Another Monday another doctors visit. Today was a special visit for my mom, we went to her rheumatologist, he is physician she’s been seeing regularly for the past 15 years. She loves this guy. He has done wonders easing her osteo pain and she is very grateful to him.
Unfortunately, timing for this appointment was a bit challenging for me. I have been preparing for some weighty meetings and my deadline is days away. I am stressed to say the least. She sprung this appointment on me unexpectedly mid-week last week. But I have made a commitment to be available to my mother no matter what, so I went to great lengths to rearrange the rest of my life to make this all work for her. At 8:30 am I was at her door to pick her up. Truth be told I was 15 minutes late. I was supposed to arrive at 8:15 and don’t you know that woman dialed my cell at 8:16. This had to be a very important visit.
Mom is dressed, out of bed, into the wheel chair, down the ramp, out of the wheelchair, into the car – tush first then legs, one at a time, door shut, mom’s in, wrestle with the wheelchair, it’s loaded, mom’s helper, she’s in the car. All this normally takes an hour. Today it was a half hour. This must be a very important visit.
We start to back out of the driveway. oops. forgot the sunglasses, back in the house and out to the car, forgot the advil, back to house and out to the car, forgot the water bottle, back into the house and out to the car. “OK, lets get going already!!” Mom is impatient. This must be a very important visit.
The car can almost drive itself to the doctors offices by now we’ve been there so much in the last two months. As usual we are on “mom’s going to the doctor” time..45 minutes early.
After what seems like an eternity, we finally are invited in to see this demigod of a doctor my mother raves about. He sits down across from her. She immediately launches into a litany of what ails her. He patiently listens. Finally, she heaves a deep sigh. I am waiting for the miracle cure to spill out of his lips. I am certain after all the machinations we collectively went through to get her here that he is going to have the definitive answer to get her back on her feet again. I am anxious for my life to get back to “normal” too. He reassures mom that he’s reviewed her entire chart. Then the bomb. He tells her that there is nothing that he can do for her now, no regular treatment today, but it’s always nice to see her. My mother acknowledges, she knew there was nothing he could do, her illness is out of his purview, but she just wanted to see him. What!!! Then, as though I am nothing more than her personal doctors office sherpa, she instructs me to hand her his holiday gift. With a flourish of praise and admiration she hands him the neatly wrapped bag. Hugs all around. “You have an amazing mother, the doctor god tells me, “she is in all this pain and all she does is think of others”. Yeah…right.
This visit was NOT very important at all. It was a massive mama ruse.
My blood begins to boil. I am beyond annoyed with Saint Mama. While she’s being praised for her benevolence, I am calculating all the time this little “fake” doctors visit has cost me. I recount in my mind what I had arranged and rearranged and how much I could have accomplished over the last five hours. Then my mind raced to a rich dose of evil resentment thinking about how much of me I set aside to attend to my mother. I want her to be well again and I want to make sure she gets to see every doctor who can get her closer to that end. But this! I felt betrayed by my own mom. She knew the hoops I’d jumped through to make sure she got to this appointment. How could she do this!
Then I stopped myself and took a deep breath. It didn’t matter whether this was a very important appointment or not. It was important to her. And it was important to her that I be there with her to meet the doctor that takes the time out of his busy schedule, no matter what, to see my mom.
Time is a precious commodity to us all. And that irreplaceable part of us we give to others is how we build irrefutable bonds. I thought back to when my children were babies and how long it took to do even the simplest of tasks, like going to the grocery store. All of the extra steps necessary to get them out of the crib, into their clothes, out to the car, into the car seat, out of the car seat, into the stroller and then finally into the store. Back then I balanced the thought of wasted time as precious moments. The time didn’t matter because it was time spent together. And this day with my mother took exactly the same effort and time as those days with my children. Today was our time together, and for her that is the ultimate gift anyone can give.
This day reminded me once again that the time we commit to others is what really counts in our lives. It doesn’t matter whether you are sitting in a doctors waiting room or wandering up and down the aisles of a grocery store. For me, I never want to regret that I didn’t return every ounce of care my mother proffered me as a child or didn’t give my children the undivided attention they deserve.
In that moment I found my humility and embraced the gift. I realized that rearing parents is much like raising children, we who live in the sandwich gen can find joy in even the most mundane of events.
