In April, 1996, my father passed away. I had spoken with him on Thursday night, and Saturday morning, my mother called me say that he was dead. He had apparently waked in the night and collapsed in the bathroom while taking some medicine. When she awoke, she found him in the floor. She told us later that for some strange reason, she thought he was teasing her. She kept trying to get him to talk, but he didn’t respond.
This event was a tremendous shock to me, because my mother was the one who had been in ill health for forty years, often accusing me of thoughtless behavior that might make her so stressed that she would die. My father was the one who was always there to make peace between mother and me when the confrontation escalated. For many years I lived in the expectation of her imminent death, yet it was my father who was gone, and she remained.
The state of Mother’s health was not the only point of contention between us. My father often told me that she and I were too much alike to get along. We both took our positions and defended them vigorously, and it was very hard for either of us to give in. He was probably right. However, that information did not help us get along any better. With his death, there was no longer anyone to mediate our differences.
At the time of my father’s death, my mother’s health seemed to me to be worse than I had ever seen it. She couldn’t remember her own address or where to find the stores she liked to shop in. She couldn’t make a meal for herself, and she resented it when anyone else made one for her. I worried that she needed someone to live with her to help her, but the more I talked about such options, the angrier she became. On an unforgettable evening she called the police to throw me out of her apartment, because she thought I had hidden her medicine. We reconciled the following morning, but I felt thoroughly battered.
Sadly, both of us needed to grieve for the loss of my father, but neither of us could focus on that. In my distress, I went to visit my parents’ pastor, who had become a dear friend. I felt terrible even to talk about what was happening. I felt real frustration that I couldn’t help my mother. I felt guilty that I couldn’t seem to get along with her at a time when we both needed each other desperately. The pastor listened patiently and kindly. Then he suggested that we pray. I bowed my head and sat quietly. He prayed, and I was caught up in a feeling that is hard to describe. It was as if the place where we sat had disengaged from everything around us. All our surroundings seemed far away. I felt the presence of God very intensely, and instead of feeling guilty and angry, I felt his love touch me in a new way. When the pastor finished praying, he asked if I would like to pray. I started speaking, and I don’t remember what I said except for one sentence. I said, “Please help me to see my mother the way you see her.” I didn’t choose to say those words. I was led to say them, and after I had said them, I was consumed with the message of the words.
Nothing about my mother’s behavior changed after that prayer, but my behavior and attitudes were dramatically different. Two years later, my mother passed away in her sleep. Many issues between us were still unresolved. She still thought I was five years old and needed to be told what to do. She still had opinions about my marriage and my children and my church attendance and my obedience to her that she had shared liberally over the years. But something was truly different. I finally saw her as a child of God trying and failing to be everything she dreamed of. I saw her as a mother who yearned to do for her children things her own mother could never do. I saw her as a person consumed by the need to be perfect, hoping nobody would notice that she was nothing of the kind.
It could have happened that my mother died right after one of our shouting bouts. She could have died the night she hung up on me for my refusal to sign her out of the hospital against her doctor’s advice. We could have parted after she reprimanded me for not being on time for a lunch to which I didn’t even know I had been invited. I am thankful our parting wasn’t that way. At the time of my mother’s death, she was living far away from me, because she refused to consider living closer. We were talking weekly, although sometimes she just hung up on me. But that isn’t the way it all ended. Our last conversation might have been any normal mother-daughter conversation. We discussed the weather and grandkids and what to have for dinner. Then came the end. I said to my mother, “I love you, Mother.” And she replied, “I love you, too.” I can’t salvage a life-time of confrontation by forgiving my mother, but I do have a parting I can live with. Prayer changes the person who does the praying.
copyright 1999 Katherine Harms
all rights reserved
