"Can't"

I thought of something the other day.

Wife spends a lot of time talking about how helpless she is.  Recently I was talking to her about taking Son 1 to college in a couple of weeks and she said she wanted to come too.  I looked for the nicest possible way to say that I really didn't look forward to the four of us being cooped up in the same car for four days, and suggested that she make arrangements to see him at college some other time.  She was very quick to remind me that "of course" she "can't" drive that far.  But she has said this about lots of other things too.  You've heard me complain about it.

What struck me the other day is a possible explanation for Why?  All along I've wondered, "What does she get out of being helpless? This is a woman who used to pride herself on her strength, on being able to take on any challenge and meet it. Why does she now refuse challenges with the words 'I can't' even when it's something she could probably work up to?"

But then the boys and I were sitting around the dinner table one evening, and ...

Son 1:  You know, it only recently occurred to me just how much time the two of us spend -- when we are with Mom -- managing her moods: saying the right things to make sure she stays stable, steering the conversation away from topics that are going to upset her, ...

Son 2:  Yeah, like her parents, or you, or our grade school.

Son 1:  Anyway, I just thought it was kind of amazing.

Hosea:  [slowly and quietly]  I know exactly what you mean.

Son 1:  I'm sure you do.

Son 2:  At least we've gotten her to stop drinking. Now she uses pot to cope with the pain, but that's OK. Pot just makes her a little goofy. But when she drinks ...

Son 1:  Oh yeah, when she drinks it's really bad.  Then she gets morose and weepy, and there's always a risk she'll turn violent.

Hosea:  Against you guys?

Son 1:  Or against herself.  There's no telling.  When she drinks, she's totally unpredictable.

Son 2:  And she's always really weepy.  "Oh, I never lived up to the ideals my parents had for me!"  I want to tell her, "That's OK Mom, because in the first place you hated them, so why should you even care? And in the second place, they're both dead -- so they sure don't care any more."  But there's no calming her ... it's like she wants to be morose.

The conversation went on from there, talking about Wife and how the boys handle living with her.  But a couple days later that sentence came back to me: "I never lived up to the ideals my parents had for me!"  And I thought for a couple of minutes ....

Wife feels a lot of guilt about all the things she wanted to accomplish in her life that she hasn't accomplished ... because life didn't turn out that way, because she made decisions that pulled her in different directions, because she got sick, because she re-acts instead of acting, ... and probably for lots of other reasons.  Guilt is a miserable thing to carry around, but Wife doesn't seem to be able to shrug it off using the kind of reasoning that Son 2 offers.  On the other hand ... supposing none of it were her fault?  Supposing the reason she hasn't done all these things is that she can't?  Supposing that she were just too goddamned sick to be able to lift a hand towards finishing any of these projects?  Wouldn't that absolve her of a lot of guilt?  Wouldn't that be a sweet outcome for her?  Wouldn't that, in fact, be the perfect solution for her, because it would get her out of this net of obligations she feels herself in, without requiring her to stand up and face down her parents' ghosts?

It's perfect.  Simple and easy.  The only thing is ... it relies on the factual claim that she is really helpless: that she can't drive even as far as her doctors in the Big City (let alone to another state); that she can't sleep without Ambien (and conversely that she can't stay awake without Provigil ... wait, how can it be both?); that she can't ... she can't ... she can't.  That she simply can't.

As long as she's helpless, she can be guilt-free.  If she ever reclaims any sense of power for herself, the guilt comes with it.

I may be all off base with this analysis, but it sounds kinda plausible ....