This week did not go as smoothly as others. I always wake up grateful for the life I have been given but there are days, sometimes weeks, that are more stressful than others.
My mother, who will be eighty-six in December, has been living with my husband and I since the end of July. We brought her here to Los Angeles, from her home in New York City after the lung cancer she was diagnosed with six months earlier spread to her liver.
My mom enjoyed a seven-and -a-half year remission from an earlier lung cancer and the new growth in her right lung was said to be unrelated to the other, which doctors have confirmed remains in remission.
This time I wanted to be the one to care for my mom. I wanted to help her and spend time with her while she went though all of her treatments. I wanted to find the very best oncologist who could help my mother both medically and emotionally though this difficult portion of her treatment and life.
Our relationship has always been a volatile and complex one. Our temperaments are polar opposites; my mom is always being asked to lower her voice and I am always asked to raise mine.
My father and I had a very loving relationship and my mother sometimes viewed me as her competitor. I don't remember a time when I was growing up when there was ever "the three of us." There was me and Dad, Mom and Dad, and only occasionally, Mom and me. We were proof of the idiom that "three is an unworkable number."
All of this changed when my Dad died. I was just turning twenty-one and about to have my first big hit as a songwriter the day my father died. All that was left in his dreary hospital room was a dull green wall with a pop music chart, taped on it, which he had his nurse put up for all to see. My song was beginning its climb to number one, and my Dad circled the song and put a red arrow pointing up. He was very proud of me.
After my father's death, I began what was to become a wonderful career as a songwriter, and my mom, after years of too many martinis, became a member of A. A. and today has thirty-four years of sobriety. She also switched from being jealous to becoming my press agent and using the perks that come with success in the most creative ways. For example, she would carry around my promotional CD's (compilations of major artists singing my songs) in order to get herself upgraded when she would come to California to visit me.
This confirmed what I already knew, which was that I grew up with mixed feelings, just like everyone else. The constant in my life has been that even when I wished that my mother was different, l love her and when she's ill I'll go to extraordinary lengths to try and keep her alive. With a stage four cancer, I realize how precious whatever time we have together is.
It's as if one day, I just got it: at any given moment we all are just doing the best we can.
Maybe in a half an hour, or a week, or a year, we will do better, but for the moment, given the tools we have been given, we are doing the very best we can. After all, "if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail," as they say. In studying different spiritual teachings I have been given additional tools that have helped me to begin to change. In the last seven years I have been studying Kaballah, with a group of woman friends in Los Angeles, and it's helped me learnthat every human being is a work in progress. Kabbalah teaches, "Any pain, disappointment, or chaos that exists in our lives is not because this is how life is meant to be, but rather, we have not yet finished the work that brought us here."
It means putting myself in another person's shoes and it means forgiveness. Today I see my mom as one of life's great characters. She is strong, braver than any woman I know, beyond funny, smart, resilient, and loveable.
Other than an occasional bad day where my old buttons get triggered, I welcome each day I can take my mom to chemo, go out for a light lunch, or visit with members of our family I have not been used to seeing. I have come to accept and respect her choices, many of which were and are still different from mine, and I honor her. She gave me my life and I will never be able to thank her enough for that gift.
Giving Back: This week for me giving back like the rest of this week's column is personal, and my charity of choice is cancerresearch.org/.
You could also check out Kabbalah.com. I particularly enjoy reading their daily message they email to anyone who asks. Whatever spiritual and religious beliefs you hold, the message always sets a tone of awareness for the day ahead of me.
Above all, I suggest you google the cause that touches you and see what opportunities to give back you may discover.
Have a great week,
Carole