't always oriented in terms of place and time. He's currently set to have the doctors remove some sort of circulatory blockage, assuming they can find it, and assuming it's the sort of thing they think it is; but even if he survives that, I really don't expect him to last another year.
His wife is in better shape, but only slightly; she has cancer, in her lungs and elsewhere. It's responding to chemotherapy, in the sense that it has stopped spreading; but it isn't retreating, either. They're continuing treatment, but again I'm going to be surprised (albeit pleasantly) if she survives another year.
So basically, we're losing about a third of that generation on that side of the family. And... I'm not sure exactly how to describe my response to this. Because on the one hand, yes, it's sad - but I'm mainly sad for my father, not myself. I'm not especially scared by it, either; I mean, I'm not ignoring it, but it hasn't provoked any particular moral or philosophical crisis in my life. It's just sort of there.
I feel like I really ought to have something more profound to say about it than that, but I don't.
My thing is watching my mother turn into her mother, which is scary. I remember my mother looking at me about a decade back and saying, "If I ever talk to you the way Mother is talking to me, I want you to remind me of this moment. I never want to make my daughter feel the way my mother is making me feel."
ReplyDeleteSo I took her at her word, and when she pulled the argumentative, illogical, "I'm going to disagree with you just for the sheer hellacious fun of it" stuff on me, I reminded her.
That went about as well as you could expect. She denied ever saying it, informed me I was disrespectful, and went off on a meandering diatribe about how interesting it is that her children remember ALL these things she never said...
I hate it. I love my mother, but I hate what she's becoming, and I'm scared unto death that I'm going to become her, just as she's becoming her own mother against her (purported) wishes.
Days like this I'm grateful I don't have daughters. This particular genetic gem stops with my generation.
/post hijack over (sorry, I can't rant about this on my blog because That Woman reads it!)
Yeah, I'm a little worried about turning into my dad. Slightly different reasons, but still...
ReplyDeleteMichael: And... I'm not sure exactly how to describe my response to this. Because on the one hand, yes, it's sad - but I'm mainly sad for my father, not myself. I'm not especially scared by it, either; I mean, I'm not ignoring it, but it hasn't provoked any particular moral or philosophical crisis in my life. It's just sort of there.
ReplyDeleteSounds a bit like when my mom's brother died a couple years ago. I wondered for a week or two if maybe I should grieve, or feel guilty about not grieving, or some other negative emotion attributable directly to him rather than Mom, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth the bother.
Amanda: I remember my mother looking at me about a decade back and saying, "If I ever talk to you the way Mother is talking to me, I want you to remind me of this moment. I never want to make my daughter feel the way my mother is making me feel."
Oh dear. My mom just told me that a couple weeks ago.
My mom had nine siblings. They've been dying off over the last few years. She's slowing down, but so far doesn't seem likely to drop dead any time soon.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that I feel much wrt her sibs dying. I never really knew most of them, so mostly I feel sad for her, but that's it. It's hard to care much about people you met once or twice at a family reunion.
Well, I doubt my mom's going to turn into her mom. My maternal grandmother didn't speak English, and my mom was essentially raised by older siblings and didn't learn her mom's language growing up. She did study it later as an adult, but I don't think much came of that. OTOH, she's got some annoying habits that I put down to her medical background. Internal medicine types really obsess over the state of one's biological waste output. Drives me nuts.