The challenge of seeing my mother dependent on others was heartbreaking to me and I suspect it was far worse for her. And when I became the person she was dependent on — well, mothers and daughters do not take easily to a lifetime of mother-daughter moments being turned upside down and on its head.
But we made it work, perhaps in part because we both got the joke when I would lift my arms in a victory V before she fell asleep and shout “alive!” — because we had agreed to keep the bar as low as we could.
But after reminding her to press the red call button if she needed help and making sure it was placed near to her hand, I would tiptoe back to my room — where, after a while, the fear would kick in.
Fear for her — she didn’t like to use the call button lest she wake me up, so I had learned instead to listen closely all night, because one visit from the EMS to help her off the floor was more than enough.
But also, after a time, fear for me. Not the clear and alert fear that I had for my mother. It was the cloudy and insidious fear that shows up in your stomach and winds its way to your chest. So much time devising solutions for all the new challenges that used to be just the little moments of my mother’s day made me all too aware of just how hard getting older can be. How all the things we just do — brushing our teeth, pulling a sweater over our head — can become impossible without someone to help.
And lying there awake, my ears now finely tuned to the quietest cough from my mother’s room, I would ask myself: who will take care of me?
I don’t have children and in recent years I don’t have a spouse. I am the youngest of five children — so maybe a sibling or a niece perhaps — but there is no one who is the inevitable, obvious person who will show up to help me to bed. And like my mother — like virtually everyone I suspect — I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want to be the visit that takes place with dread.
Some are lucky enough to take a trip to Italy — they enjoy a lovely pasta dinner and then wander back to the charming hotel room and pass peacefully in bed. I hope so much that this is exactly how it goes for me.
But I have seen that the Italian hotel room is not always the case. I am no longer my mother’s caretaker and she is very content at the assisted living facility where she now lives. But despite the change in living arrangements, the fear that crept inside me has not gone away. The fearful voice still speaks to me late at night sometimes. Its question is the same: who will take care of me?