How to Share, or Thanks but no Thanks, but I'll Eat it Anyhow

We took my mother-in-law over to my parents' house this afternoon.  Now, my parents are seniors, too, but about 30 years younger than my mother-in-law or 5 years older than my husband or...well, you get the picture.  My mother is the kind of person to put on a spread: fruit, crackers, cheese, muffins and tea.  My mother offered the matriarch a muffin and a cup of tea; so far, no problem.  But, because my mother knows my mother-in-law is half blind and has no teeth, she cut the muffin up into bits and buttered each of them.  It really wasn't necessary but on the whole, helpful.  While this was arguably beneficial, the matriarch hates being reminded that she is incapable of certain methods of eating.  She may need to eat like a three year old but do not tell her she eats like a three year old.  I am not being disrespectful; it is her reality and she hates it.  To say, the matriarch resented the cut up muffin all the way home is an understatement; however, her anger did not prevent her from eating and enjoying the muffin.  This sort of situation illustrates the paradox with which my husband and I live.  And, to which I struggle to accommodate with the meals I cook.  It also illustrates the frustration my mother-in-law feels.

I keep thinking a person never really gets used to being old; in the mind, one is always that seventeen year old on the verge of doing great things.  My mother-in-law still makes plans, has hopes, and she dreams.  The matriarch dreams a lot; she has plans for Christmas, she still wishes she could go to Alaska, she would like to fall in love again.  I don't know what I figured my mother-in-law would be like when she came here; previously, she had only been ill when she had needed to be here.  It was a pain but we could handle it.  But the longer, she is here, the more I realize that whole 'life' she had on her own, that 'life' that went on when I didn't take her to the doctor's or shopping or out to lunch, was a very important part of her identity--even if it was a life restricted to her own house.  It was her house and her garden and her kitchen.  She sits, now, in her room because it is her private space, her place.  Maybe I am thinking about this too much but my mother-in-law is not just an old lady waiting to die and I have been looking at her that way.