Then Again - Diane Keaton [5]
The state of being a woman in between two loves—one as a daughter, the other as a mother—has changed me. It’s been a challenge to witness the betrayal of such a cruel disease while learning to give love with the promise of stability. If my mother was the most important person to me, if I am who and how I am largely due to who and how she was, what then does that say about my impact on Duke and Dexter? Abstract reasoning is no help.
At the beginning of her last year, Dorothy’s small circle of devoted friends had all but fallen away. The people who loved her could be counted on one hand. It was hard to recognize the woman we had known. But then, am I recognizable as the same person I was when Annie Hall opened almost thirty-five years ago? I remember people coming up to me on the street, saying, “Don’t ever change. Just don’t ever change.” Even Mom once said, “Don’t grow old, Diane.” I didn’t like those words then, and I don’t like them now. The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn’t bring happiness. There’s a word for you: happiness. Why is happiness something I thought I was entitled to? What is happiness anyway? Insensitivity. That’s what Tennessee Williams said.
Mom’s last word was no. No to the endless prodding. No to the unasked-for invasions. No to “Dinner, Dorothy?” “Time for your pills. Open your mouth.” “We’re going to roll you over, Mamacita.” “NO!” “There, doesn’t that feel good?” “NO!!” “Do you want to watch TV? Lucy’s on.” “Let me get you a straw. Let me get you a fork.” “NO.” “Let me rub your shoulders.” “No, no, no, no, NO!!!!” If she could, Mom would have said, “Leave me and my body alone, for God’s sake. Don’t touch me. This is my life. This is my ending.” It wasn’t that the activities were administered without affection and care; that wasn’t the issue. The issue was independence. When I was a kid Mom would retreat to any unoccupied room with a longing that overshadowed her all-encompassing love for us. Once there, she would put aside the role of devoted mother, loving wife, and take refuge in her thoughts. In the end, no was all that was left of Dorothy’s desire to have her wishes respected.
“Finally freed from the constraints of this life, Mom has joined Dad—just as she has joined her sisters, Orpha and Martha; her mother, Beulah; and all her dear cats, starting with Charcoal, ending with Cyrus. I promise to take care of her thoughts and words. I promise to THINK. And I promise to carry the legacy of beautiful, beautiful Dorothy Deanne Keaton Hall from Kansas, born on October thirty-first, 1921—my mother.”
I spoke these words at her memorial service in November 2008. Mom continues to be the most important, influential person in my life. From the outside looking in, we lived completely different lives. She was a housewife and mother who dreamed of success; I am an actress whose life has been—in some respects—beyond my wildest dreams. Comparing two women with big dreams who shared many of the same conflicts and also happened to be mother and daughter is partially a story of what’s lost in success contrasted with what’s gained in accepting an ordinary life. I was an ordinary girl who became an ordinary woman, with one exception: Mother gave me extraordinary will. It didn’t come free. But, then, life wasn’t a free ride for Mother either.
So why did I write a memoir? Because Mom lingers; because she tried to save our family’s history through her words; because it took decades before I recognized that her most alluring trait was her complexity; because I don’t want her to disappear even though she has. So many reasons, but the best answer comes from a passage she wrote using those fine abstract-reasoning capabilities she passed on to me. The year was 1980. She was fifty-nine.
Every living person should be forced to write an autobiography. They should have to go back and unravel and disclose all the stuff that was packed into their lives. Finding the unusual way authors put ideas into words gives me a very satisfying knowledge that I could do