The Sum of the Parts
Aging Pets and People
I’m writing this newsletter on the heels of Mother’s Day. I’m lucky to have spent the day with my mom, daughter, and other loving family members. We had a very nice time together.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom lately. As she nears the age of 80, she’s a different person than she was when I was growing up. We all change, of course, but some of us more than others. We age in different ways.
My mom’s story is not mine to tell.
It gets complicated when you process your daily life through the stories you commit to paper. As a writer, I frame many experiences as tales to tell, but sometimes my story and that of a loved one mesh together. When the parts can’t be teased away from each other, it gets tricky. Then, sharing the story feels like a violation or an invasion of privacy. I’d rather swallow my feelings than hurt a loved one with my writings, so, at times, that’s what I do. It’s hard.
But thinking about my mom, and all the things she’s taught me and done for me over the years, made me reflect on something I thought about originally some time ago. When a loved one - animal or human - grows old, their body and mind may change in ways that make your relationship with them evolve. Think about your 16-year-old hard-of-hearing dog, once a vibrant family member, now an incontinent, grumpy fellow with tangled hair he won’t let you brush, who barks at all hours of the night.
You love him, but at 3 a.m., you sure don’t like him very much.
The cuddly puppy, the years you spent running two miles every morning together, the frisbee games you played…. You don’t see those things when you look at your pup now. Instead, your mind swims with the urine you are cleaning up and the hours of sleep you are losing. Sometimes you are frustrated with him. You yell at him to be quiet. You stop spending as much time with him doing the things he still likes to do. Sometimes it’s all you can do to provide the increasingly complicated care he needs to have a reasonably comfortable existence.
I’m not judging you. Anyone who has loved an old dog has probably been there at one time or another.
When he inevitably dies, you may feel relief for a moment, but then you are able to see the dog you lost in his entirety. The puppy breath, the laughter, the cuddles, the fun, the games – you see all of it at once. It’s then that you feel the depths of the loss of all the dogs your pup has been.
Now substitute your mother, grandfather, or other loved one for your dog.
It can be frustrating when you realize that someone you care about isn’t the same person you remember. Your past together may span many of your old dog’s lifetimes, with many shared experiences and great memories, but sometimes you can only see the person in front of you. When they’re gone, though, you’ll be reminded of all the versions of who they were to you. You may see the person who wrote notes on your lunch napkin all through elementary school, plus the person who taught you to drive, and also the one who helped you raise your own children. If you’re very lucky, the memories will be largely positive, and the confused or difficult person you experienced at the end may be the version that is overcome by all the others, and largely forgotten.
It may be that the path to peace in the face of end-of-life challenges is to try to remember that the person before you is the sum of all the people they have been in their life – from the child who yearned for a family without violence, to the parent who gently cared for their own children, to the supportive grandparent, and so much more. They are all of these people, but at the same time, they are none of them. They are a new person again, just as they always have been, just as we always are, growing, changing, and reinventing.
If you expect your person to be the same one they were at any particular point in your life, you will be disappointed and sad. It’s so easy to focus on what we think we have lost. What’s hard to see is what we might have gained. If you can find the beauty in the person before you – the sum of all the people they have been – you might find that your shared experience through the end of your time together is better than you thought it might be.
It’s late as I am finishing this up. Writing wisdom tells you to complete a piece, put it away for a week, and reread it to look for errors and make sure that you fully convey your thoughts. Naturally, I’m writing this, start to finish, the night before I plan to send this out to you. Plus, I spent the evening at Senior Awards Night for my daughter, who will graduate from high school very soon.
For Mother’s Day, she made me a treasure hunt to find my present, with four clues to solve. I’ve been doing that for my kids for most of their lives, so she thought it was only fair that I finally got my own. It was fun, although I had a little trouble with the word scramble before I had my coffee. She got me a book I wanted so that I can learn more Zentangles and Zentangle Inspired Art.
As someone who can’t draw at all, I’m really happy that I have found this cool way to relax. Here’s my attempt at some of the exercises from the book.
Have I mentioned how much I appreciate doodling as a source of relaxation? SO MUCH!
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