Marrying up

I know what my dad would do without me, or at least, without me in the house. He’d be in some sort of an assisted-living center and I’d go visit him once or twice a week. I’d bring a book and sit with him for a few hours. Probably wear super powerful noise-cancelling headphones while he watches the news. Maybe take him to “Pandas” every once in a while.

But what would my dad do without my mom?

Being my dad’s caregiver is really only the latest in a string of choices my mom has made in their married life, choices that put someone else way above herself. My mom has always taken care of my dad, with the big things (she was the breadwinner of the two and ensured their financial stability) and with the little things (she did the cooking and the dishes). The one thing my dad contributed to the logistical part of their relationship was filing taxes. Not a small detail for sure, but not quite exactly pulling his weight either. I suppose he did drive my mom around at times, but given how my dad continued to drive like he was a New York yellow cab driver even when he left New York, I’m not sure that should really count.

“Uncle John married up,” an old childhood church friend said to her mom, outside my parents’ house during the summer, which feels like such a long time ago.

“Oh,” her mom said, “is that what it means to ‘marry up?’”

“Yes,” my friend said before turning to me, “I was trying to explain to my mom what it means to ‘marry up’ all day.”

I chuckled. This friend’s mother, I’ll call her Auntie Mary, has been coming over relatively frequently to help my mom with various tasks, whether to just give her a ride somewhere or to take her shopping. She and my mom have been friends for some time, something I actually forget—that my mom has had friends.

“You know,” Auntie Mary said, “your mom used to come to my house very upset about Uncle John. Very upset.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, many years ago. You know, she seems much more at peace about him. Or something like that, yeah.”

I debated whether to say this next phrase, but knowing my mom was out of earshot, I went for it. “I think that might just be because she knows she’s old and there’s no point in changing it now.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” she responded.

Someday I’m going to have to do some digging into the details of why and how my parents actually got married. The circumstances, if there was any dating involved, the thoughts of their friends and family. They weren’t in older China, but modern dating wasn’t really a thing yet either. People, individuals, they didn’t court each other; families courted each other with stature, gifts, promises. Getting married, having children, and maintaining the presence of a strong family was a duty, not a romantic ideal. Love was neither a feeling, nor a verb (as so many church friends liked to call it).

Love was obedience. Deference. Honor. Service. Love was enduring some pain because your pain couldn’t compare to the pain of the larger community, pain of the family, or if you want to be melodramatic about it, pain of the entire country.

Those are the kinds of love my mom knows how to express, the ways she knows how to show that she loves, and how deeply she loves. I wish she knew a few other modes of expression and was willing to understand other people’s modes, like mine. She and I speak very different languages in that way. Makes sense, I grew up American.

And so for much of my life, the ways I’ve witnessed my mom love have felt very foreign to me, at least until now. Service, duty, those are really the only ways left to show love for my dad. Words are basically meaningless. Emotion is just something you spin a wheel of fortune on to see where you land on any given minute. It might be painful to take care of my dad, but how does that compare to leaving my dad out to die? How does that compare to contributing to a society that doesn’t know how to take care of its elderly, let alone actually incorporate them into it?

I suppose the difference that remains, between my mom and me, is that I still try to love myself, to find the intersection of loving my parents and loving myself. I can be around to take care of my folks, sure, but I have to move out and have my own place to do it. And by having my own place, I know that I’ll be able to take care of them even better because I won’t want to bang my head against my desk half the time.

I can tell my mom has some desire to follow the same path. Every so often, mostly when I was growing up but even now, something lights up in her and she demands that she be treated well.

Like when a property tax bill came in the mail a few weeks ago. My mom showed it to my dad because she wanted him to know that life doesn’t come for free and you have to work for it even though my dad’s basically gotten by for free.

“He needs to pay for it,” my mom told me.

“And...how’s he going to pay for it?” I asked. “He doesn’t even know how to go to the bank anymore.”

“He’ll have to handle it.”

I looked quizzically at her. “Mom, you know he has Alzheimer’s. He’s not going to remember.”

“No. That’s an excuse.”

I choked on my saliva.

“He needs to know,” she continued, “needs to know that someone needs to pay for it and that I will do it for him.”

She grabbed the bill and went back to show my dad again, to show him that my loves him so much to pay for the tax bills that he could never afford to pay for. That if she didn’t pay for, there’s a good chance he’d be on the streets.

“Go ahead…” I told her.

I already knew what the reaction will be. But it’s like when my mom tells him to brush his teeth, take a shower, or get out of bed. She persists, and so does he.

And so he yells at her again. And again. And again.

But this is what my mom knows.

I don’t doubt that my mom loves my dad. I have never doubted it. My only wish for her was that she tried to also love herself, even if that meant leaving. She could have.

My brother disputes me every time I think this thought out loud though. He says it’s just in our mom's blood to say one thing, even though the truth is the exact opposite. The truth is that this is who she is. It’s why she drives people around. It’s why she lends people money when it makes no sense. It’s why she continues to sacrifice and serve over and over and over again. That’s what she knows. That’s who she is.

I don’t know if “she could’ve left” really matters anymore. I’ll always maintain that my mom put my dad above her to her detriment. Too much. That she didn’t really love herself. But no one could ever accuse my mom of not loving. How she treats my dad will always be a testament to that.