the daughter she's always wanted

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

my mother and me at my college graduation party

4 March 2025:

I tussle with this diary. Why do I note all this pain with my mother? Why do I press the publish button? The best answer I can land upon is that my mother’s dotage is a lonely struggle. Writing helps me to but down some of my pain. Sharing helps me to feel connected.

My husband is my helpmeet. My friends too offer support. And yet, I’m still an only child. My mother has had no partner for most of her life. I have no stepparent to validate my incredulity. My mother’s only sibling, my beloved uncle, died many years ago. And so, there is no family team to regularly turn to and ask, “Can you fucking believe this?”

Joan Didion famously wrote, “I write to learn what I am thinking.” I write to learn, am I crazy for being so tied up in knots? Is this normal? I share this diary because in some sense, dear reader, I’ve made you my sisters and brothers. Forgive me.

…

Each story of forgotten medication, rodent chewed wiring, the stove left on, would infuriate mother. I am outing her. But/And, this time in her life is also my story. So I strive to be honest—to hold my feet to the fire of truth telling. I totally suck!

I rant:

your house is falling apart, your shirt is filthy, your sheets need changing, drink more water, eat less sugar, get to the dentist (I’ll take you!), let me pay your bills (she double paid cable and is late for PG&E), let me do laundry, let me clean out the fridge, take a shower, get a haircut, be around people, get hearing aids, shower, please shower, accept meals on wheels….

My tirades, sometimes quietly frustrated, often loud and angry, get us nowhere. I am not careful, and I despise myself. How can I be in integrity with what I value in myself in this situation? How can my words and actions align with who I think I am?

“Ellen,” I say to my mother. I stand very close. I speak loud and slow. I pinch my fingers together on each hand and bump them against each other, the baby sign language gesture for more. “I don’t want to be this angry and scared person.”

“Then don’t be.” She digs her fists into her hips. Behind her, on the dining room table are tidy stacks of bills, requests for money from the SPCA, coupons for carpet cleaners, three beanie babies, a small pot with dry soil that once held some plant. There is also a painting of us she commissioned when I was a teenager. In the painting, I am reaching toward my mother, and she has her hands in her lap, completely closed off from me. We both hate the painting. Me, because the artist painted a faint mustache. My mother, because of how she is sitting. Years after the commission, my mother ran into the artist at the grocery store. In front of the oranges she asked her if she would fix the painting, erase our facial hair and the artist scoffed. “Then it wouldn’t be true,” she said.

“You expect me to just stand by until the wheels to come off,” I say.

“How did I make it this far?” She clacks her jaw three times, a new persistent habit I think because her bridge is uncomfortable, hence the offer of the dentist.

Through all of this, as long as my mother is alive, a tiny, magical-thinking sliver of me holds out hope. She may ‘wake up.’ She may have a moment of clarity and become the mother I’ve always wanted. It is a cruel wish and yet I don’t think I am alone in hanging on like this. I wonder if my mother too holds onto a sliver of hope that I will be the daughter she always wanted? One who tells her that she was a wonderful mother. One who expresses pride in her capabilities, who tells her exactly what she wants to hear.