The Deafening Silence of a Crowded Room: Why We Finally Moved My Mother’s Chair

And yet, somehow, in a house absolutely packed with the very people she had fed, raised, and loved, she had spent the pinnacle of Thanksgiving Day entirely alone at the kitchen sink.

The worst part? I honestly thought we were having a wonderful day.

For months leading up to the holidays, Mom had been politely turning down our Sunday dinner invitations.

• “Oh, don’t make a fuss over me.”
• “I’ve got plenty of soup here at the house.”
• “You kids enjoy yourselves. I really like my quiet time.”

I believed her. If I am being brutally honest with myself, I believed her because believing her was easy. My husband and I were drowning in work, Hannah was overwhelmed with high school, and our son, Ben, had travel baseball practically every time the sun was shining.

Marriage

 

I wasn’t a negligent daughter. I called her during my commute. I dropped off groceries on her porch. I constantly checked whether she needed anything from the pharmacy. When my brother asked if Mom seemed a bit isolated lately, I waved off his concern. “She’ll come over when she feels like it,” I told him confidently. “You know how fiercely independent she is.”

The Cost of “Never Mind”

What I failed to truly acknowledge was her fading hearing. It had been getting progressively worse for several years. She wore her hearing aids, but she had tried to explain to me once that when several voices spoke at the same time, the overlapping sounds turned into an unbearable, static jumble.

Pregnancy & Maternity

 

I listened to her explain that struggle the same way people listen to a mild weather forecast. I heard the words, but I didn’t change my plans. I certainly didn’t change my behavior.

At dinner that afternoon, we had passed steaming bowls of food while talking over one another in our usual, chaotic family rhythm. The television stayed blaring in the next room. Somebody would shout a question from behind Mom’s chair, and somebody else across the room would answer it before she even realized she had been addressed.