In my last post, I was talking about my mother and how she lies/deep-sixes uncomfortable/bad memories. The biggest example I have is from the last time she was here, and it has stuck in my mind as to how it brightly highlighted how my mother’s mind worked.
I was in the living room on my laptop when my mather came racing in the room, crying. My father was hot on her heels and screaming at her. He was accusing her of stealing his money, which was one of his recurring themes in his dementia. He lived in poverty when he was a kid, and my parents didn’t have much money when they f irst married. Like, really scrimping and saving, in addition to them sending money back home to my father’s family (but not my mother’s for sexist reasons).
Side note: my father has been weird about his money all his life. For the most part, he was stingy as he pinched a penny hard. It’s understandable, but he took it to extremes. And in very disaparate, disconnected ways. I have mused about it before, but he was very penny wise, pound foolish. He would gripe about two kiwis costing a dollar when he came to visit (apparently, it’s cheaper in Taiwan), but then he will spend a hundred dollars on a water pick for his teeth (this was decades ago).
Which, I get. We all have the things we will splurge on. For me, it was my last desktop (the computer I’m writing on right now). But at least I’m aware of my weak points. My father isn’t and never has.
Now that he’s in his dementia, I have to pretty much let it go. Let what go? The resentment, the expectations (as minimal as they were to begin with), and any hope for an authentic relationship. I mean, to be honest, I did not have the last at all with my father–ever. At least since I was in my twenties. Instead, I have to practice taking my father as he is, which is where Taiji really helps out. It teaches me to be in the moment and just be.
Anyway. The fight. My father was shouting at my mother, and I unwisely put myself between them. Literally and metamophorically. Sometime in my thirties or forties, I looked at my father and realized that he could not hurt me physically. Emotionally, yes, but not physically. That helped psychologically in a way I can’t completely explain.
I stood between my father and my mother, and outshouted my father. I’m not proud of it, but it is, as the kids say, what it is. Sometimes you have to outbully a bully, and in that moment, he was bullying my mom. Again, it was about money and how she was stealing from him. Or maybe it was about his driver’s license and how we refused to give it to him. That latter was true, by the way. There was no way he should be driving, but he was very stubborn about it. My mother allowed him to beat her down (metaphorically) until she let him drive to Cubs for instance. She argued that it was so close, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s a spurious argument, but she could not say no to him.
I managed to shout my father down, but it was tense for a good fifteen minutes or so. Later, my brother came over for dinner, and my father brought up the argument. However, he said it was about the way my mother was driving, and I tried to stop him from talking about it. It made me incredibly angry to hear him lie, even though he probably actually believed what he was saying. In addition (and I did not figure this out until just a few weeks ago), that might have been what sparked the argument in the first plaece, but that was not what they were arguing about when they reached the living room.
Even if my father wasn’t lying on purpose, I could not stand it. I had heard him lying all my life, and I was not having any of it. I was not going to let him lie and try to put himself in a good light. I kept cutting him off, which, of course, made him more upset. Eventually, I went to the living room so I wouldn’t explode. My mother came in and said I should apologize to my father because I had shut him down. I refused, and I was furious with her as well. And I was mad at myself, too, beacuse I should not have stepped into the fight.
A few days later, my mother brought it up again and that I should apologize. I reminded her that he had shouted at me (and her), and she said that I shouted at him as well. I stared at her for several seconds and asked her if she remembered why I had yelled at him. She shook her head, and I told her it was because he had chased her into the living room and was screaming at her, which made her cry.
She stared at me for several seconds before saying in a small voice, “I didn’t remember that.” She sounded completely sincere, and I did not doubt that. I mean, I believed that she didn’t remember it, though it had been two or three days earlier.
That’s when I knew that she simply could not handle the truth. I’m not saying that in a pejorative way, just in a resigned tone. She cannot deal with anything that makes her look bad or that puts her relationship with my father in a negative light. She had invested her entire being into her marriage–and she could not afford to face the truth.
I wanted to make her, but I knew it would break her. I have talked with K about this and our respective parents–knowing the thing to say that would break them. With my mother, if I confirmed that the reason I did not get married was because of her. It would not be the truth–but it also wasn’t a lie.
More tomorrow.