Mom was here in California with us in February 2008. I remembered when I picked her up from SFO, I was shocked to see her being wheel-chaired out to the luggage area. I didn't recall Rick mention her condition and somehow I thought she was putting on a show, maybe she wanted to come visit us more often, or she was protesting the obvious lack of affections I had shown toward her throughout the years. In any case, when we got home she was able to walk up three flight of stairs by herself. After confirming with Rick that there was nothing wrong with her prior to visiting us, I told her to exercise more, and that the number one factor for longevity is mobility. She insisted she wasn't faking and sometimes she 'just couldn't move'.
I gave her the book by Dr. Oz "Staying Young" and begged her to read it and exercise more, but she would stop after flipping a few pages. Adrianne took her to her school and had her teachers look at her, after they prescribed Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture treatments, she would feel much better and that was very encouraging, but she only stayed with us for a few weeks and we didn't see through the entire process. Her overall mobility was still terrible and I told her, sometimes in very harsh words(because I was stressed out from work), that even her mother had more mobility in her 90s. 2/3 of the time during her visit she was fine, the other 1/3 she would feel bad or became immobile.
Before she went back to Toronto, she also asked me about the idea that each of us (me/Rick/Eddy) give her $20K so she can pay off her $60K mortgage. She also had $100K invested with a friend with 6% interest, so I told her she should pay off the mortgage with the $100K, kept $40K, and each one of us would give her $1200/year, the equivalent of 6% on $20K. She wasn't happy but she obliged. I mention this part because I believe the issue is related to her deteriorating condition later and I will explain.
Starting May 2008, I began to get emails from my brother Rick about Mom's mysterious problems. Sometimes she couldn't move and would wet her bed. Sometimes she could move and function like a normal person, some weekends she could cook big meals for Rick/Tatiana/Eddy/Armin when they gather at her apartment and the family had a great time, but then some weekdays Rick would get calls from her begging him to help her get out of bed. It got to a point where Rick could no longer work without interruptions and was stressed out by having to deal with her and a new job (which he subsequently lost). We considered bringing her to California but she didn't have U.S. health insurance. They tried different hospitals in Toronto and none of the doctors could tell what happened, them tried to cover their ass by prescribing more pills anyway. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis, even though RA symptoms do not come and go away like that, they prescribe her steroids anyway. The steroid had side-effects too, so more prescriptions would follow. Some even caused her to hallucinate. The downward spiral got worse after each hospital visit and more prescriptions. In October she was no longer able to take care of her self so we decided to move her to nursing home so someone can take care of her 24/7. That was not able to halt her decline. During one of the hospital stay she got lung infections and passed away. It's a well-known fact that winter hospital stay are dangerous for seniors whose weaken immune systems are vulnerable to those deadly bacterias strands in hospitals. Sadly she became one of the victims.
During 2008 I also developed great pains in my back and neck. I went through all kinds of treatments: orthopedics, physical therapy, acupuncture, massage therapy, inversion table, stand-up workstation, and nothing could lessen the pain. At one point I gave up and thinking I may not live long enough to see my son grow up. The problem lasted until June 2009, when I stumbled upon John Sarnos book: The Divided Mind. According to John Sarnos, my back pains was not caused by any physical anomaly, but by the 'unexpressed rage'. The pain was just the way my unconscious mind trying to distract me. I was very skeptical at first so I began to read more about it. Almost immediately my back began to improve and by the time I finished all his books in a few weeks and became a convert, the pain is almost gone. John Sarnos' s theory is built on Freud's theory that our mind is divided by the conscious(ego) and unconscious(id). The id registers its 'unexpressed rage' to ego by mis-interpreting signals and causing pain. As soon as we (the ego) understand the source of rage, even the simple act of acknowledgment could cause the pain to go away because the id had already accomplish its goal - letting the ego know that we cannot continue like this. His claims was also backed by recent findings that when orthopedic doctors were presented with X-rays from people with and without back pains, they could not tell one from the other. The fact is everyone is born with some physical defects and yet many could live pain free. One other John Sarnos finding was 'symptom imperative', in that if you fix the pathology for the pain without fixing the underlying rage, the pain will show up somewhere else. Someone went through surgery to 'fix' the back pain will simply transfer the problem to some other places, like insomnia or anorexia.
In my case, I believe my un-expressed rage was caused by the work politics and the lack of support from my teammates and managers, and my (unconscious) anger of having to support the family all by myself. I believe Mom's physical problem was also caused by the unexpressed rage. There was no real pathology and that was why it was so elusive - it could be knee pains, yet as soon as she started taking steroid, the muscle began to fail, then it's some other things else. I tried to empathize her situation and I could not help but feeling the sheer rage, horror and isolation she felt - her failure of marriage at such old age and lack of stable companionships. Her failure to be financially independent (I could never stopped wondering that had all of us send her $100/month through automatic transfer instead of sending her $1200 check upon her request, what that would do to her health). She always fear that she will not be able to be close to her children and grand children, and that she would end up alone in senior homes, which she kept mentioning over the years and was ultimately realized.
Mom often said to us when we were young and did bad things: "One day you will understand". I did not understand back then, but now I begin to understand after we have Tenzin. A month ago he started kindergarten, and Adrianne and I took him to the school on the first day and he wouldn't let us go. As we were standing there hugging each other, I couldn't help but feeling the deepest sadness, that the wheel of motion has been set in place and he is now on the path to leave us in 13 years. He is such an important part of our life now, I wonder how Adrianne and I could ever let him go.
Did mom ever let us go? I looked back when Mom took me to kindergarten, that seemed so long ago and she seemed so young. Did she plan for her old age? Did she plan for her retirement, her mortgage, her health, her being able to live independently and yet close to her children? Maybe she did plan for those, but nothing worked out the way she expected. Had I been able to see through her rage, I would have done something totally different, but it is too late now.
