Tried to call mom tonight but she was sleeping so I told the care taker that I’ll call again next week. It has not been the same since she moved into the nursing home. The intimacy is gone. The phone call is always a hassle of talking to strangers and waiting and trying again when the phone is not picked up. And the conversation has become a series of repeated subjects that have been said numerous times before and now being itereated again. It’s sad when you can’t really talk to your parents any more in any reasonable fashion and the calls to them is just a form of courtesy. I miss the vibrant person that she used to be who could initiate an international call on her own and just called me to talk and Dad was in the background yelling about things. His hearing was very bad already and it’s not possible to talk to him on the phone. He couldn’t hear me and needed mom to translate. But she was on top of things and we could carry on a conversation. All that is gone now.
I will be visiting her in two weeks. Got the airplane tickets, made the reservation for the hotel. And I dread it as I dread it every other time in the past few years. It’s not going ‘home’ any more. It’s a foreign place where I don’t have many ties and the relatives are not really related in any sense of the word. I go back and forth between the hotel and the nursing room spending a few hours a day with mom or go to one of those dinner parties for formality’s sake with those relatives. Although mom gets to see me, we don’t really connect any more. She is drifting more and more to her younger days. She tells stories of her past, of ghosts that she sees, of made up, imagined affairs. And I don’t have the heart to point out the impossibilities, so I sit there listening to her and making agreeing noises. Is this the road I will be on as I get older? Do my children need to put up with me when I slowly lose my sanity when I am old? It’s sad.
S and C came over for dinner. I made spinach and artichoke dip, corn salsa, jerk shrimp and a salad. She brought stuffed zukini and a cocktail mix. We talked, ate and drank. Topics changed to children and parents. S calls her mom every week. C talks to their daughter every day. In comparison, I talk to mom once every few weeks, and the same with ey. em lives close by but we seldom talk on the phone, sometimes a few text messages is all we manage to connect with. I must not have that connection gene in me to keep in touch with mom and the kids. I dread calling mom, I don’t want to disturb the kids’ life. So I don’t call them much. But they are on my mind a lot. I wish I know more about kids’ daily life but that is a thing for the past when they were young and living with me. Now they both have their own places and lives to live, even when we talk on the phone, I feel disconnected with them. Maybe that’s how it is when the kids get older like I am with mom.
So it’s been a bit depressing lately. Life is still full though. Danincg, knitting, spinning, working. Something is missing, however. And I can’t put my finger on it.