heralded by disaster

a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help

14 February 2025:

“When I need help, I will know.” This is my 85 year old mother’s mantra to me, her friends, her doctor, and the social worker I engaged. Meanwhile her refrigerator is filled with aspirational food. Things I believe she intended to eat but never got around to preparing… meat in varying degrees of decay, the relics of bagels, some withered apples, and five bottles of white wine. When I attempt to clean it out she tells me I’m insulting her.

“How will you know when you need help?” the social worker on our zoom screen asks.

“I’m intelligent. I will know.” Never mind her compromised memory. A care-er is suggested as an option and my mother sets her chin, shakes her head, and aggressively growls. Yes, she growls.

It occurs to me that my mother may not know what a care-er is. She certainly had an austere childhood, growing up above her father’s seasonal bar in the Pennsylvania mountains. She was a single mom at 22. We moved frequently and sometimes just ahead of the landlord knocking on our door. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say my childhood was unstable. My therapist gently chides me when I say my mother practiced benign neglect. “No, Natalie,” she tells me, “it was straight up neglect.”

The thing is, I don’t want to neglect my mother when she is in this precarious state. And yet she makes caring nearly impossible. Perhaps care is outside of my mother’s ken. Perhaps she sees the inclusion of a care-er as shameful, as giving up independence and power.

“Change in your mother’s life will be heralded by disaster.” This is the proclamation of the social worker. “As much as you would like to make her safe, she has the right to her choices, no matter how disastrous."