Air of Invisibility

I’m just back from three days with my 95yo mother in Hendersonville, NC. As you can imagine, a trip such as this had my mind running a hundred miles an hour. The next few posts will be fueled by that activity.

I went to church with Mother on Sabbath morning. When I was growing up, we went to Kress Memorial Seventh-day Adventist Church in Winter Park, FL. Mother was a pillar in the life of that church. She was a deaconess for many years, and head deaconess for another many years. When there was work to be done, she was there. She made the communion bread each quarter; she washed and ironed the linen tablecloth for the communion table. When someone died, she organized all the food to be taken to sustain the deceased’s family. When the church was redecorated, she sat on the committee that made the decisions. She was known and loved by all.

We walked into the Fletcher church on Saturday, and not one person greeted her by name. She has lived in Hendersonville since 1996 or ’97, but she is, really, as alone after ten years in Fletcher as I am after only ayear in Youngstown. She eats dinner each noon with the same group of women, but they hardly speak. She can’t hear much at all anymore, so socializing really does nothing for her. She sits in a room of people, alone with her thoughts. Sometimes she’ll think of something to contribute, but because of her hearing loss, she unknowingly interrupts conversation after conversation in her effort to be part of the group.

I salute her for continuing to go out and get out. I think, if I had hearing loss that severe, I’d become a hermit. Already, at 58, I hate going to noisy restaurants, as I cannot hear the conversations around me. I’ve been known to retreat inside my own head in a crowded, noisy restaurant. What must it be like to have severe hearing loss and feel so excluded from the world around you?

And what must it be like, after a lifetime of mattering to people, to feel like you don’t matter much of all any more? This is why I call her every morning. Just to check in. Just to let her feel she matters.