How you spend your last chance...

[rivka]

Elizabeth Edwards, as many of you probably know, is dying of metastatic breast cancer. Her husband, as most of you probably know, is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. You might not know - I didn't - that they've taken their two young children out of school and are all traveling together on the campaign trail.

I've seen enough of the Mommy Wars that it didn't surprise me when a blogger at "Silicon Valley Moms" felt entitled to say this:

Worst of all, you are being a terrible mother, forcing your young children, who should be in SCHOOL, to ride in buses and talk to the press when they obviously don’t want to. This election is NOT ABOUT THEM. They deserve some peace, not time with nannies and campaign-trail daycare providers, since, as the Times article describes, you don’t have time to see them when you are busy campaigning too.

Do I sound callous? Perhaps. I am truly, seriously, sorry that you are sick and that you are dying. But let this be your parting gift to the world: give your children some actual QUALITY time with you, which they are not having on the bus or in senatorial-aide-nannycare. Help give your children a next new Democratic president, who is NOT going to be your husband.[1]

What did surprise me: Elizabeth Edwards herself showed up in the woman's comments section. And she kicked ass:

With all due respect, what you would choose to do is relevant only once: when you choose how to spend your remaining days. I made my choice; because of our lives it was a public choice, but the choice doesn't belong to the public, it belongs to me. And with all due respect, you have no idea what the quality or amount of the time I spend with my children is. [...]

I want to be entirely clear. You don't get to say I am a terrible mother because you think you wouldn't make my choices in my situation. You don't get to say that my children don't want to be with us when you don't know them and when, parenthetically, you know that happy children can be periodically disagreeable. You don't get to judge me because you think you know exactly what you would do if you had my disease. I want to be really clear: you don't know.

You don't often see public figures get that real. And you definitely don't often see women who have been subjected to that kind of public Mommy Drive-By stand up for themselves and their choices so unapologetically. I am impressed with Elizabeth Edwards.

I found this story via Notes from the Trenches, which says everything I would want to say about the matter:

And that is what really bothers me the most. The implication that she would be a better mother somehow by waiting patiently at home, baking cookies, wearing her apron and waiting to die. And she should do this for YEARS. Push down her own will and desires so her children could have proper memories of her. As if there is some good parent manual of how to die and leave your children behind.

We all say, or think, if I were dying I would do this, whatever this might be, in a heartbeat. I’d quit my job, stay home with my kids, travel the world, bake cookies, never yell, always smile, sing songs all day. I’d be perfect. So that my kids could have a perfect memory of the perfect me. I would live my last years out to the fullest. Like that insipid country western song that was popular a few years ago.

Which always causes me to wonder, well why aren’t you doing those things now? And the most simplistic answer is because it isn’t you.

Elizabeth and John Edwards have built their lives in the public eye. Have built a life around public service. Why wouldn’t they want to share this with their children? Why wouldn’t she want her children to see that even when she was terminal, that this was what was important to her? Why wouldn’t she want to impart this legacy onto her children? To not share this with her children would be to deny who she is.

Sure if I were dying I have a vision of how I would my children to remember me. Perfectly patient. Perfectly happy. The singer of songs, player of games, skipper of ropes. The mother who served up perfect meals, that were always enjoyed, and did so with a smile on her face. The mother who always had a dessert to put on the table. A home made one, not tossing a box of Little Debbie snack cakes in the center and yelling, “Every man for himself.”

Apparently I want them to remember someone else. Because I have no plans to actually become that new person.

Instead if I were to suddenly drop dead they will be stuck with the memory of the authentic me.

I've been wrestling lately with some questions about the authentic me versus the should-be me. No one will write about my choices in the New York Times, but I still feel weighed down by my vivid mental image of how people might judge me. It would be good to learn a thing or two from Elizabeth Edwards, huh.


[1] Link not provided, because "Silicon Valley Mom" took the post down and put up something temperate in its place.

Comments

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

That is so cool. Usually public figures don't say what they really think. No one ever puts jerks in their place like that, no matter how much it's deserved--certainly not people who are afraid of political fallout. Maybe that's another effect of terminal diseases--your capacity for tolerating BS plummets to nothing.