On Being An Orphan

My mother  died very early in the morning on Saturday February 18. Alzheimer's had finished doing its work of destroying her brain. Having been summoned home to Mackay in Queensland  on Wednesday the 15^th by nursing home staff with the instruction that if I wanted to see my mother alive I had best travel quickly, I saw my mother one last time. The half hour I spent alone with my mother was needed. It alone allowed acceptance and closure to happen. I was able to say loving last words.

I have had at least the last three years that my mother was vegetative to accept the reality that Alzheimer's is a linear disease. It develops, it then proceeds to destroy neurons in your brain until there is literally not enough of them for you to live. No one at this point in time is cured from Alzheimer's. No one suddenly rises from their bed and resumes their lives. My mother was always going to die as she did. 

So it was at 1.30 a.m. that I found myself alone with my mothers body. Forgiveness came easy. When I had seen her seven hours earlier I had told her of my forgiveness. Being a parent myself I now know just how tough a job it is, and I am without a violent, mentally unstable spouse. Knowing my own ability to make mistakes when it comes to raising my boys made it easier to forgive my mothers mistakes as a parent.

Forgiveness brought the gift of closure, of release. Whilst what I had seen and kissed on the Friday evening was a shrivelled and obviously dying husk of what my mother had been, I had and still have little doubt that my mother heard me. Given that she died shortly after I left suggests that she had waited for me to arrive.

Forgiveness and acceptance means that I can now transform my mothers death into something positive. When my brother Mark died I wasn’t given the chance to see his body. Thus acceptance of his death and the ability to grieve and channel that grief into something positive has been more problematic for me. My mothers death is easier.

With my mothers death there is now the simple question: How can I honour her properly?

My mother in her own way was every bit as challenging in her opinions as my father was. They shared views on race and both disapproved of my marriages to Asians. Still my mother had the better mouth control. Also I was, and still am, a Mummy’s boy. Easier to forgive someone who at least tried to nurture you. Forgiveness of my mother is the easier, less time, less life consuming option for me. I had seen and done enough hating in this lifetime. 

Whilst it is true that I want no further contact with my birth family, this doesn’t mean that I hate the Bowater of Mackay. To hate them is to give them an importance they do not have or warrant in my life. What it does mean is that having met a number of them over the last five years, I understand that there is nothing in common with these people, there is no need from either side to build a relationship. I have hated them, but now see them as damaged people. Fiona, for example, who at 45 is easily 130 kg, is someone with all the emotional and physical problems that being that size is the result of. Normal, happy people don’t eat themselves into obesity. When I was 140 kg, I was miserable and attempting to eat my way out of the misery. I couldn’t, I exercised and made life changes that cumulated in a divorce and subsequent marriage to Selina, and this brought happiness. Fiona’s obesity is evidence of the emotional and physical dark place that she is in. 

Compassion is my best option. All my siblings are damaged people who are unable or unwilling to heal themselves. Why be angry at the broken? It makes even less sense at being angry at broken people I will never see again.

So it is that I am giving the question of how best to honour my mother’s life a lot of thought.

After days of thought, the best answer I can give to this question is:

I will honour my mother as I have been honouring Mark. I will do my best to ramp up the intensity of my quest for physical and intellectual perfection, but the actions will remain the same. A physically and mentally active Russell is the best version of me. I will continue to make every effort I can to be the parent my children need me to be and the sort of parent I didn’t have. I will make every effort to be the husband Selina needs me to be.

No amount of grief will return my mother to me. No amount of grief will give me the time with my mother and my brother that I would so dearly like to have. Given this there is no point in my grieving for someone who functionally died 5 years ago. What is plastic in my life is how I live it. I can control how I am as a person. Effort in becoming physically perfect will bring me to those I love. Effort in becoming the active Senior I want to be will give me the years I want with them. 

Only when I am in the best possible place will I be the best use I can be to myself and those I love. And living a fit, toned, and healthy life, both physically and emotionally in the best place I can be. No amount of incense and chanting will honour my mother the way that one day of living properly, of living my best will.