Legacies

I've been thinking about how reactions to illness are shaped by how our parents reacted to our -- and their own -- illnesses. My father's family downplayed and denied sickness, something carried to an extreme by my uncle, who, in the hospital dying of heart disease, told me that he was all right except for this cold he couldn't shake. My father was a bit more realistic, but when I'd ask him how he was doing, he'd always say, "Can't complain," and he wouldn't, even when I told him to go ahead.

My mother's side of the family was more complicated. Grandma did her share of denial, if that's what it was. There she'd be, apparently at death's door, and when we took her in to the doctor and he asked how she was, she immediately brightened up and chirped, "Fine, fine!"
Maybe it was like taking the car in because of that funny sound in the engine which disappears the minute you get to the garage. Or maybe she just liked seeing doctors; we never figured it out.

I think she must have spent a lot of time denying my mother's feelings when my mother was a child, because she always worried that we would think she was malingering. "I really am feeling bad," she'd say, "Even though it may not look like it." She managed to combine that with her own style of denial ("No, of course I don't have a headache. I never get headaches,") which sometimes led to strange self-contradictions.

Because of her own background, she was sensitive to my brother's and my illnesses, perhaps even over-sensitive. I know that there was one year in which I stayed home from school whenever I said that I felt bad or when she decided the glands under my jaw were swollen. I had fun those days at home until boredom sent me back to school again. (Yes, Max and Cinda, that probably explains why you were never allowed to watch TV when you were home sick. I didn't want you to enjoy it, the way I had.)

So where does that leave me now? With a certain amount, at least, from all of them. I remember when I had breast cancer and had to fill out a form which asked if my ailment was minor, moderate, or serious. I spent a lot of time trying to decide if it was minor or moderate. I wonder if people see me walking around, apparently healthy, and think I'm malingering. And worst of all, the last time the doctor asked how I was, to my horror I heard myself chirping, "Fine, fine!"