WHAT’S LIGHTING US UP: ANNE-MARIE OOMEN’S LUMINOUS CONTRADICTIONS

With “What’s Lighting Us Up” I’ve been inviting some of my writer friends to report on any books, music, movies, moments in nature, or life events that have been making them come more alive than usual. Here poet, essayist, and playwright Anne-Marie reflects on a difficult challenge in her life and discovers that there can be joy in even the toughest moments:

What lights me up these days? Contradictions. Being in paradox, touching enigmatic moments as though they were Braille, as though to decipher a mystery from the rough dots of hard experience. I hate it and I thrive on it.

In April my third memoir of a trilogy on rural life, Love, Sex and 4-H, was published. Since then, I haven’t been able to write much because my time has been divided between teaching, book promotion, and big concerns about my elderly mother. She’s 94, and last January, after four years in a home for the elderly, she fell and broke her leg. It did not heal well. She has not stood on her own, nor walked, since then. After a long and difficult decision-making process, our family moved her to a medical care facility—full scale nursing home. This is very hard; this lights me up.

What I am learning from her is not just what will happen to most of us in this new/old age, but the tender pain of how it happens. I watch her among her peers in the nursing home, and I ache for her, and I learn. In those efficient halls, with nurses bustling and busy aides in and out of an unquiet room, she is actually getting excellent care. She is getting stronger, little by little, though PT is her most dreaded part of the day. She won’t look at the therapist. She wants to go home. Home is the farm. I feel her longing like a knife; the blade bright with hope that I try not to dull without telling her outright lies. As I wheel her to get her hair done or watch her push-pull with her therapist, I feel her loss, but I see that she has gained muscle. She is interacting. She is eating. Her loss has some light around it. I can sometimes see to write by that light.

When I come home from being with her—usually two days a week—I try to honor our time together by writing down what she has said, what I saw her doing, how I came into her room to find her holding the corner of the bed quilt her mother (my grandmother) made for me, looking at the stitched name of her own mother and the date, 1973. I watch her fingers feeling the stitches; she is tracing her own mother’s name. She cannot always remember her grandkids, but she remembers her mother. She looks up and smiles, says, “Mama was here.” Then pauses, corrects, “Oh, I guess I dreamed about Mama.” I see her there, evening light falling on her shoulders, living in the past but not in the past. Because, of her, I am inside a moment and outside of time. I tell her I love her. I would not have this moment without her. I try to write those moments, to get one iota closer to meaning in a time that on the surface appears meaningless, unless we make it mean.

Mom 2This week, after two months in the facility’s therapy room, the physical therapists helped her into a standing position. I’ve attached pictures of the sequence. Here is light. Their goal is to get her to stand just enough to, with assistance, help with her toileting. It’s a hard thing: no one wants to think about that, certainly not in a blog about light, but here it is. Toileting is a matrix—who knew? It’s not just about safety and hygiene. It’s integrity, mind-body connection, physical and psychological strength, interaction, and if she can help with it, it’s so much easier on the nurses. That singular and simple goal has light around it.

So I stay present but on high alert. And I file away. This is also contradiction. My mother seems to know. She’ll look up from her favorite snack, Lay’s potato chips, and as she scatters chipflecks on her shirt, she’ll tease, “You’re the one who says, remember this and remember that.” Crunch crunch. She loves salt. She tells me stories she has told no one else—though she has told others different things. How does she choose? She lets me see her cry sometimes; tells me how much she misses my dad. She has let go of her anger toward me for many (not all) the stupid things I have done. We have finally become friends. This is light.

Many friends, and not only those in my generation, are going through similar experiences—I haven’t found a family that isn’t touched by this elder care issue and its growing complications in this medically politicized world.  I’ve come to recognize in my peers a certain charged worry when parents come up, and after living with the complexities of care-taking, an acquiescent shrug, so this is how it is. I used to hate that, to think there must be some call to action. I understand better by having observed my mother’s slow acceptance of powerlessness, even as her children take unwilling power over her life. More contradiction.

We don’t have a lot of models for how this part of life is done because every single elder’s story is unique and relates differently to family. Contradictions though—like learning to be friends with your mother only as her calendar and clock disintegrate—that’s not unusual. In the end, we do what we can as best we can with what we have and hope we’ve done so out of the right motives. We walk in some kind of shadow. But as her needs become greater, she has offered me opportunity and slow as I am, I am seeing the light. There’s a process here about our love maturing, something I somehow missed before. I don’t understand this; I know it’s true. Most of us are learning to love our way through this. Contradiction becomes mystery. Wonder. Light.

(Anne-Marie Oomen is the author of three memoirs, Love, Sex, and 4H, Pulling Down the Barn, and House of Fields (all from Wayne State University Press); An American Map: Essays (Wayne State University Press); a full-length collection of poetry, Uncoded Woman (Milkweed Editions); and seven plays. She and her husband, David Early, have built their own home near Empire, Michigan. Visit her website here.)

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10 thoughts on “WHAT’S LIGHTING US UP: ANNE-MARIE OOMEN’S LUMINOUS CONTRADICTIONS

  1. Loraine Anderson

    Anne-Marie,
    This is beautiful. I love how you see the the world and have the words to describe it at heart level. It reminds me of my mother and what I learned from her – mystery, wonder, light.
    Thank you.
    Loraine

    Reply
  2. Joy Gaines-Friedler

    Thank you for sharing this essay. We read, I think, in order to be reminded that we are a community – that we share what it means to be human and are therefore not so alone. And, as writers we must write what possesses us. My journey through my mother’s dementia became a book of poetry – but it isn’t just my journey. And that is the point. Thank you Anne-Marie. And thank you Jerry.
    Joy

    Reply
    1. Jerry Dennis Post author

      My pleasure, Joy. What fun to see all the heartfelt comments here and on Facebook. Anne-Marie is a treasure.
      – Jerry

      Reply
  3. Judy Childs

    This brings back vivid memories of the light in my mom’s eyes. The short walks (wheeling) to the frog pond, and how the full, dense frog song held us. Painting landscapes with water colors in the sun room. Car trips were eliminated with her decline. We just were. Her brave smile and cheerful wave at the end of each visit. The way her room held the light just before she passed on. It was eerily beautiful.
    You go, Anne Marie. Thank you. And don’t put yourself down with “as slow as I am”. That’s a clunker.

    Reply
  4. Anne-Marie Oomen

    Thanks Lorraine. For the longest time I did not see richer those things that I learned from her. Such a process! And warm good wishes for your book.

    Anne-Marie

    Reply
  5. Anne-Marie Oomen

    Oh Joy, thank you, and know that book of poems is such an inspiration to me as I try to comprehend the journey my mother and I and so many of us are on. Your words mean the world.

    AMO

    Reply
  6. Anne-Marie Oomen

    Thank you Judy. Your spirit and your relationship with your mom sound so special. And the light in her eyes? Is that where your’s comes from? Keep writing, dear friend.

    AMO

    Reply
  7. Ann Bardens-McClellan

    Dear Anne-Marie,

    I was so taken with LOVE SEX AND 4H because of the relationship you have with your mother, the depth of that and how beautifully you wrote about it. My mother has been dead for 50 years, and even when she was alive, she wasn’t there. I write constantly about absence, and you write about presence. Fortunately, I have good relationships with my children and husband, but there will always be a hole in my psyche. Your essay here reminds me again how special the mother/daughter relationship is. I learn that from you and others who write movingly about their mothers. I’m grateful. Annie

    Thanks for sharing, Jerry.

    Reply
  8. best essay

    Your words are really inspiring. I just remember my mom, we actually had a misunderstanding that we did not resolve until today. I think it’s time to reunite and spend time with her. I am glad that I read your post and learned about contradictions. I hope your mother will be fine. Good luck on your future works and more power.

    Reply
  9. bestessays.com team

    I agree. This is a nice essay about the connections and contradictions of what truly is meaningful or what lights her up. I feel bad for her elderly mother. She has lived a long and full life.

    Reply



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