The Weight of Filial Duty

I used to collect records in my punk rock years. I don’t remember where I bought it (those days are hazy) but somehow I ended up with John Mellencamp’s Scarecrow album in my collection.

It’s a great album and I remember listening to it a lot in my youth. I loved all the snap and crackles of that vinyl as it rotated on my turntable. It sounded warm and inviting, and the album artwork and photos were good too.

That’s the thing I miss about LPs and even CDs, it’s the album artwork and photos. In today’s online music world, we never get to hold an album cover or look through liner notes. We never get to spend hours looking for various incarnations of Iron Maiden’s Eddie character hidden in the drawings.

The same goes for bits of wisdom from the artist themselves. Inside the Scarecrow album is a quote by Mellencamp that’s stayed with me all these years. It reads, “There is nothing more sad or glorious than generations changing hands.”

I remember reading somewhere that it was a reference to his grandfather passing away when he was making this album. If we’re lucky to have a good and loving family, the death of a loved one makes us cherish the time we have with them, and it makes us realize that we’re in death’s queue too.

The last 10 months have been an utter hell for my 85-year-old mother. Sometime in September 2022 she pulled something heavy in the garden and fractured a vertebrae. She neglected to tell me about this for months, expecting the pain to go away, but it didn’t.

Everything came to a head on Thanksgiving last year when I picked her up to come to our house for dinner. She complained that her back was hurting badly and needed to be careful moving around. I asked her if she needed to go to the hospital but she waved her hand and said she was alright. The next morning she called me early and asked me to take her to the Emergency Room.

The day after Thanksgiving is when my mother’s spine started to crumble, and it hasn’t stopped.

I’m keenly aware of where I am in the timeline of my life and of my loved ones. I don’t know if that’s an oddity of me being myself but I remember looking in the mirror of our bathroom at age 6, barely reaching it, and thinking “I’m going to die one day.”

I remember holding my first cat as she convulsed and choked in my arms, too weak from feline leukemia to swallow her medicine, and dying. To this day I can still feel her heartbeat grow weaker and stop.

I remember visiting my Uncle in the hospital on the day he died. He was writhing in his bed, calling out to his parents in his Farsi language, his clarity of mind gone. The doctors couldn’t keep his pain under control as cancer ate him alive. I got a phone call from my father later that day that he had passed.

I remember my mother calling me when I was at a conference for work that my father wasn’t waking up, that he was cold, and that I should come quickly. His death touched off a massive die-off on his family’s side.

I’m aware that death is all around us, at every time, and it comes at the most inopportune time for us. I’m aware that we always don’t cherish the time we spend with one another. I’m aware that all this will be gone one day.

My mother continued to fracture all her lumbar vertebrae and couldn’t move around much. My sister and I sprang into action, buying food and managing the day-to-day affairs of my mother. We took her to countless doctor’s appointments and many more ER visits.

My sister and I had become our mother’s caretaker and it’s a heavy weight. I don’t know how to describe what I feel but what I do feel is heavy. It’s the weight of filial duty where my parents exited stage left after performing for decades. Life just pushed me onto the stage and said, “Start performing.”

I spent a full day in the ER last week with my mother. This time she fractured two new vertebrae and had two broken ribs. Years of osteoporosis are turning her bones to dust. There were tears in her eyes as she held my hand, the pain was unbearable.

She was admitted and they performed a spine stabilization procedure. I remember picking her up later in the week and noting that she looked like death warmed over. Sitting in the car seat next to me was my mother, the woman who gave birth to me and raised me, and she was shrinking and becoming so frail.

I deliver her safely home and make sure she’s resting. She’s happy that we’re there for her and is glad for everything we do for her. After a kiss goodbye, I get in my car and head home.

I turn on the radio and Mellencamp’s song “Scarecrow” is on. My mind races back to that quote and I realize that generations have changed hands. I wipe away my tears as I merge onto the highway. I’m sad and there is no glory.