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

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Edwards is one of my heroes.

[melebeth]

I really love her. She is bold, outspoken, and brilliant, and the world will be a far worse place once she is no longer in it. She is the only candidate, so far, who I consistently want to vote for, and of course she isn't one. I do like her husband better for having married her and for not even trying to contain her voice, but if I could choose anyone to vote for right now it would be her - and I've been saying that for months.

[larcb.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Because, frankly, mommy wars are stupid. Kick Butt, Elizabeth!

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

WOW. That's beautiful.

[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.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Wow. Can I link to this?

This is pretty incredible clarity on the whole "what makes a good mommy" argument. What makes a good mommy is being true to who you are as a woman, as a person. That if you value making change in the world, sharing it with your kids is the most valuable lesson about yourself you can provide them. That *gasp* it varies from woman to woman, and June Cleaver isn't what it's about for everyone.

And that dying forces one to cut to the heart and soul of what that means, and nobody can make that choice for anybody else.

But most of all: that being a public figure DOES NOT MEAN the public gets to choose your life for you, and the public can sit down and shut up now. BOUNDARIES, writ large and crystalline and far more tactfully than I could have writ.

I, too, admire her.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

(Earlier comment deleted because I'm not paying attention, and repeated half of what you had up there already. Sheesh.)

I wrestle with the shoulds too, far more than I'd like. I wish I could just leave those shoulds behind completely, but that's incredibly difficult. Fortunately, a good part of the time I have a screw-the-world, who-cares-how-They-see-me attitude, at least for the small stuff, and my goal is to apply that to bigger and bigger stuff.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Edwards rocks my whole entire planet. Her clarity about her boundaries is so wonderful I want to put it in a frame and hang it at eye level somewhere in my house.

People aren't just trying to tell her how she should live with this kind of faux concern, they are trying to tell her how she should die. That's taking drive-by mommying to a level I find hard to even look at without wanting to hit something.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly how I feel. I like (Mr.) Edwards well enough, but you can't help but recognize that she's the real powerhouse in the family.

-J

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for her in a heartbeat.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

That's so fucking awesome. Thanks for sharing.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Plus, own your words. If you posted something stupid when you thought your victim wasn't reading, at least have enough guts to stand by what you said.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Agreed. If you're ashamed of what you said - and she should be - put an addendum at the end of the post and make whatever apologies you need to make. Don't try to cover up what you actually said.

[dafna]

She is awesome. Talk about really living "when the fall is all that's left."

As you know, my sister had cancer last year. She's doing much better now, but at the worst of it she was very very sick. She went to every single chemo appointment in a suit and 3-inch heels.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

That was a truly righteous smackdown.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Why wouldn’t she want her children to see that even when she was terminal, that this was what was important to her?

Exactly that. I believe that if a terminal diagnosis prompts me to make radical changes in what I do - beyond what is required by the disease itself - it will mean that I have not been prioritising correctly now. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, for one reason and another.

Er, those tenses look mixed up. Stupid English.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Gods, there are so many things a parent can do to give their children good memories - be honest, be loving, spend time to them, respect their opinion, be a role model, be human.

Baking cookies and singing songs? Probably part of the packet, but buying cookings and giggling because you've forgotten the words to the song will do just as well as long as you're *you*.

Elizabeth Edwards rocks. Her children won't remember a textbook mum, they'll remember a personality. And I wish her all the best.

[ailbhe]

I have no idea who this woman is but I love her.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

What a magnificent woman.

[jennifer0246.livejournal.com]

linked in from the lovely eggrumet ...

and WOW. rock the eff on. good for her.

[ckd]

She'd already impressed me; this just reinforces it by an order of magnitude or so. Wow.

[prophetkristy.livejournal.com]

(here via silmaril)

She is incredibly awesome. And classy! Did you hear about her smackdown of Ann Coulter (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/06/26/236484.aspx)?