Communication Problems

Ever since I visited my mother more than six weeks ago, I've had problems with my email. Outgoing email only. This means that my ability to communicate easily with my circle and with the "outside world" has been greatly impaired.

I've had several long phone calls with Apple Support--and I'm grateful for those smart, patient, and predominantly good-willed guys at Apple! And a couple of phone calls with my old email service provider.

Here's where things stand: even with a new email provider and account, things aren't exactly dependable. Some days it's working fine, other days not. Some days my emails go out to some people without a hitch but not to others. And there's no way to know which of my missives are reaching their intended recipients and which are not, unless or until someone gets suspicious about my non-responsiveness and wonders what has happened to me and asks.

Maybe it's just as well not to assume that email will always work smoothly. Maybe it's not a bad idea to remember to use the phone instead sometimes. And maybe it's appropriate to be wondering more broadly about my communication with others. Is it always what I imagine it to be? Is my message getting through? Am I being heard, understood, received? and am I offering my best hearing, understanding and receiving attention to others?

I have to say that right now I find it somewhat amusing to note that my communication issues began while visiting my mother. There's so much static within me when I'm with her, it's hard to know sometimes what clear, honest and compassionate communication would be in that context. Does it mean shutting up, because she's 93 years old and doing her best, and what's the use anyway? Does it mean being compassionate towards myself and simply honoring, if not always expressing, what I'm feeling in her presence? what I might wish to say that I've always wanted to say for more than fifty years but have never dared to say? and what  I've tried unsuccessfully to say?

I will say that I've come to think of my mother as one of the true Queens of Indirect Communication. Though she edits herself slightly less than she used to--and that in itself can really catch me off guard!--her inability to speak directly, to ask for help of some kind, to separate herself psychologically and emotionally from the person she is addressing still astound me. Sometimes I get caught in the web and remember only too late that I might have fared better had I taken her statements in some sort of inverse fashion. The audio equivalent of a mirror image.

Smoke and mirrors. She speaks through smoke and mirrors, and most of the time I don't imagine that she does so consciously. Though I could be wrong about that. Maybe she's smarter and more self-aware than I think. When she says, "I'm sorry I upset you," maybe she really knows she would like to say, "I'm sorry you upset me" or even, "You should be sorry you upset me!" But I doubt it. In any case, it sure makes it confusing and exhausting to carry on a conversation!

I had had my suspicions about my mother's quick and adept projection abilities (projecting her own feelings, especially the "nasty" and  "negative" or "forbidden" ones like anger, onto others) for quite a while, but in her presence I would often doubt my own perceptions. Especially since I have so often been with her by myself with no corroborating or more objective witness.

Until one day when I accompanied her to an appointment with a new doctor--a geriatrician who happened to be accompanied that day by a resident intern. The new doctor, despite his "Marcus Welby, M.D." appearance, poked and prodded my mother fairly persistently with questions, trying to get a feel for who she is as well as challenging some of her excuses for why she prefers to spend most of her time alone. He wasn't buying them.

I could sense my mother getting irritated with the doctor, but instead of stepping in to rescue her--which, believe me, it did occur to me to do!--I took more of an observer stance to see how she would respond. Plus, I have to admit, there was a part of me that enjoyed seeing someone push my mother beyond her pretty narrow comfort zone about things like getting exercise and being more social--two research-proven remedies for slowing and even reversing symptoms of dementia. Such p

Finally, though, the doctor caught on that my mother was irritated and really didn't want to be pushed any further, though she hadn't exactly said so directly. So he backed off. A little while later he asked my mother how she was feeling or if she had anything she'd like to say to him, and she said, "I imagine you are glad this appointment is over, because I've been such a bitch!"

The resident lost his doctorly poise. His hand flew to his mouth in shock, unable to stop the words that slipped out: "Oh my God!" His eyes were wide as proverbial saucers.

I started to suggest to my mother that perhaps what she wanted to say was that SHE was glad the appointment was over, because the doctor has been such a bastard. But I stopped myself.

Still, I have savored that moment for a couple of years, the resident's response as a corroborating witness to my eons of speculation. Here was someone else, not my husband, not a member of my family, who couldn't believe the mixed up, inverted communication of this master of projection.

Ahhh, I thought. I'm not crazy. Or, if I am, at least I know why.