The passage I’d like to close read for this response is on page 21 in They May Not Mean Do. It reads: “‘You’re a saint,’ Daphne said. It was not a compliment. ‘One of those insane, self-destructive saints,’ Natalie added. The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed”(21). In this passage, Joy’s friends are addressing her caretaking of Aaron–as opposed to hiring a caretaker, or to putting Aaron in an assisted living facility.
While it’s clear that this position of martyrdom is not enjoyable, Joy continues to cling to it through Aaron’s demise and death. She’s consistently reminded by the people around her and even by herself that this caretaking labor is as harmful to her (if not more so) than it is helpful to Aaron, and yet she refuses to change her behavior and ask for help from anyone other than her daughter, Molly. I think this attachment to martyrdom is deeply connected to Joy’s position as matriarch. In one instance, she vocalizes how tasking it is to be this martyr-matriarch: “‘I can’t take the disorder of cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, the crazy mess, the hot steam in the kitchen, the millions of dishes. It’s too much for me, Molly. But I don’t want to give up my place as the matriarch, I suppose. What foolishness. But it’s true’”(50). Just as in the conversation with her friends, Joy juggles a simultaneous knowledge that her position as martyr-matriarch is unconstructive, that she’s clinging to a role that is no longer useful for her or her family, and a desire to maintain that role nonetheless. As the oldest woman in their family, it’s always been her role in this group of people to caretake–it’s her identity, and to stop caretaking would mean cultivating a new identity. Doing so is challenging at any age, but I imagine even more so in the later years of one’s life, when that identity has had decades of reinforcement.
Even after Aaron’s death, Joy continues this self-flagellating martyr-like behavior. In organizing Aaron’s funeral, she flips quickly: “‘Oh, I don’t care anyway. He’s gone. What does it matter?’ As soon as she said it, Joy knew it did matter, that it was all that mattered, there was nothing else. The funeral was Aaron’s funeral, the last thing she could do for him. She had to do it properly. Not just properly, but perfectly”(137). I think this continued attachment to her being the “perfect,” wholly capable caretaker for Aaron comes from a desire for control in a situation in which she actually has very little. Dying is an unpredictable, uncontrollable process, as is aging. There’s no satisfying, well-mapped blueprint for caring for someone who’s dying, nor is there a foolproof plan for grieving.
Even less so is there a blueprint for being responsible for both someone else’s unreliable body as well as your own. In the moments before Joy’s friends note her martyr behavior, she almost falls: “The doctor said these dizzy spells were nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t fall. But what if she did fall? What was to stop her from falling? She could very easily have fallen just now…”(21). There seems to be a direct correlation between Joy’s lack of control over herself and her need to control Aaron’s wellbeing. Rather than deal further with the possibility that she might fall, or what she would do if she did fall, Joy pivots back to Aaron’s health. It doesn’t seem that she does so intentionally, but she puts her own health on the backburner to manage Aaron’s. When she returns home from this conversation with her friends, her first thoughts are “how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt”(21). I think most people do this–when we lose control in one area of our lives we seek to supplement it by controlling something (or someone) else. This book is an interesting exploration into how that pattern applies specifically to aging.
Coming to Age 