The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [97]
Julia called one evening with paranoid delusions about the retirement community management. She said they didn’t think she was who she said she was. If one should ever doubt that thoughts aren’t real, here’s the proof. Julia’s fears were reflecting off the walls of her skull as reality. “I’m angry” turned into “everyone is out to get me.” “I don’t know who I am anymore” became “they don’t believe I am who I say I am.”
I just listened and said I’d vouch for her if anyone questioned her identity.
FLIGHT RESEARCH #5
A photograph by Rosemary Laing. An Australian stuntwoman wearing a white wedding dress is suspended in flight against a bright blue sky.
Despite all this newly acquired wisdom, I was not really out of the woods. My flashes of compassion were overwhelmed by Julia’s demands, the orchestrated crises, the angry phone calls.
Finally, I saw a therapist, who suggested there was a reason I’d chosen to be in this pickle. Here was an opportunity to understand my own part in the situation. The therapist suggested I stop being the caretaker; I’d done enough. Others had said they would help out, but since I’d assumed responsibility, they hadn’t needed to. What did I want my role to be?
I steeled myself to talk with Julia. I even wrote what I was going to say on an index card. I told her that feeling responsible for her was very difficult for me and that it contributed to the tension between us. I could still help her with financial problems and medical appointments, but couldn’t she think of other people to call on for other things? I mentioned a few names. She said she didn’t like this person and didn’t trust that person. I let that be her problem.
She said I didn’t have to feel responsible, that other people were making me feel responsible. I let that one go.
We appeared to part on good terms and to have a new understanding. I felt immediately freed. I saw how much I’d contributed to the situation by acquiescing to the role of servant. I saw that, rather than stonily withdrawing, I could tell Julia what I was feeling.
Of course, Julia turned our conversation into a different story. She called her goddaughter, who in turn called me to ask if it was really true that I’d have nothing more to do with Julia, and that I had refused to help her out. Julia continued to spin fanciful tales of how I just wanted her money and I couldn’t be trusted. My phone calls and visits were met with frosty silence.
During meditation, I contemplated change. Relationships change, They change the people involved in them. The people change, independent of the relationship. We arrive at a new understanding or reach an impasse. What endures?
The hardest thing of all is to change the dynamic you already have with someone else, especially if they’re not willing participants in the change. Julia was perfectly pleased when I was in the servant role. Changing this had provoked her outrage. Dementia was her trump card. She interpreted my bid for independence as abandonment. She couldn’t change, but I had to. It tore me up to pull away from her. It was an excruciating exercise in turning my back on someone else’s pain/my own pain. But I had to step back in order for others to step in. Now other people were helping Julia.
Months later, I encountered a remnant of things past when Julia left a message asking me for help with her taxes. I lived through a thousand angry scenarios before I called her back. I was the shell-shocked veteran ready to hit the dirt at the sight of a trash bag fluttering by the side of the road. Sometimes it was only a trash bag; sometimes it was an IED.
This time, it was only a trash bag. Julia was amazingly sanguine about my filing her tax return. She wanted control, but she also wanted someone to take care of her problems.
The pendulum continued to swing, more slowly now that I saw her less often. She was pleased with me one time, angry the next. We enjoyed an evening at the theater. Then I returned from vacation to three increasingly furious phone