My mother can't hear me, part two
Wednesday, 6 January 2016 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59I've Got Nothing To Say And I'll Only Say It Once.*
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The oddest thing about it all is her perverse tendency to hear the opposite of whatever I've said. If I say "It's not going to rain today," she hears "It's going to rain today." And this isn't about sentence structure, or assuming the worst. If I say, "It's going to rain today," she hears, "It isn't going to rain today." It's so bizarre, it feels deliberate.
My favorite moment of being misunderstood was when I was trying to give her a telephone number over the phone. (This was not my idea, and I protested its uselessness, but she insisted.) I got to the number zero, and she simply could not get it. She thought I was saying Jell-O. Because randomly throwing in the names of food items is something I would do while giving someone a phone number.
And this can't be blamed on the stroke; it was two years ago. Really, giving someone a phone number on the phone should be the easiest thing in the world. There are only ten options, and none of them sound anything alike. (Maybe five and nine. Do you know why six is afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine. [Read it aloud if you don't get it. That was Pat's favorite joke.]) If you hear Jell-O, ask yourself what number sounds like that. But of course she doesn't do that. She's busy making up her own stories about what you're saying. And I wouldn't care, but I'm doing all the heavy lifting while she's playing, and getting angry at me because she's not getting it. It's all my responsibility and my fault and LA-LA-LA-LA, she can't hear me!
The second worst part of this is the sheer unnecessariness of all of those years of yelling. I'm furious with her for that, for treating me so thoughtlessly all that time, wearing me out so that now when it's important that I have patience with her, I just don't anymore. She's used it all up, it's entirely her own damn fault, and she doesn't get it. She blames me.
But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is how this erases me in her life.
She's told me more than once that nobody has ever made her laugh the way I do. I'm funny. I've always been funny, and making my mother laugh was the best. I do that with words, with wit. But now my words disappear before they reach her, and I cease to exist. I'm just the pack mule that carries everything, that pushes the wheelchair, that moves the furniture. I have no wit; I'm silent, mute, an annoyance when I try to speak. I'm no longer the daughter she loved for making her laugh because she took that away from me.
Maybe that's why she doesn't love me anymore.
*Floyd Smith
-:- -:- -:- -:-
The oddest thing about it all is her perverse tendency to hear the opposite of whatever I've said. If I say "It's not going to rain today," she hears "It's going to rain today." And this isn't about sentence structure, or assuming the worst. If I say, "It's going to rain today," she hears, "It isn't going to rain today." It's so bizarre, it feels deliberate.
My favorite moment of being misunderstood was when I was trying to give her a telephone number over the phone. (This was not my idea, and I protested its uselessness, but she insisted.) I got to the number zero, and she simply could not get it. She thought I was saying Jell-O. Because randomly throwing in the names of food items is something I would do while giving someone a phone number.
And this can't be blamed on the stroke; it was two years ago. Really, giving someone a phone number on the phone should be the easiest thing in the world. There are only ten options, and none of them sound anything alike. (Maybe five and nine. Do you know why six is afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine. [Read it aloud if you don't get it. That was Pat's favorite joke.]) If you hear Jell-O, ask yourself what number sounds like that. But of course she doesn't do that. She's busy making up her own stories about what you're saying. And I wouldn't care, but I'm doing all the heavy lifting while she's playing, and getting angry at me because she's not getting it. It's all my responsibility and my fault and LA-LA-LA-LA, she can't hear me!
The second worst part of this is the sheer unnecessariness of all of those years of yelling. I'm furious with her for that, for treating me so thoughtlessly all that time, wearing me out so that now when it's important that I have patience with her, I just don't anymore. She's used it all up, it's entirely her own damn fault, and she doesn't get it. She blames me.
But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is how this erases me in her life.
She's told me more than once that nobody has ever made her laugh the way I do. I'm funny. I've always been funny, and making my mother laugh was the best. I do that with words, with wit. But now my words disappear before they reach her, and I cease to exist. I'm just the pack mule that carries everything, that pushes the wheelchair, that moves the furniture. I have no wit; I'm silent, mute, an annoyance when I try to speak. I'm no longer the daughter she loved for making her laugh because she took that away from me.
Maybe that's why she doesn't love me anymore.
*Floyd Smith