To do the right thing, I have to do the wrong thing
I wasn’t prepared for this moral dilemma. To do what’s right, I have to go counter the express wishes of my mother — against her will and without her consent.
The unfinished business that Ingrid has in her life is literally embodied in the hundreds of boxes in her attic, the stacks of old newspapers, and the piles of recycling, unwashed laundry, and general detritus that have accumulated in her apartment. She lives in fear of someone going into her home and just cleaning it, which is the natural inclination many of her friends have had over the years — all of whom she has divorced over their lack of understanding of her deep-rooted need to do this herself, in her own time.
The other day she expressed it to me this way: she has to sort through all her stuff herself to figure out what would bring her satisfaction in life. Sounds a bit like Marie Kondo, doesn’t it? And that’s exactly what I wish for my mother, the ability to sit with all her things, sort through them with a helper, and tidy up her life and live it how she wants it, on her terms.
Alas, the situation we find ourselves in is that (a) her home is in a state that no immune-compromised, physically infirm cancer patient can safely live in, and (b) there is a high likelihood that her physical capacity is not going to bounce back to where she is able to climb the three flights of stairs to her apartment. The multi-family apartment building she lives in does not have an elevator. Now that her cancer treatment has started (a combination of traditional chemo and anti-body therapy, every four weeks), in a few days she will be transferred to another hospital for 4 weeks of complex geriatric rehabilitation therapy. The goal will be to get her circulation up, increase her range of motion and physical fitness, and, yes, climb stairs with confidence. She is determined to go back home, so I have suggested to her that she train for that goal like I trained for the marathons I have run: you can’t just will yourself to do it, you have to put in the time and practice to have a chance to complete it. So she has started cruising the hospital hallways like a champ.
In the meantime, I am preparing to fly to Germany as soon as I am fully vaccinated. Because of course all of this is happening during a global pandemic, as if dealing with the end of your parent’s life wasn’t hard enough. The way my solutions-oriented, overly logical brain (which Ingrid attributes to my father’s DNA, usually with considerable chagrin) works, I either have to clean her place so she can safely live there, or I have to clean her place because we are moving her into a new living situation. Either way I am cleaning it. Hence my dilemma. She would never consent to my doing this, and I am not asking for her permission since I don’t want to distress her while she is in the personal marathon training that is her best chance for regaining mobility and a measure of physical independence. So I am doing it anyway, and in so doing will cause her considerable distress.
I take a small degree of comfort in knowing that, my mother’s suspicions to the contrary, I actually know *how* she would like things done. I know not to put the things she carefully wrapped and stored in those many bags and boxes onto dirty surfaces. I know to shake out the old newspapers to look for bills, letters and notes. I know what’s garbage and can just be tossed. I know that she likes her laundry washed and air dried, not put in the dryer. I know that she wants to organize the collection of wellness magazines she’s picked up from her favorite health food store in a binder, with an index. I know how to clean a house to her exacting standards. I know that she will most likely divorce me over what she will experience as a violation of not just her trust but her very person, and I also know that there is no other way.
