From the vortex of grief: Fault lines of relationships

 It has been more than a 100 days at the hospital. Other than my dad, undoubtedly, the two people most affected by this are my Mom and me. She has lost her career, the comfort of her home and the security and strength of an able spouse. I am flailing in my personal life and career, having lost the strong physical, mental and emotional support I used to get from my parents. Both of us are seeing someone we love being reduced to a pitiful state. And it has broken us completely. All of this is understandable and quite expected.

But the difficult part was this- I thought we'd be broken together. That we'd be there to support each other and help each other heal. My mom thought the same. After all, we love each other so deeply. And we are both strong and independent women. Yet, we both have been disappointed on this, and we feel more alone than before. Ever since this incident happened, our differences are even more marked. We end up arguing and hurl hurtful words at each other, adding to all the other wounds we have. 

First, some context on this. My mom and I have always loved each other, but we've had drastically different perspectives on everything, and we've never been able to converge. We give each other opinions and thoughts, but ultimately the primary person involved in the situation makes the decision. For instance, when I wanted to quit my job before I had an admission into a PhD programme, she was strongly against it, even after I justified my decision with several rational arguments. Ultimately I still went ahead with my choice, and even though she vehemently disagreed, she let me make my choice  cause it was my life. Similarly, when she told me that she would continue working past 65, I tried to get her to reduce her working hours and/or days, and then gave up because it was her life. Our conflict resolution strategy has always been this. And even though we disagreed with each others' decisions, we did not interfere, and we had an amicable relationship due to this.

But after this, we were thrown into this traumatic situation, and we needed to make decisions together. We needed to function as one unit rather than two disparate people, and from there started our problems. First, we had to decide who would stay at the hospital. She insisted on staying all by herself for long periods, and I let her. But then, she asked me to do the same, and I couldn't because of my work constraints. The best I could offer her was to takeover on Sundays/weekends, which she did not agree to. And hence, she shouldered the burden alone, staying continuously at the hospital for months. I feel awfully guilty about this, and she resents me, but what can I do differently? Nothing. I cannot do what she wants, and she is not ready to take what I can offer.

Next came the question of where my Dad would go from the hospital. I wanted my parents to come and stay with me, and she stubbornly refused, citing that it would ruin my marriage. Again, I did not agree, and we spent hours going back and forth over this, and it left both of us exhausted. Afterwards, she told me that they would go to a care home, and just hearing that shattered me. I tried so hard to convince her otherwise, but to no avail. After a while, I gave in and searched, but I couldn't find anything suitable. We stopped talking about this.

This morning, we again had a major argument about something. I had called casually for a quick chat before a meeting, and she wanted to get into a detailed discussion regarding something. And then , she offhandedly told me that she's taken a major decision by herself, which made me feel very left out. When I alluded to that, she replied that she had already mentioned it to me and I hadn't done it, forcing her to do it herself. We were back to one of our sore points. I worked on a schedule. I liked to plan things out and do them. She has complete agency over her schedule, and expects me to immediately do things. Any behavior to the contrary meant that I didn't care, or wasn't interested. The whole interaction left me feeling useless and sad.

Why am I writing about this? I think all of us have relationships like this, where we love the other person, but keep hurting each other and can't figure out why. I have been trying so hard to break out of this behavior pattern. I think the first step is to identify such a dynamic, and it has taken me years to get to this point. In my case, the problem is simply a mismatch of expectations that arise from the drastically different people that we are. This difference in expectations makes us seek things that we will never be able to get from each other. And that makes us sad, angry, unloved and unreasonable. We say horrible things to each other, and that makes us feel even more alienated. I still don't know how to fix this. But I am working on it, and being able to clearly identify how I am reacting and feeling is the first step on the journey. :)