I'm having a hard time dealing with my mom being sick again. I'm not good with pain and suffering that isn't my own. My own suffering is tolerable; I can whine about that. But somebody else's suffering you can't do anything for. I feel myself cringe when I know she's in pain. But I can't fix it. I can't help anything at all. I hate not being able to make things right. I feel useless. They say it's a good thing for you to know your limitations in life. I've always found my limitations to be something of an issued challenge. So it's frustrating for me to know that I can't possibly rise to the occasion this time.
It's far too early for her to be home from the hospital. I won't get into the messy details of the thing, but I'm having to change drainage bags of blood myself. If you think it's nasty to read about, try having a stomach as weak as mine and actually doing it. And trying to smile and look happy about it, so she doesn't feel so guilty for having made you do it. Once again, I think of Mother Teresa. I can do these things for my mother because she's my mom. But could I, or would I, do it for some random passing stranger? She picked lepers off the street and carried them on her own back. She smiled, and not forcefully as I have to, but naturally and kindly, at people who were covered in their own reeking oozing body fluids. And she wasn't doing it to get paid, or to get famous. She was doing it to see Jesus in the people he's closest to; who most share in his crucifixion and moment of final suffering.
It's strange that people spend so much time covering up the base facts of their existence. Since the expulsion, we've covered up our nakedness. And we've been shy about the little body functions which govern our days. It's strange that nuns and grandmas, who are definitionally prudish, are known for not respecting ones privacy of body. My most embarrassing and awful memories of early childhood were of my grandmother seeing me naked. By the time a woman is a grandmother, she's changed so many diapers that one naked kid means nothing to her whatsoever; I have well-over 20 cousins, and you can be assured she changed all of their diapers at one point or another. So to her, it was nothing at all. But for me it was horrible. Grandma's are supposed to be proper, you know, and you don't want them to know you can ever be naked, or have to go to the bathroom, or say bad words, or whatever else it is that everybody does that you're not supposed to talk about. I'm finding nuns much the same way. No respect for persons. All business; get down to the work of things, nudity be damned.
I wonder how God sees us. We must look delightfully silly to him, with all of our houses built on sand. With all of our endeavors which mean nothing at all in the end. All of the pains we take to look dignified and independent; like toddlers who insist on dressing themselves in the morning, in their clothing so as to look cool for their friends, but the clothing they choose is always mismatched and sometimes thrown on wrong body parts and not buttoned properly and generally inclusive of bits like tutus and cowboy boots, and often the two together.
I'm rambling. Don't know where I'm going with any of this. But I have three minutes to leave for school, so I'd better get moving.
posted by Sarie @
10:58 AM
>Comments: 0
