LEGACIES
by Frances Lief Neer
[an extract from Breaking Barriers]
THE DAY my son died I began a new life. This is not to say, mind you, that I sat in the wings waiting for Bill to pass on so that I could just be done with him; rather, life took on a richness after his death that he would have loved to be part of. Who would think that so much tragedy could lead to so much growth?
I mourned Bill's death before he died. We mourned together. Every day for six months we talked about who would take care of the family matters, the legalities - and most of all bring up a young person? It was an important decision we had to make, who would care for Christine? Her mother was incapacitated, and none of his friends could take her in. Finally, one day he put it to me: "You as an old person will have to bring up a young person."
Being "old" wasn't the problem per se. The problem (I saw it as a problem then) was the blindness that was coming over me like a slow, dark tidal wave. I could still do some cooking, and I could still use the telephone, but traveling, going to the market, and reading were all falling away along with my sight.
So here I was: seventy years old, losing both my son and my eyesight, and faced with the care of my thirteen-year-old granddaughter. I was devastated; yet I saw clearly that I could not spare the luxury of depression. I had to rouse my strength and get into action.
In truth, I felt I had not been a good mother - to Bill or to Amy, my daughter. I spent my time pursuing career passions, which was unusual for women at the time. I was teaching, working after school, and running a household - I had none of what they now call "quality time" with my own kids. Even when Bill died, I was in the middle of a master's degree in Visual Handicapped Studies. In my thirst for knowledge, there has never been such a thing as disability.
In the midst of our deep mourning, Amy once said to me, "How lucky you are, Mom. You have a second chance to raise a thirteen-year-old girl, which is no small task." And it was true, with Christine, I had a second chance at motherhood. After Bill died I moved into his house so as to disrupt Christine's life as little as possible. The first year was a multi-layered experience of coping: coping with Bill's death - by far the greatest loss of my life; coping with putting away the pots and pans so I could find them easily; coping with grief; coping with reading Braille; coping with the labyrinth of social services I had to procure for Christine and myself; coping with teenage music and with nurturing my granddaughter while trying to realize my own aspirations; and coping with the homework, both mine and hers. How could I help her with homework?
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