“I think we should put her in a nursing home,” I said, terrified of cleaning and bathing my own mother-in-law. My brother-in-law was more compassionate and set her up with a woman who took care of her 24/7. Zoya was from Mongolia and was so skilled with her hands, the doctors remarked at how smooth Marge’s skin looked, despite being bed ridden for a year.
We’d not spoken to Marge for five years. Why? Bruce had to cut apron strings. Marge and I were too much alike. My terror of taking care of her and her fear of being abandoned in her frail old age, slammed between us like an ax. Marge wouldn’t take no for an answer. And we couldn’t say yes.
I’d spent twenty years blessing Marge and blessing myself. At a healing service at St. Anskar’s the minister laid hands on me and prayed for reconciliation. I imagined Marge and I picnicking by the river flowing from the temple with trees bearing leaves for the healing of the nations.
When we met Zoya, a woman so full of light, I breathed relief. She invited us to supper. We brought our gentle dogs. We listened to Marge tell her stories, some so painful I clenched my teeth. She entrusted us with her affairs. It was as much a miracle as being raised from the dead.
When I scared up twenty Monarch butterflies, I saw for myself, what being raised looks like.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
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The following is the long version of the above story. It’s longer than my usual posts and talks about a miracle as powerful as the resurrection. See what you think.
How Blessing My Husband’s Mother Brought Us to That Big River Where the Trees Sprout Leaves for Healing the Nations
God bless my enemy. Bless her. God.
For whatever reason she is someone I can’t confront. I can’t talk to her about what’s troubling us. Often she’s nothing more than a wet hen pecking at me incessantly—you aren’t worthy, you don’t belong here, you’re not good enough. The wounds are subtle, but I bleed.
I know my enemy because she sits like a cockleburr on my soul, the prickers so sharp it does no good to talk it out, the pain only nestles, making itself comfortable and me obsessing: I could have said…I should have replied… But anything I might say to defend myself would be met by an accusation I cannot answer. My brain rides a spin that skips, the music played over and over. I bore my friends. They withdraw.
I do not want to be married to my enemy because of the hate, but I am harnessed to her as surely as two Clydesdales are bound by heavy leather straps, tugs, and the load they are pulling. Besides, just because she hates me, and sometimes it’s just that, her hatred, it doesn’t mean I have to hate her back.
There is wisdom behind Jesus’ commands to love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. It’s a wisdom that reflects the saying that when we hate others it’s because we are uneasy with ourselves. But sometimes it’s easier to hate someone out there, who has done us wrong, than our own souls, who did someone else wrong. How can I pray such a thing when I hate her? I hate the woman. There I said it.
God bless her.
I hate her.
God bless her.
I swear it’s like shoving my shoulder against a Clydesdale that will not move, her quarter ton hoof resting on my foot. Bless. Her. My enemy. I lean into the horse. Punch her flank. The mare turns her head, looks at me with kinder eyes than her hoof, leans into me. Bless the nag. God. Get her off my foot.
God what am I saying? I can’t tell you what to do. I can only trust your Spirit’s stepping between us, with a language more like groans and I think about my dog as he stretches out of sleep to waking, with low throated greetings like nickers from a horse.
God does something, or the prayer’s own power, or the goodness being traded for evil, but some magic of goodness happens. He feeds her, my enemy, pouring oats into her manger. She steps forward. I pant as the blood shoots into my foot. The pain eases.
I have seen this blessing work a slow miracle in the most intractable of relationships, where I had no hope we’d ever speak again, but there we were, talking and listening with compassion. So this is one thing I believe and practice. I bless her, my enemy. And in blessing her I bless myself.
I pretty much wrote this thirty-five years ago, a few years into my marriage. Bruce’s mom was raised in a culture that demanded children take care of their parents no matter what. I was raised by parents who loved me so much they pushed me out of the nest. And Bruce and I believed, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife.” Of course the apron strings should be cut. But his mother, Marge, felt abandoned. Her friends said it wouldn’t matter who Bruce married, his wife would not suit her, but she still hurt my feelings. I hurt hers.
I don’t know if my therapist recommended, I do this, or if I was reading the Bible one day and decided to try it. I do know so many terrible things were happening in a few short years that I did not want to be bitter the rest of my life. The best way to explain it is to say that by the time I was thirty-two my mother, my father and my brother were dead, and Bruce’s family made it clear, that no, I was not one of them.
I did not want my hatred to bind me to Bruce’s mother. So I started blessing her. There were times I could feel her disapproval across the seven miles from Poplar Grove to Belvidere. I’d obsess, trying to argue back that I’m not as bad as you say, but you need to let your son live his life. You need to let me live mine. Obsessing did no good, so when I’d think of her, I’d turn my mind to blessing. This does not make me a saint or a good person, just practical. Please don’t think I’m better than I am. Underneath my prayers, all kinds of hatred, resentment, and fear swirled. God knew it, but as an act of obedience, I’d pray asking God to bless her.
Things went from a working, speaking relationship to not speaking at all. How could this be? I was blessing her. I was doing my best to be kind and compassionate, to overlook when she spoke to Bruce as if I weren’t in the room. But one Easter Sunday, Bruce’s mom and I had a spat. I started it by snapping at her, one of those speak before you think blurts that do no good. In some families we would have felt we cleared the air, but no, we stopped speaking. Bruce said he’d had it. He knew she would not respond if we tried to make amends, and he was tired of trying. My therapist recommended I stop rescuing them from each other. She said if that’s what your husband wants, you need to honor his wishes. We celebrated Mother’s Day that year and we brought her a gift for her 80th birthday. But the exclusion from her birthday parties, from Christmases, from hearing family news had begun.
We realized that we were likely written out of her will. The money wasn’t worth our need to separate, to live our lives even though I’d been through it before, my brother feeling I had no right to our parents’ estate, his wife feeling I had no right to my brother’s and my family’s things and it’s more than just things. But that’s another story.
It’s painful to be the neglectful children. It’s painful when you live in the community and everything that people are saying is true, but not the whole story. So I blessed her–the years of it, the dailiness of it, adding up. The obsession eased. I didn’t think about our mutual dislike. Marge no longer owned my mind and emotions. I blessed her. She had even more friends than before. Her neighbor ran her to the doctor. She stayed at her home. She went to parties and church. Others in the body of Christ met her needs when we could not.
Then in the June of 2005, I imagined that maybe one day Jesus will step on the Mount of Olives, splitting it in two. A river will run through it, maybe down the great fault that runs through the Red Sea and into Africa. There will be salt marshes and fresh water. There will be trees with leaves for the healing of the nations. The mountain splitting, the river splashing out, shows up across so many prophets, I believe it just might happen. I’ve stood in that river. I’ve sunk my roots in it. I’ve seen it stretch wide and fat to flat, loamy shores, mature trees lining the banks. I’ve felt the warm currents swirling around my ankles and I’ve drawn the muddy water up my trunk into my branches, out to my leaves. I imagined this river about the time when Marge’s body began failing, when she had to suck oxygen, when Bruce’s brother called, saying we should come see her, she might not have much time. We started coming around. I was afraid because it was getting to be time for her to accept help. But she did not want it. Who would? I was afraid she was too much for us to care for.
Whenever I came in contact with her, I kicked off my shoes and stepped into the river, feeling mud squish between my toes. I let the river well up me as if my toes were roots sucking in water. Remember? Jesus told the woman at the well that he would give her rivers of living water, flowing from her belly, if she’d only ask.
So I asked and felt the water racing into my spirit and then out. If I didn’t, I felt my spirit and soul drain from me, leaving me the kind of tired sleep doesn’t fix. I am sure Marge felt the same way about me. I am sure she wept bitter tears when Bruce and I did not come to visit her year after year after year.
My elderly friend Adele says, “And you worry you’ll be like this when you get old. What quirks in my personality would come out to make the people around me miserable?” I don’t have to wait till then. Those quirks already scare people off.
I imagined squishing my toes down in cool mud. Warm, muddy water swirling around my ankles. My toes gnarling and snaking down, sucking. My arms reached for the sun and looked at it reflecting on the water, smelling the mud, and rain coming. My fingers flattened and turned green. I imagined someone would pick them and crush them and make them into medicine for healing the nations, medicine to quit that old disease of being toxic to our world and each other.
I imagined that someday Marge and I will sit down at a picnic and the caked mud that has made us monsters to each other will be washed off, and we will sit and eat and finally, finally, after all these years talk like friends.
Marge didn’t crisply step out from this life to go home to be with the Lord. Here today. Strong, independent. Gone tomorrow. No, her heart and breath failed so badly she wound up in at Mercy Harvard Care Center. Once her strength returned, her will returned. She was going home no matter what. Ever since I’ve known her, she wanted to die at home. Fair enough, though I wondered how her need to die at home came before her relationship with her sons. She did not want a caregiver. She wanted to stay independent. But her body said no, you can’t. But she refused any suggestion for help. She was so stubborn, my brother-in-law threw the power of attorney, power of health care, all her papers back at her. She offered to let us be her powers that be. We said no. We’d choose for her to stay in the care center. She would die hating us. We did not want that responsibility. She was given a choice: stay in the Care Center or arrange for her own caregiver at home. I wondered how good can come of this. I wondered how deeply we’d be torn up by her death.
Not St. Anskars. Our local church.
A dear friend invited Bruce and I to St. Anskar’s Healing Service. I came forward, stood, while a devout woman laid hands on me and listened to my wishes. I felt like I’d rubbed a bottle and had three wishes the genie would grant. I asked for healing for a friend with liver cancer and for my book to be published and for healing for my very broken family. I dreaded Marge’s death. I dreaded the ugliness of her will. I’d lived through inheritance battles twice and did not want to suffer another one. I went to a Bible class, whining, crying complaining about the whole thing. They listened to my complaints, they loved me and they prayed.
Bruce’s brother brought Marge home to die without asking our opinion or even telling us that’s what he was doing. He called hospice. The nurses thought she wouldn’t live out the weekend, so he called us, saying we should say our goodbyes. But Bruce’s brother had hired a caretaker who was full of light, who is one of God’s great ones, doing the most humble service, who loved Marge so much she washed and set her hair, colored her nails, and made sure her children treated her right. I felt safe with Zoya who made me feel that everything would be all right. I never saw Marge happier than I saw her lying on that couch, her needs tended to so well, she was neither afraid nor angry.
Bruce and I began coming by every weekend to sit with Marge. We read Phyllis Tickle’s Prayers In Winter, Springtime and Autumn. We brought our dogs for her to pet. We listened to her final stories, some Bruce had heard before, some he hadn’t.
Again, we were the lousy children, letting Bruce’s brother do all the work. He offered to let us tend her every other weekend, when Zoya was not available. We said, “No, we are not caregivers.” Bruce’s brother wanted to make all the decisions, so we let him.
Slowly we built a friendship with Marge without her asking us to do chore after chore after chore, what had ultimately broken the relationship.
Her best friend Jane Johnson became my friend, listening to my frustrations about how things were being done. My Bible class listened to my fears. I sat under the hands of the healing service at St. Anskars and asked for prayers. Zoya, full of light Zoya, tended her.
Marge did not die that first weekend she was home. Instead she had a vision of a strong, tall man dressed in white that was brought on by morphine. I wondered if she met her Maker, and he terrified her because she knew she had not made things right. The will was an ugly document, leaving all control to my brother-in-law, leaving three quarters of the estate to him.
Bruce and I read scriptures that said, “Better is a crust of bread with the righteous than a feast in a house full of contention.” I blessed Marge and my brother-in-law and recited, “Better is a crust of bread. Better to live on a corner of a rooftop. Better to be righteous and calm than rich and all stirred up.”
Now here’s the miracle in all this. When Bruce’s brother burned out so badly that Zoya was frantic with worry, and I called Trish, the social worker at Hospice saying you’d better check things out, we told Marge that she did not need to put up with the drama. She could hire someone else to run her affairs. We thought maybe a banker or her lawyer could do it. She thought that might be a good idea.
She called her lawyer and asked that I be present. I wasn’t sure I should be there because I did not want to cause more problems. This was Marge’s business. She asked that Bruce and I both be her power of attorney, power of health care, executor—the powers that be. I asked that she change the will so that Bruce and his brother split everything down the middle. She agreed.
I wasn’t so sure. But Zoya said she’d help. We could do this together. Bruce and I agreed to find out more from her lawyer. She encouraged us to do this, that it wasn’t that much work, that it wouldn’t destroy our lives. We only had a few checks to pay each month. It was the right thing to do. The State didn’t like taking over in these situations when there was family. I said, “I’m game” despite the fact that two social workers had advised me to stay out of it. Bruce nodded, “All right. We’ll give it a try.”
This is the miracle, that Bruce’s mom asked us for help. And that we said yes. She was wise to put my name on the papers because I had the time to run to the bank, to make calls, to keep track of her medications. It made things easier on Bruce if I could write checks too. We could be partners in this. She saw me as family. After twenty years of being the awful daughter-in-law, I was finally family. I asked for help when we needed it from the doctor and the lawyer. Marge read off her grocery list. We filled our grocery cart with her groceries and ours. When Zoya needed time off she brought her sister, who Marge liked better, so they both got a much-needed break.
It was some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. And yes scary because I didn’t know how my brother-in-law would react. It was a big responsible thing to tend to someone so frail. Here I was, terrified my whole life of taking care of an elderly person, taking care of Marge, willingly, joyfully. Not once did we go in over our heads. We were not asked to physically tend her. We did what we could.
The holiest, most sacred hours came when we sat in vigil the night before Marge died. We sat with her and read a night office of confession on her behalf, Bruce asking God and others to forgive her the pain she’d cost them.
Bruce’s brother thanked us for taking over when he couldn’t handle it any longer. He did not make trouble as we settled the estate. He thought we should be paid for our work.
I learned fear is a liar. None of the things that I feared came to pass.
Bruce’s mother and I did not have to wait to have our picnic by the great river that will cut out of the Mount of Olives when Jesus steps on it. We had it months before she died, when Zoya cooked pork chops and salad and fruit and we sat by Marge’s couch and visited. The mud making us ugly to each other had been washed off.
Her death did not leave us panting with the bitterness of what could have been done, should have been said. Thank God we did not keep those hard boundaries that rise up when a person has hurt us and we don’t want to be hurt again. I opened her Bible and found her favorite verses were the ones about wanting to the do the right thing, the godly and loving thing, only to fail and fail until the verse rises at the beginnings of Romans 8, “There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Maybe she knew and regretted her quirks—the things that separated us. But nothing, not one thing, height nor depth nor trouble shall separate us from the Love of Christ. Marge had made peace with Bruce and I. She hugged us goodbye, saying she loved us. The morning of her death we walked out her road as the sun broke the horizon, striking broken corn stalks with gold light. We went home for some time off. Just as we broke the Poplar Grove Village limits on our return trip, Bruce’s brother called saying she died peacefully, not long after he and Jane Johnson said the Lord’s Prayer.
All of these things are miracles as profound as being healed from cancer or maybe even being raised from the dead. These miracles came on the wings of this healing service’s prayers, and the prayers of my Bible class. They came on the hope that one day the mud that makes us ugly to each other will be cleaned off, and that sometimes we have to wait until the other side for that to happen. They came on the power of choosing to bless rather than curse even though every emotion is bending us to curse. All of it depending on God’s grace that moves in our world that is the power of the new creation, that is God reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us.
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