My mother's words; my mother's worries.

partial revisions Friday 1 June 2012


My mother's words are fearful and anxious-- an old woman's fears and complaints, repeated, repeated, remembered, with emphasis and feeling, non-stop,  the same every day because nothing can be solved, and nothing will be solved.
Pain in her legs, constant pain.
Pain in the back, constant pain.
And medicines give only partial relief.
And medicines bring their own worries:  
Is this prescription already out of date?
Again?
Call the doctor!
Again.
Put on hold,
Again.
Negotiations
Again.


Fear, always fear,
fear of being alone:
Will you leave me?
Who will help me?
I want to be independent.
I don't want to ask anyone for help.


And I say: There is no shame in asking for help;
but it is shameful to refuse to help when you can.


But help is not coming.


And most certainly, the most certain thing of all is that:
No help is coming from the generous pockets of Uncle Sam and his Precision Killing Machine.


And I must listen, and I must listen now because it cannot wait. /// What! you are sitting on the toilet? no matter--- you must listen----You must listen and you must feel the fear, share the anxiety, until you cannot stand it any more.  //////You must listen now---- Or, she will be angry. You must listen to her fears and complaints: her wife's fears and her mother's fears, her fears for your sisters and her fears for your father/// And you must listen and listen---///But, curiously absent are fears about a son who has not worked for three years/////Curiously absent are thoughts about what three years of unemployment mean/////Curiously absent is the thought that a man's life has been wrenched to a stop, and he has been cut off from friends and placed in an alien environment////// I would like to cut off my ears and give them to my mother---At least then, I could have some peace, the freedom of quiet////I must worry about my future in silence between her words that drown all of my thoughts-----My life, my person, my history and my future are all invisible, drowned, suffocated in a sea of anxious words. //////It is as if I do not exist........... As if I did not ever have and do not ever need to have a life of my own!---- For three years I have been told that I do not exist.


My mother is not strong,
but she has weapons,
The weapons of the weak:
patience,
stubbornness,
even resentment.
Flight from conflict,
retreat,
followed by complaints and gestures,
small signs of unhappiness,
repeated,
repeated,
repeated,
until the small hint magnifies and seems to rage like a torrent.


My tears do not help,
but only express my own helplessness, frustration, and despair:
I cannot make her young again,
and I cannot guarantee anything.


I can neither save my mother from anguish and fear,
nor can I free myself.


So great a thing is this freedom which I hear endlessly praised and feted,
so empty are the words of our masters,
so cruel and miserable is this life for which I am not the least bit thankful:
My own stupidity and suffering I can bear,
but to helplessly watch and share the suffering of an old parent?
And to know that there is no good reason why it must be this way:
That is the cruelest thing.
--No:
I am not,
not in the least bit,
glad to be alive.