The compassionate devil

My mother had a very serious stroke on May 15 that paralyzed the right side of her body. Ever since then, I’ve been in the midst of rearranging her life affairs. It’s become increasingly evident that she is not going to walk again or regain the use of her right arm; furthermore, that she is deteriorating mentally and, almost certainly, dying.

Aside from my two children, I am the last adult left standing from my nuclear family. My sister died in 2011; my father died in 2014.  A family history of alcohol and drug abuse left an extraordinary amount of wreckage in its wake; the people are dead, the money is gone, and I am the gatekeeper charged with cleaning everything up now that the game is nearly over.

There was a moment last Monday when I became quite angry about the whole thing. From an external point of view, it seems grotesquely unfair that I was the one who got sober, and have thus been put in the position of the garbageman cleaning up the mess that everyone else left behind them. Yet I was only angry from an outer point of view. Inwardly, I noted to myself as I got into my car one morning at 7:20 AM after visiting my mother in the rehabilitation home, my role has always been to pick up other people’s garbage. I took that role on literally as well as philosophically when I took it upon myself, for many years (as I still do) picking everyone else’s garbage up off the road and in Tallman State Park. A part of me understands that it is honorable to be the garbageman, honorable to do work in order to clean up after those who don’t know how to be responsible. From that point of view, I’m glad that I’m capable; yet the selfish parts of me still rebel, even as the more intelligent ones see that my role as a garbageman is a rightful one, and that I need — desperately need — the humility that is by default bestowed on me when I pick up someone else’s garbage.

Perhaps the signature thing about getting pissed off last Monday and cursing to my wife and son about how I keep having to clean up after everyone else who acts irresponsibly was that, in this case, I feel no anger or resentment at all towards my mother. When I see her, I only feel tenderness and love. Understanding these contradictory impulses — my anger at being the guy who has to turn off the family lights after everyone else has  spent a lifetime trashing the place, and my realization that I have been put in the position of responsibility to do this because I am able — has helped a great deal of reminding me about the separation between our two parts. It’s the angel in me that is judging: judging my father for his drinking, judging my sister for her bipolar disorder and her drug abuse, judging my mother for her own alcoholic dysfunctions. That angel is not a compassionate one, even though it wears the white robes of righteousness and claims to have a right understanding of everything. Maybe, as Mr. Gurdjieff said, I can trust the devil in me better in this case. It is, oddly, the devil who is compassionate, caring, and loving towards my mother: he is not judgmental. How to explain this? I don’t really know. I just see it this way. 

The contrast between my outer anger towards the world in general and all the burdens I’ve had to shoulder here (burdens I am well able to shoulder, so already I have no right to complain) and my inner attitude of compassion towards my mother is striking. It helps to highlight a quality emerging in her that she never used to have: a capacity for ordinary simplicity.

 As she weakens, and her mind is increasingly focused only on what takes place now, my mother has become extraordinarily simple, compared to how she used to be. She is gentle, generally goodhearted, and rarely, if ever, argumentative. None of these are qualities one would by default assign her before she had the stroke. Many of the inner parts that were destructive and selfish have been pared off with a knife, leaving only a simple person with relatively simple ideas.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.