I have a snapshot that captures the relationship of my younger sister and my mother, near the end.  They are looking past each other.  The older woman wearing a long skirt, a cane in her hand, looks toward the photographer;  the younger one turned slightly away, her face showing a bit of the exasperation she is fighting off.   They had ongoing battles over the years, as many mothers and daughters do, but as their roles slowly reversed, my sister becoming more and more the caregiver as our mother’s 24 year death from endometrial cancer progressed, some hard edges were rounded off their conflicts.   I could show you the photograph, if not for invading the privacy of the individuals depicted.  A little background, instead.

My sister named our father “The D.U.”, The Dreaded Unit.  The name was apt, my father was able to convey his dreaded aspect with nothing more than a withering facial expression, no words necessary, though he was quick and deadly with a word or phrase too.   My sister once reported an answering machine message from the D.U., the mere tone of his voice making her want to rip her ears off so she could stop hearing it.   Our mother loved and always defended the D.U. and, after his passing, took on the name for herself in her last five years.

“Of the two of them, she’s by far the more dreaded,” my sister always said.  I had the opposite experience, but I knew what she was saying, from her point of view, and watched their struggles with sadness.

My sister lived a mile or two from our mother and looked in on her often, took her to doctors, had her mother take her and the kids out to dinner once in a while. Each resented the other’s ingratitude, and complained of it to me from time to time, swearing me to secrecy.   Any decent mediator could have helped them resolve the most fundamental issues between them, but both refused to consider it, for the same reason: the other was too stubborn and would never agree to it.

“She’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” my sister told me often, citing the most recent example of our mother’s supposed slide into dementia.  My mother had a variation on this for her daughter.  During my visits I never found my mother in the least bit demented, though she sometimes mis-spoke.  

“I can’t stand it in this hotel anymore!” she declared one day from her bedroom in her apartment, not long before she died.  I looked over at the guy who cleaned for her and took her shopping and said “well, we can fire the bellhop,” and he smiled, “but this is your home, mom, it’s not a hotel.”  

“I know, I know,” she said, annoyed “I can’t even talk any more…”  The sad fact was, she didn’t have many friends left to talk with.  When a group of women from the hospice came, days before her death, I heard laughter coming from the bedroom.  “One thing for sure, your mother is not demented,” said one of the women as she came out of the bedroom, a big smile still on her face.

The New York Times published a piece by a woman who went to visit her mother, toward the end of her mother’s life.  The two had always had a very contentious relationship and the daughter set off on the visit with trepidation.  When she arrived she found that her mother, her dementia fairly advanced, did not know who she was.  She was surprised at the happy greeting she received.  As heartbreaking as she found the situation it soon emerged that her mother mistook her for a long lost friend, or maybe a beloved sister, and they had a wonderful weekend together.  It was like old friends meeting for the first time after a forgotten lifetime.  

I gave the lovely piece to my mother to read on the plane as we flew from Florida to New York for her last visit.  My mother liked it very much, and I’m sad that I never got it back from her to pass on to my sister, she might have gleaned some insight from it.  

The piece disappeared like many other things when my mother died, like a life, finally whole, studied, and appreciated, and existing now only as lessons, digested and undigested.