I spent last week moving my mother into what passes for an assisted living facility. We encountered the deal breaker a week ago Monday. When I awoke that Monday morning, I did not know that it was the day. However, by the end of that day, my mother's apartment in a facility of about twenty little apartments was rented. There is a live-in “attendant,” a common area, and other . . . shall we call them “amenities?” I have moved my mother off the farm where she has lived for nearly 64 years and into that place. It reminded me a lot of work. I have moral and aesthetic objections to work that I successfully overcame in the circumstances. It has been a strangely exhausting ordeal.

During my time here in Open Salon, I have read with interest innumerable blog entries in which the writer addresses his or her own experiences dealing with an aged parent. It is a common subject nowadays. And will become more common. While the details of each situation are unique, there has appeared one overriding theme, one commonality in all of these writings. Every single writer on this subject at one point or another has attempted to describe, or address in some way, their own emotions in the midst of this. They have all failed—to a greater or lesser extent--in my opinion. I shall not attempt it in any serious way. It is an indescribable thing. One only comes to know it by experiencing it.

This incredibly complex amalgam of emotions arises out of that reversal of roles. We ourselves were utterly dependent on this person at the outset of our lives. Now he or she is utterly dependent upon us in the most childlike way. I know that I state the obvious in saying that, but sometimes the obvious requires restating. Because in a situation such as this, we are not always proud of our reactions. There have been times, for example, when I have wanted to shake my mother. “Goddamnit, you are my mother, one of the brightest, strongest women whom I have had the pleasure to know! Get a grip for chrissakes!” I assure you that I did not. But the urge was there. And quickly passed.

I have been the holdout on this. The rest of the family, immediate and more remote, have been uniform in their opinion for some time that this should have been done long ago. I well know that her acquaintances in the community were of a similar mind. However, I am her only child. As long as I was in her camp, she was not moving. A week ago Monday I myself had to concede that it was time.

More than anyone else, I understand my mother's connection to this place, this farm. I grew up here after all. The farm is part of her; she is part of it. I employed every stratagem I could think of in order to allow her to continue to live here. Talking to her nearly daily on Skype. Paying all her bills on line from Mexico when she began writing checks for one thousand dollars that should have been made out for a hundred. And the like. Every stratagem, that is, except taking up residence here. That is what she would like of course. For me to sit with her through the entire day every day at the kitchen table here in the farmhouse, looking out the window, watching the birds at the feeder. If I did that, I would end up killing her to be blunt about it. That stratagem is therefore not a viable one.

She is not happy, but she is resigned. She knew she could not stay at the farm if I said no more. And I have now said it. No more. I have been grim and "purpose driven," as suits are wont to call it. The whole festering situation has been lanced, in a manner of speaking. I love that old woman. She was a mother tiger in her day. My mother tiger. Were it not for that, this all would have been easy.

While the cleanup operation continues, I felt that I had accomplished enough by this past weekend to justify the purchase of a bouquet of flowers for myself. I put it on the dining room table along with a card that I wrote to myself commending myself for a job well done and thanking myself for my effort. I cleaned up the component stereo system complete with turntable and set it up in the living room. After some coaxing, the turntable worked. I checked the chimney of the fireplace and built a fire. To round out the weekend I managed to coordinate some female companionship in front of that fire Saturday evening with surprisingly little effort—a younger female companion relatively speaking, a female companion firmly oriented in time and space just for a little change of pace.