Suzanne Rhatigan ©

“Children; our greatest achievement and deepest disappointment”  Anon;)

Nature nurture?  Who to blame?  Where does it come from, the stubborn streak, the bad blood, the good heart, the sweet smile, the loose tongue, the awful handwriting.

I worry a lot that I have unwittingly passed on the worst of myself to my children.  Everyone who knows our family usually comments that my beautiful daughter is the image of her dad and my son, the spit of me. Their dad gets the credit for their brains, me for their tantrums and time keeping. We’re the core of their lives but it won’t always be so. Soon they’ll go their own way, a mark of our success or our failure as parents

I worry a lot that my kids will become estranged from me as I did with my family for a time. It’s that thing when you wonder if you’re even more fucked up than your parents….

My mother and I had a tough start.  What part her personality, life experience and genetic coding were responsible, I don’t know and despite a lifetime trying to figure it out I probably never will.  Throw in an unhappy marriage, an ill-advised adoption and the misogyny of Catholic Ireland’s then laws prohibiting divorce and a married woman’s right to work and support herself, and you do not exactly have the most positive, nurturing, loving environment for anyone to grow up in.

I brought stuff to the table too.  Personality, life experience (begins in the womb apparently), genetic coding and an almost instinctive dislike of mum and a deep dependent love for my dad whom she unfortunately disliked. Intensely.

Roll on 60 years…

Extract from my diary ‘Caring for Mum’

January 2024

Got a call last night to say mum had a bad fall and had likely broken her femur. Off she went to A&E again.  She was in a side room when I arrived up.  The surgical team discussed the difficulties they would have getting her through the operation and anesthetic, not to mention post op infection and complications, given mum’s age and frailty.  I told them they would have to work hard to kill her.

Mum duly flew through the surgery so much so when I was on my way to pick up some things for her from the nursing home this morning, I had a call from a doctor on duty saying they would be discharging her that afternoon.  I diverted and went straight to the hospital.  Mum was sitting in a chair at her bed and was very agitated and confused.  There was a carer sitting with her supervising as she was trying to get up and move and was pulling at IV lines and dressings etc.

I negotiated another night on the ward for mum with the reluctant Doctor. The rational is mum will be better off back at the nursing home where she will be less stressed.  I was gob-smacked!  What about infection, the post op complications the surgical team had warned of?  Still better off in the nursing home, where they can nurse her, apparently. – But the nursing homes aren’t set up for that kind of post op care – I suggested.  – Really – the doctor asked – Isn’t the clue is in the name? – – And what if she goes downhill?-  -They can bring her to A&E- I was told.  – So back for another 24-48 hours on a trolley? –  No answer.

I sat with mum and I saw how the distress of her bewilderment and confusion out-weighed her physical problems and pain, despite having had her femur bolted together less than 24 hours before, I started to realize getting her out of there was very likely the best option.

Returning mum to the Nursing Home in this condition will require even more attention than before and will involve more daily input from me. While the staff at the nursing home will take care of her, as well as their staffing, insurance and management protocols allow, it is the case that your elderly or infirm relative still needs your support and advocacy, on the day to day in a nursing home. Despite what it says on the tin. 

Back in the room

I was deeply estranged from my mother for the best part of 30 years.  The inevitability of that estrangement was unsurprising. Years of hurt, anger, bitterness.   Things that happened, stuff that was said. Unforgiveable stuff really.  However, I don’t regret those years apart, it couldn’t have played out any other way.  Even following dad’s death there did not seem to be any likelihood of a relationship of any meaningful sort. That profound dislike still lived inside me.

So, what happened to change that, you might wonder.

Eventually I had my own family.  I faced into the reality of parenting. The soul sapping drudgery, the loss of self, the joy of love.

But what if the love is just not there. How impossible it must be to mother or father another human without love.  You can’t phoney up that feeling no matter how much you try and we did try, but if it’s not there it’s not there.

Slowly it started to dawn on me just how horrible not being able to feel that love and be that kind of mother must have felt.  Here mum was, trapped in a loveless marriage with two children, pretty much acquired to validate the unbreakable nuptial contract, in the absence of a more traditional consummation.  This just wasn’t what she signed up for and there was nothing she could do about it.

She railed against dad’s controlling patriarchy.  To me he was a benign loving benefactor, to her he was a miserly, unyielding master. To my mind he was salt of the earth, a gardening, clean living, monk like presence as opposed to her, a frustrated socialite, whose undoubted beauty and glamour were wasted at the bingo in the community center on a Friday night.  Winning a couple of quid on a full house was the difference for her between a new pair of nylons and a hair do.

Dad controlled the purse strings so mum took matters into her own hands.  She began running up credit in department stores, hiding the bills, selling bits of jewelry, reporting them lost and collecting on the insurance. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She would of course be found out and punished with even less autonomy.  She couldn’t be trusted after all.  And of course she couldn’t.

Mum had, expert social skills. These skills brought her into unlikely company.  American banker friends of friends who loved coming to Ireland on golf trips also loved spending time and money on her. By the time dad copped on to the nature of mum’s acquaintanceships he had abandoned any attempt to engage with her or she with him, but his ego naturally took a serious knock so he had to do something about it.

He always had the ace up his sleeve.  She couldn’t afford anything like the outward appearance of the life style and postcode a wife of a successful partner in a large accountancy firm should have, so she had to suck it up and stick it out, or leave, with nothing. Appearances are everything to a woman like mum so she made the decision to stay in the family home while essentially living alone.

She took a part time job as an assistant in a model agency. Dad couldn’t seem to stop her, so he withdrew any remaining personal financial support for her.  Mum soon worked full time and was gone from early morning to late evening most week days. Weekends were spent at the golf club. She no longer involved herself with any domestic activities.  By the time we were old enough to do the cleaning and cooking that’s what we did.  Dad would cook a little but mostly sorted his own meals.  I was stood on phone books to reach the sink and wash the dishes. Dad thought a washing machine was an unnecessary luxury, so my sister Catho and I boiled our underwear in pots and washed our uniforms by hand.  We went with a list to the supermarket on a Friday and dad picked us up and settled the bill.

From early on Catho and I cooked for ourselves.  Tins of Cambells Irish stew, Dennys tinned meat pies, Findus crispy pancakes, omelets, beans on toast, spaghetti hoops all the 70s culinary classics.   It went on like this until we reached adulthood and my sister married.  That was when things hit rock bottom for me and mum.

In January 1985 I bailed and headed to London to find fame and fortune.

Mum realized with no buffer in the home her position was untenable she had to take her chances in front of a judge so she finally left and applied to the courts for a separation. Dad came out of the ensuing court case badly and found himself parting with half his monthly pension and a good chunk of cash to enable mum to set up home elsewhere.

Mum’s life finally began in her 50’s.  She was able to live the life of a lady of independent means without the encumbrance of a husband or children.  She decided against buying an apartment, choosing to rent instead and bought herself a sports car.  She was advised by someone, that she would have a better claim for more funds from dad in the coming years if she had no property or assets. She should spend her money on herself, so she did.

I was not a part of my mother’s life through these years or I certainly would have advised her against that strategy but it probably would have made no difference.  Some 15 years later Divorce was now legal in Ireland and mum found herself without any savings or assets starting her retirement. She came back looking for another settlement which, now the law had changed, resulted in Divorce.

Dad was elderly and frail and I returned from London to assist him with his legal affairs and his increasing health issues. Initially it was for a week every month, the two, then I was struggling to get back to London for a week every month to keep the Cushy nights at the 12 bar going. The Divorce settlement was satisfactory in the end enabling dad to retain his home while mum got an increase in her monthly allowance and a provision for her in his estate.  Within 2 years he had died.

I transitioned from caring for my dad to caring for my baby who arrived 5 months later.  I fully intended picking my life back up in London but by now I had integrated back into my home town and I didn’t want to leave and here I am over 20 years later.

It was a family wedding a few years later that prompted me to act on the unresolved estrangement from mum.  I was so tired of hating her. Loving my own kids so much left no room for hate.  I wanted to heal the wounds and just get along.  I decided to open the door and invite her in.

Was there a tearful reunion, was it joyous, life affirming?

No.

It was fine.

Mum is, as I mentioned, an expert socially.  She can play the game, flatter, cajole, charm, when necessary. It was easy enough to get along, particularly if you avoid any mention of grievances past, so mission accomplished. Mum was still a very active and independent woman in her seventies, so she got on with buzzing around with her bridge friends and her golf friends and her book club friends delighting them with stories about family events and visits, finally able to live the part of matriarch and adoring grandmother.

I immersed myself in my family and tried to be a different kind of mother.  I would devote myself to my babies and nourish and nurture them if it bloody killed me, or them and it almost did.  It’s fucking hard!  It doesn’t end when they stop being babies either like you think it might.

Just as my children were requiring a little less micro-management I began to write again.  I had notions of releasing a record and getting out and gigging but mum’s problems started to impact on my time

For the last 10 + years mum’s physical and financial health declined she needed a great deal of help to live independently and a lot of the management of that fell to me. It has been extremely stressful and time consuming.  My resentment of her had fertile ground to spring forth again

Then Covid.

How the fuck did this happen.  How did I end up being mum’s main carer when as far as I could recollect, she never cared much for me!

Of course, we cannot know whether our parents were caring and kind to us when we were very young, we have no reliable memory of life before the age of maybe 8 or 9 only snippets and flashes, maybe.  I do know that for as long as I can remember I felt unloved and disliked by her, I have many memories of her telling me that no one liked me because I was difficult or attention seeking or defiant.

This kind of thing…

– If you go on like that no one will like you –  or – there, you see (insolence, bad temper) that is why you have no friends -. One of the flashes of early memory I have is of us singing the clap handies song.  – Clap handies, clap handies till daddy comes home with sweeties and chocolate for Catho alone -. Then she would turn to me and say -and none for you because you’re so awful -. False memory?  Maybe, but I’ve had that memory my whole life, since I had any memory, so I think it very likely happened, more than once. Either way that’s how it felt.

Point is I kind of just accepted it as true.  It made sense that I was lonely and isolated because no one liked me.  It was so predictable that I would show off my singing and dancing and gymnastic skills endlessly, everywhere, I just wanted someone to say, – wow you’re great -.  But all I saw or heard or imagined I saw or heard was – God what an irritating child, send her out to the garden or up to her room -.

I couldn’t stop performing though, because when someone not aligned to my mother’s opinion and experience of me praised me, I fell instantly in love. My vulnerability to flattery is still an Achilles heel to this day. Unfortunately, it’s not just a need for someone to like me it has to be everyone and that is just greedy and no one likes a greedy girl.

Anyway.  Here I found myself, due to an unfortunate series of events, mum’s primary carer.  With our history and deep-rooted malevolence toward each other, it was not ideal.  But, we battled on regardless.

Just as Covid hit, mum’s finances were heading fast toward destitution. Despite her inheritance from dad 20 years before, which would have been enough to buy an apartment, she had in the intervening years continued to rent luxury apartments, suited to her idea of how a person of her social standing should live. By now she had no other recourse but to try to get housed by the Council, she soon would have no way of subsidizing the deficit between what the state allowed her in rent assistance and the market rent in the private sector and she had no intention of downgrading.

I dealt with all the various departments, filling out reams of forms compiling endless documentation that would be duly submitted and end up in the housing department black hole. But eventually she was prioritized on the housing list.  She was even offered a gorgeous little cottage, which she turned up her nose at despite me pleading with her, as it meant she could continue to live independently, all be it with our support.

It was pretty obvious to me and the social workers, by now involved with mum, that she was at the crossroad of being unable to live alone anyway, so a placement in assisted living was sought.  Honestly you have more chance of discovering a seam of gold running through the walls of your house behind the woodchip wallpaper than landing one of the precious few assisted living places available in Dublin.  But we found one.  It looked perfect, not far from family and friends though not in her area of choice.  Still mum reluctantly agreed to take a look.

I remember the morning I went to collect her to view it.  I knew straight away that she wouldn’t have a bar of it.  It was a rainy grey day.  – It better not be dark in here – she warned as I prattled on about keeping an open mind.  – It’s in the middle of nowhere – she complained.   – It’s five minutes from at least two of your friends and Catho and the same distance from me as your current accommodation – I replied, shouting now as I could see all the work and time I had invested in this falling away.

-If you don’t take this mum, you will have no choice but residential care-.  I said, careful not to mention the ‘nursing home’ words as she had already repeatedly said she would live on the streets before going into a nursing home.

Turned out that even if she had loved it and she didn’t, she was hostile and rude to the woman who manages the facility. Unsurprisingly they rejected her application, confirming what we already knew, that mum, even with support could no longer live alone.  She of course did not share that view, but at least it did set in train the process for arranging the medical referrals and financial support required before a residential place could be secured.

It was the end of summer 2022 and we were now coming out the other side of Covid and it was clear that mum had declined a lot during the long isolating months with just me and her home help coming in to visit.  Her mobility was of grave concern, she was falling regularly, but her cognitive decline was also off a cliff.  It seemed that almost overnight she decided that she couldn’t face another winter alone so we set about finding a nursing home which she might consider.  I didn’t have too much hope for plain sailing but with the help and encouragement of her lovely social worker she edged closer to seeing the possible up sides.

I had heard of a spot not too far from both Catho and me so we went to check it out.  Luckily it had a lot going for it on 1^st impressions.  It felt more like a luxury hotel in reception.  Plush carpet and leather sofas.  A small hair salon, a large dining social area.  Mum was impressed.  She contacted the social worker herself to ask her to initiate the next steps.

As the date came closer however, mum started to change her mind.  She had backed herself into a corner though as despite me advising her not to give notice to her landlord till she had an actual move in date, she had gone ahead regardless and now she was moving out whether she wanted to or not.

Moving day arrived we packed up everything with mum, at her own insistence, looking on bewildered.  She was watching me like a hawk. I was of course, stealing her valuables and any manor of bric a brac.  I sucked it up.  She was at last checked into the nursing home and it looked, despite her understandable apprehension, like all would be well.

That night there was a phone call from the nurse, mum was distressed could we come up.  When we arrived, we were told that mum had called the police and told them she had been kidnapped and that we had stolen all her belongings, she wanted to press charges.  What followed was weeks of this and other similar behavior as mum railed furiously against her predicament.  Apparently, this type of thing is not unusual but it is distressing for all concerned.  The staff were lovely, they tried to reassure her and amuse her and bit by bit it worked.

Eventually mum bonded with the staff all of them young lovely nurses and carers from all corners of the world, which she was fascinated to hear about.  Her masterful social skills had not deserted her even though her memory of the friends and acquaintances she had lauded and valued so highly for so long, were fading away.

So where are we now?

Having a parent or family member in residential care does not mean your job is done.  It is a huge relief emotionally and practically to know they are being minded, but you are still their family and like it or not you need to be present in their lives.

In another desperately sad twist Catho became ill this time last year and she was unable to be involved with mum as much.  In a strange duality, mum was protected from Catho’s illness and Catho was protected from mum’s decline.  Yes it meant I had to manage alone but it also meant I have been able to fully appreciate the benefit of having let go of the residual acrimony and damage between myself and mum, it wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, and she and I became very close.  I was able to touch her and comfort her.  I can really hardly recall a time when mum and I ever embraced, but over the last year we caught up.  She liked me to groom her and stroke her cheek.  Just holding her cold little hands was a pleasure.  She would smile and say – you have such lovely warm hands – and I would laugh and say – yes, but not good if you want to make pastry! -.

When mum settled into her life in the nursing home I started to see the possibilities still awaiting me that my free-er time might afford me. It’s not that I thought I would head off into some exciting life, I still have school going kids and a cranky old man to deal with at home, but I am quite surprised by how the nursing home community became a part of my life.  It has not been a hardship calling in to see mum, though I never know what kind of mood she will be in when I get there.  Far from it.  I look forward to seeing her so happy in the company of the friends and caring staff who are her family now too.  Even when she has bad days she can usually be distracted and cheered up with a piece of cake.

Midnight September 23^rd I had a call from the nurse on duty to tell me mum had died.  I was with her earlier that day and I said to the nurse that I felt she was dipping again.  She had been up and down with persistent infections due to being bed bound and they were ready with end of life care for her there, when she needed it, but she bypassed all that and nodded off into the long sleep unaided.

I was so proud of her over that time, she faced her mortality so stoically and without fuss.  She was comfortable, which given the difficulties and discomforts she had endured in her life, was a very good outcome.  She also didn’t fully realise how sick Catho was or take in the news that Catho had herself died the week before, which was truly a blessing.

PS: I did tell you a story of mine and my lovely sister Catho’s childhood in blog 41 Only Joking. It really is a love song though I’m not sure she thought it was.  RIP my love.

PPS:  This song idea came directly from the lines of the great poem by Philip Larkin

That Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

X

Guitar, harmonica and singing Suzanne
Cello Billie Baumeister

suzannerhatigan.com/blog/44-they-fuck-you-up/

 suzannerhatigan.com/blog/41-only-joking/