Family Dynamics

“Watch what happens when you don’t name an experience as ‘bad’ and instead bring an inner acceptance, an inner ‘yes’ to it, and so let it be as it is.” ---from Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

I thought the conversation with my 89-year-old mother would be a reasonably pleasant one. Otherwise I wouldn’t have initiated the phone call last Sunday evening.

I didn’t expect to be blindsided almost immediately by the hard, angry, hurtful, contemptuous tone of voice she used to issue orders in a rapid-fire, take-no-prisoners manner that stunned me into silence. My heart pounding, nausea swirling in my stomach, I felt like a shallow, stupid six-year-old.

How dare she talk to me that way, I thought, but didn’t say. Instead I focused on my breathing, clung to the last vestiges of the calm I’d enjoyed all day, and managed – somehow – to eventually shift her attention elsewhere.

Later that night, I realized that she was up to her old tricks, stirring the familial pot and trying, without success, to manipulate me into doing something that would be of benefit to her and her alone. Nothing new there – I’m accustomed to her narcissistic machinations and have learned, with the help of my extremely astute therapist, not to take them (too!) personally. Yes, her behavior towards me had been hurtful, but only for as long as I allowed it to be. I know – without a doubt – that I’m neither shallow nor stupid, and she knows it, too.

It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered my pot wasn’t the only one she’d been stirring.

Imagine my surprise to find an e-mail from my brother in my Yahoo box first thing Monday morning – my brother with whom I hadn’t had any real meaningful contact in the past 17 years – the brother who had visited our mother maybe a half dozen times in those 17 years, three times fairly recently.

Seems he wanted me to know that he had decided to sell our mother’s house and move her into a senior independent living facility – something I’d been trying to get her to do for the past three years. He was going to visit her again soon and take her to the facility he thought would suit her best – a facility to which I’d already taken her. He had decided that a trust should be set up to protect her assets, as well, and wanted to know what I could do to help with the sale of the house, setting up the trust and her “transition.”

I honestly thought the top of my head was going to blow off. Who did he think he was, taking over in such a high-handed way after years and years of doing nothing for her? More importantly, how dare he ask ME what I planned to do to help HIM?

I closed my e-mail, allowed myself a little time to rant – okay, I ranted quite a while – then told myself to calm down. I read once that if you change how you look at things, things will change, and I figured, what could it hurt? I printed out the e-mail, read it again, several times, and considered how, exactly, I could look differently, and more kindly, at what my brother was saying.

First and foremost, he was stepping up, at last, offering to take the lead in a situation that had proven to be increasingly problematic for me to handle on my own. Obviously, he also wasn’t aware of all I’d done already, more than likely because our mother hadn’t told him.

In fact, she had refused to consider any alternative I’d offered to make her life easier, including an invitation to move to Houston or the hiring of a home healthcare worker. Her “solution” to the “problem” had always been that I should quit my job, move back to St. Louis, live in her house under her authority and take care of her, because that’s what good daughters did.

Finally ready to reply to my brother's e-mail, I sat quietly and composed my thoughts. He needed to know what had already been done, so I included information on the facilities our mother had visited with me, the home healthcare alternative I’d investigated and offered her, and the trust she'd set up shortly after our father died. I suggested he contact my St. Louis cousin, who had recently sold her house, for a real estate agent recommendation. I also expressed my sincerest gratitude for HIS help and (settling firmly in the backseat) offered to support HIM in whatever he chose to do.

In the past, I would have likely been jealous or upset by what I would have seen as encroachment on my good-daughter territory. Not anymore! My brother, bless his heart, had taken on the job of good son and more power to him. I’m behind him 100 percent.

I’m also hoping our mother won’t make him crazy in the process – something she’s always been really good at doing. To that end, I recommended he read a book that has helped me more than I can say – The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists by Eleanor D. Payson, M.S.W.

The experiences we had as part of our family are as they are. Changing those experiences is impossible, but changing how I look at them has made all the difference for me. May it do the same for you, brother of mine.

P.S. Hitting the SEND button Monday afternoon, I felt an enormous sense of relief. The cosmos has shifted again – in a good way.