Collateral Damage

My family has had several tough years recently.  My divorce from my first husband after almost 16 years, finding out my brother was about as dishonest a person as anyone could be, and my marrying a man with some grave health issues.  Now that Chris and I seem to be settled and safe, my mother and father have placed the house up for sale and are leaving my state.

I’ve never lived farther than a few minutes from my parents so this will be quite a transition for all of us especially since my father has grown quite close to Chris this past year.  They’ve found out they share many interests which has led my pops to give Chris more woodworking tools than I can count.

This afternoon I visited my parents after they showed the house.  We sat and talked about things, about how I’d rather they not leave but I understood.  That’s when Mom said something that broke my heart because I hadn’t understood at all.

She can’t take the stress.  This last year with Chris and dealing with his health and the VA and everything else had been heavy on me, but it had weighed on my parents as well - especially my mom because she understands something very deep about loving someone with declining health.

My father has had rheumatoid arthritis since he was thirty-four years old.  It started the summer we were painting the old two-story farmhouse in Kansas.  At first it settled in his feet and we assumed it was from standing on the ladder.  The following months I watched my father grow crippled.  He curled up as his body betrayed him.  Just as Mom started making plans to have a ramp installed for when Dad became wheelchair bound and looked into a job at the local grocery store, there was a miracle of sorts.  My dad got better.  He found a level of comfort, tenuous as it was, and life started back up again.  Pops is sixty-five and has won and lost when it comes to his disease.  He takes a medication now that controls it, barely, as it destroys his liver.

Mom looked at me today and said she couldn’t take watching Chris deteriorate.  She couldn’t bear to see the pain on my face while I took care of him.  It was a moment of such sorrow and joy I can’t describe it.  Like I said, it’s been a hard couple of years and Chris wasn’t exactly welcomed into my family with open arms.  I more or less tossed him in and said like it or not this is your son-in-law.  And they didn’t like it – at first.

I’d never considered my family when Chris’ health ebbed and flowed.  My son, who spends half his time at our house, my dad, my mom, his daughters.  I’ve tried hard to shield everyone in our lives from Chris’ PTSD, but it’s near to impossible to do.  His symptoms are obnoxious and rude.  They never call before they drop by.  If we have plans, they don’t get the hint when we grab our coat and keys.  No, they squeeze themselves in even when we don’t have the energy or the room.

Luckily, I’ve kept my parents from seeing the very worst, but I’ve confided in my mom on more than a few occasions.  I hadn’t realized what I was doing was inviting his symptoms to her house via my own need to speak to someone.  She’d become an unwilling counselor and because she loves me, her heart bleeds with my wounds.

When she said she couldn’t watch Chris deteriorate, I saw the damage I’d done and knew I needed to remember she doesn’t see the good days. I tend not to tell her when he’s slept beautifully and soundly for more than one day in a row, or about how we were able to go to the grocery store without incident, and how he managed to go to the gas station by himself and not come home in a panic. No, I don’t talk to her about the good things. Maybe I’m embarrassed those are victories to me. But more than likely I was taking for granted my mom understood there were good times as well as bad.

I’m taking her homemade soft pretzels tomorrow. We won’t talk about Chris’ health. We’ll talk about Christmas and all those years stretching behind us with no audible worries of the years ahead of us.