Cords of Connection
The delicate space between holding on and letting go
It’s been over three years since we chatted. There have been no birthday wishes, no Merry Christmases.
For four decades, we called each other most weeks of each year, the telephone wires serving as our invisible umbilical cord. My adolescent escape was your saddest sorrow and my greatest adventure, but we both knew it was necessary.
In the early years, I sought advice and empathy for my angst about life, love, marriage, and mothering. Your advice was to the point.
— Don’t take any shit from anyone.
Fear of being rejected and unloved often overruled that advice.
In the later years, our roles reversed. You sought counsel and compassion about the harsh realities of aging and your regrets. It took a while to understand that you weren’t always looking for advice as much as you sought to be heard, seen, treated kindly, and loved.
I reminded you:
— Don’t take any shit from anyone.
And added:
— Set boundaries. Walk away from emotional harmers.
Fear of being rejected and unloved often overruled that advice.
Our chats were generally uncomplicated; we understood that we lived different lifestyles in different landscapes. You loved me but didn’t fully know me. I once joked about being switched at birth, and your silence told me my joke was not funny.
In between our hellos and goodbyes were weather comparisons, health updates, family dramas, political rants, and technology troubles.
As a desert dweller, you consistently asked how I, a mountain mole, could tolerate living in the cold, the rain, and the snow.
— Why won’t you move back to the desert?
I rolled my eyes each time, unseen through the telephone cords, and explained that my heart belonged here, like yours belonged there.
Holiday chats were considered a requirement for you, evidence that I loved you, and thus a reluctant obligation for me. So often, those chats started with the same comments & questions about my absence.
— I wish you were here. I miss you so much. When are you coming for a visit?
I couldn’t be honest about how I felt about my annual visits, so I stayed silent, moving on to less emotional topics.
I deleted the last voicemail you left me while in the hospital—a weakened, whispering voice filled with fear, confusion, and pain, pleading to go home. I don’t want to remember you like that. It was your consistent cheerfulness, your kind heart, and your occasional profane responses about the idiocies in our world that I want to claim to memory.
Our chats ended after your strokes. I spent your first week of home hospice helping you and witnessing the changes, the losses. Some days, you remembered me, but gradually, I disappeared from your reality.
Our cord was finally cut.
You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love. ~Louise Bouregious
While researching elder loneliness for a future newsletter, I came across several threads about older parents who call their adult children every day and sometimes multiple times during a day. The one consistent theme among the posts was apparent: the parents sought a connection to help them through each day. Some suffered from the beginning of dementia, and others were grieving the loss of their partners and friends. Others called because they feared something: a neighbor’s dog barking, a scam phone call, an illness, of being alone.
Isolation is often the only companion for an elder.
Because we lived 1000 miles apart for over forty years, my relationship with my mom was maintained via weekly calls and annual visits to her home. She struggled with technology, so we didn’t text or Facetime. She loved to talk on the phone, even engaging sales representatives in friendly conversation. She died on December 5th, 2021, the day before my birthday, her firstborn. Though our relationship could be fraught with seldom-discussed wounds, I understood that my mom loved me unconditionally throughout my life. It is truly the most loving gift anyone can offer to someone, perhaps one that only a parent can offer. I didn’t always appreciate our weekly calls until they were no longer part of my life.
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Technology continues to change the way we interact with each other. I am curious about your experiences and how technology has impacted/ing your relationships. Please share in the comments.
Thank you for this, what I imagine is closely held by you, look into interacting with your Mom over the years. Your words give us a vision of the architecture of the relationship you both had.
For the last five years I have been almost 1000 miles away from my Mom, and have been several hundred miles away from my sister for longer, coming up on 30 years. For her age (80), Mom is pretty good with technology. She lives, as I have mentioned previously, on our isolated Montana ranch by herself. Her, my sister and I have a group text thread we keep going. Almost every morning one of us begins with a message, which is really reaching out to check in with one another. Especially Mom, as we want to be sure she is safe and well. Occasionally we FaceTime or Zoom. Even less occasionally we call on the phone. But we keep in touch often, us three girls.
Thank you for this, Sue. It can be hard to know how often to connect w/adult kids. I have 3, scattered from AK to CO. During the pandemic, I got into the habit of emailing them on Friday mornings. I still do that, faithfully, just so they can be aware of what's going on with us and that we're still (at 85 and 79) relatively healthy. They respond in different ways: one by email, one w/Sunday phone, one w/texts. It's a comforting connection. Hope your birthday is a very happy one!