Caregiving Story

Last week, we saw the recent tear-jerker movie "Evening". Well-crafted in that the tears did flow for me, but I can't say whether it was because it had the requisite things a tear-jerker has to achieve that... or if it was because of how much it had me thinking of my mom.

The story is structured around a dying woman played by Vanessa Redgrave who is flashing back to a wedding weekend when she was young. She was the maid of honor and fell for a family friend of the bride named Harris. She mutters how Harris was her "first mistake" as she goes in and out of a dream state.

Her daughters have gathered at the old house where she's dying and they've never heard of Harris. One of the daughters really wants to dig into this mystery, asking questions during the moments her mother is lucid, while the other thinks she should let her mother "die in peace".

The images of the sallow and drawn Vanessa Redgrave alone reminded me of my mom on her deathbed, but I was also reminded of my mom because she had secrets too. Periods of her life and stories that were alluded to, but never revealed. These tantalized and frustrated us as kids and later as adults when we thought we had the right to know all about her. But, they remained secret and now are forever beyond our grasp.

Maybe all or most parents have some secrets guardedly kept from their kids, but, even if not, the movie made me think how there are always ways in which our parents are unknowable to us.

As we mature - and, yes, become our parents in so many ways - we do grow to understand them and consequently "know" them in ways we never did as children. And, if we're lucky, we heard tales from them or our grandparents of how they were when they were children or young adults.

But, we don't necessarily know *all* about them. Whether it was mistakes made, indiscretions, dreams they had for themselves, roads not taken, passing fancies, etc.

As in the movie, it's natural to want to know all about these people from whom we sprang forth before it's too late. And, the time comes where we also need to let them go with stories untold and dark areas of unknown territory like medieval maps of the world.

We let them go and hold on to the what we did and do know and love. That's what we're left with.