Nutty as a Fruitcake

I made fruitcake for the holidays. I know – Ick.  Many people hate it. I like my mother’s dark fruitcake recipe, which I make without the icky stuff she put in her version. I use dates, dried apricots, raisins and walnuts. No red or green candied cherries! As a result, I feel disgustingly superior and virtuous.

Only my daughter and I will eat fruitcake these days. I could easily skip it, but this is my first Christmas since Mom died. I miss her and I really wanted to make it. It will make my daughter happy. Maybe I can talk my granddaughter into trying it? Stranger things have happened.

Mom made fruitcake every Christmas I can remember until the slow progression of that hateful Parkinson’s Disease made it impossible for her to bake. Then I started making the Christmas fruitcake. I would send her one in the mail, just like she used to to do for me after I got married and moved far away. They weigh a ton, so the postage probably cost more than the ingredients; but it was my special gift to her. I felt I was honoring her in the making of it, and I knew she liked that I was carrying on her tradition. As a mother and a grandmother I understand that now.

Food-related holiday traditions are the legacy of the common woman. As long as someone is still making our recipes we have achieved some form of immortality.

Of course, as a daughter (or son), you have to make these things a little different than your mother did. We must put our own spin on it to reflect our uniqueness, our modernity, our necessary and never-ending rebellion. Who among us actually wants to BE their mother? Not many.  We adjust and tweak to insure we are different. How much we have to tweak depends on who our mothers were.

I must confess that I stopped making them a few years ago, in 2012 - that fateful year when the fruitcakes I made went moldy. It made me so mad, that mold.  I threw a big, stinkin’ fit and stopped making the effort in subsequent years.  I guess I showed them! Now I regret that and so many other things. I was not the best daughter I could have been.

I cannot go back and make my mother a fruitcake for 2013 and 2014. Instead, I made a memorial fruitcake in 2015. I am storing it in the fridge because in Florida I do not have a cool basement, or any basement for that matter. I am going wild with the brandy. If it gets moldy I am going to throw it out without saying a word. I am keeping my anger in check. This is now a ritual, a sacrifice, an act of love. From here on in it is the making of fruitcake that is important, not the eating of it.    

It occurs to me that she may not have liked my version of the fruitcake. As I shamelessly bragged above, my version does not include candied green and red cherries, and who knows what other carcinogenic or candied crap she used to put in her version. She never believed those things could be bad for you. She liked the bad stuff, my Mom. It used to drive me crazy.

She definitely did not soak her cheesecloth in brandy. She used apple juice and wrapped the cakes in muslin. I am quite sure she also liked thinking that her fruitcake was better than mine. And, of course, it was. To be completely honest I miss the red candied cherries. I probably should not admit it or the thought police might come and haul me away. Out of sheer orneriness, let me say it loud and proud: the red candied cherries were my favorite part. I was a fool for not realizing that earlier. Next year I will put them back in.

I just realized that instead of giving her the fruitcake she wanted, I gave her the fruitcake I thought she should have. Aaaack! It is a good thing she loved me, because I can be insufferable.

Mothers understand these things, though. At least I do when my daughter now makes many of "my" Christmas cookies just a little bit different than I did. To become our grown-up selves we must separate from our mothers.

I am beginning to understand why a mother will always love her children more than her children will love her. Otherwise, none of us would ever leave her and no one would ever grow up.  It is as it should be.

Just Plain Mean

When I was a little girl I liked to hide just out of sight on the breezeway steps so I could hear my mother and Bernie (the next door neighbor who also happened to be my adored and adoring godmother) gossip at the kitchen table.  They had a coffee klatch every morning while the men were at work, and I loved to hear those women talk.  I learned a lot that way. Most of what I learned while surreptitiously listening to The Women was about human nature, about people and what motivated their actions.  It was fascinating and my interest in analyzing people's motives and desires has never waned. 

I am fairly certain Mom never realized I was there, listening.  She probably never knew what a treasure trove of illicit information she was for me.  Talk about a liberal education in the humanities!  Those two women were pretty insightful.  Not only did they do a close reading of most people, they deconstructed them to the bare bone.  I think that is one of the reasons I did not want to go to kindergarten.  Good stuff was happening at home in the kitchen.  That and I did not want to miss watching Captain Kangaroo.  I loved Bunny Rabbit. Not as much as Mighty Mouse, but almost.

One thing I suspected back then, and have since learned to be true, is that some people are just plain mean.

If you do not believe me, move someplace new or start a different job where you do not know anyone and they do not know you.  The Big Meanies will step up to bat and reveal themselves to be players, quick as shit.

I am beginning to understand meanness.  I think it is a strategy insecure people use to maintain the status quo and to ensure that others will not be mean to them.  Big Meanies are cruel to newcomers as a means to establish their authority and mark their territory.  We really are just base human animals when we do not take the time to think or feel. 

Newcomers suffer accordingly; eventually the Big Meanies throw them a bone of kindness to test the waters and see if they will bite.  By then the newcomers are so traumatized by isolation and loneliness they will do anything to make the BM like them, including agreeing with everything the aggressive BM says or does for the rest of their natural born lives. Ick. It is all so disturbingly stupid.  I am determined to forgive people when they hurt me, because I know they often cannot help themselves.  However, I would have to be an idiot to then want to be around someone like that, or to forget what they are capable of.  Cruelty is a social game I prefer not to play.

Try not to take it personal if it happens to you.  It is almost always about them (the BM), and rarely about you.  You could be anyone and the mean person would respond in the same exact way.  They do not realize their insecurities are showing.  BMs mistake meanness of spirit for strength.  And they want to feel strong.  We all want to feel strong, and it is much easier to be mean than to be kind.  It just is.

I hate to say it... but exposing yourself to a Big Meanie from time to time might just be good for what my Father used to refer to as "your immortal soul."  Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is brave.  Only when you are vulnerable will you notice the scarcity of good intentions that exist in this old world.  This is information you need to know and can definitely use!  Understanding meanness just might tip the scales as to whether you become a Big Meanie yourself or not.  We all have that meanness in us.  I try to control mine each and every day.  Mean is one of those things you have to actually try hard not to be.  Making that noble effort is part of our humanity.  When we think and feel and empathize, we become more fully human.

You really notice meanness when you become a stranger.  Middle class culture did not invent the Welcome Wagon to make newcomers feel welcome, they invented it as a marketing tool to get newbies to spend their money at local businesses and to introduce them to local norms.  If your neighbor brings you a cake as a "welcome to the neighborhood present" for no other reason than s/he wants to make you feel welcome, then by all means glom on to her/him.  S/he is a kind person - a rare find.

What I really hate are cliques.  I hated them a million years ago when I was in high school and I hate them now.  Is there anything more distasteful than adults  circling the wagons for no better reason than to exclude others so as to maintain the status quo? 

I guess I understand how cliques happen and why they exist.  Belonging to one is the easy way out.  We work hard to build relationships with people who are like us, who share our values.  I am not saying values are good or bad, I am just saying all too often what is most important in cliques is that the values are shared.

I know, I know, it feels good when everyone is just like you. But a personality can molder if life is too straight and narrow. All too often "easy" just turns out to mean dumb, and "safe" turns out to mean lazy.  Most of us will not put in the effort required to think about an issue unless we are challenged.

So why am I bringing this up?  Someone was mean to me, and it got me thinking.  See what I mean?

Wait a Minute!

Hey, wait a minute!  Do you remember last time when I said there were no further incidents at the nursing home?  I forgot something.

This post is a bit macabre.  Please note I am a fallen away, pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic, so I can quite literally go medieval on your ass.  I stopped going to church in the late 1960s when the Catholic Church instituted reforms to modernize the mass.  Because I stopped being a Catholic at that point in time my religiosity has never been altered or modernized.  I take my spirituality straight up and I yearn for dead languages, strong incense, and Gregorian chants.  It is a religion that no longer exists in reality, but it is still and always a part of who I am.  I am culturally Catholic in the same way that non-religious Jews are culturally Jewish.  There is nothing I can do about it.  If you do not want to see this side of me then please do not read the following.  Wait for my next post where I promise I will leave death and dying aside.  I may even write about the beautiful weather we are having.

So much was stolen from my mother's room at the nursing home, at the assisted living place she lived in before she was moved to the nursing home, and at a rehabilitation center she was in for a short time a few years ago after surgery.  I am not sure if the wretched thieves were aides, nurses, roommates, or other wandering residents - but multiple people stole things from her rooms in each place.  It is a sad fact of life at nursing homes.  We learned to move anything of value to my sister ERB's house.  What innocents we were at first.  I still have a hard time imagining how someone could feel they are entitled to steal an old woman's belongings when she is at her weakest and most vulnerable.  The assisted living home where she lived for about 5 years before being moved to the nursing home last year was the worst.  Drugs and candy were always disappearing.  Before we figured it out someone stole her diamond engagement ring out of her dresser drawer.  It was supposed to have gone to my baby sister, ERB, as a reward for spending all those years being her principal caregiver.  You might ask, "Why did you let her take her jewelry to a place like that?"  I might answer, "Try telling an older woman who is still in her right mind that she can no longer keep her engagement ring with her when she moves into a private, one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living home."  

The coup de grâce came when she was dying.  Someone stole both of her favorite rosaries from her home-room (let us call it the "living-room") while she lay dying in a different room (let us call that room the "dying-room") in another wing of the nursing home.  She was moved from her "living-room" right after she had the stroke, and for the following week she was in the "dying-room," a large private room where the family could maintain a private vigil.  Her two rosaries were always draped over a picture frame next to her bed in the "living-room" so she could reach them if needed.  One was her special rosary; the one she specifically stated, in writing, was to be buried with her.  It was given to her by one of her sisters, and it had been blessed by Pope John Paul II; a man who was also a victim of Parkinson's Disease.  He died, has been proposed for sainthood, and will eventually be canonized.  He was an absolute rockstar to my Mom. 

We should have retrieved those two rosaries and put them by her death bed, I know, I know.  If only I could turn back the hands of time.  We were all a mess, though.  I must confess no one thought of it.  We were overwhelmed.  We rarely went down to her "living-room." I could probably come up with a few more excuses.  However, in retrospect I must say: "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," which roughly translates from the Latin as "It's my fault, it's my fault, it is REALLY my fault." 

I know theft is a crime, but please humor me for a few minutes while I consider the act as a sin.  This rosary theft is a sin not only against my sweet mother and her family, it is a transgression against the nursing home community.  The wretched thief exists, but since we do not know who it is we begin to suspect everyone.  I really hate that, because the vast majority of the staff and residents there are kind and good.  Putting her/his co-workers under the cloud of suspicion is a whopper of a sin, way bigger than a mere venial sin, it is a mortal sin for sure.  This sin impacts on many innocent people in many ways.  The injustice almost takes my breath away considering the complex repercussions of one casual, selfish, voluntary act.

I like to assume the wretched thief was a twisted Catholic AND a moron who thought she/he was entitled to a memento of my mother.  Why else would someone take two rosaries?  Because I am a sinner myself, I choose not to forgive the wretched thief.  Not now.  Hopefully someday, but not quite yet.  It is too soon.  Instead,  I hope this sin haunts the wretched thief in the dark, disturbing her/his sleep continuously until the wretched thief returns the rosaries to the social worker.  Then I might forgive her/him.  Okay, we all know that's not gonna happen.  It is an idle fantasy of a grieving child.  It is only in the irrationality of my grief that this fantasy makes me feel better.  I hope for justice and, okay - make me say it: revenge.  But even if the rosaries were returned, what would we do with them?   We will not dig up the casket to put the rosary in her hands if it suddenly appears.  She is holding a different rosary now, anyway.  It is just not the one she wanted. The time has passed to make this right for my mother.  Still, I wish I could let this go.  

I have not been a practicing Catholic since the late 1960's; however, it is all coming back to me now.  My better self would pray for a miracle,  hoping the wretched thief would come to her/his senses, return the rosary, and do penance for her/his sin.  Unfortunately, my better self seems to be missing in action along with the rosaries, diamond ring, other jewelry, knicknacks, pills, candy, and cookies that have disappeared over the years.  For now, I look for justice.  Still, what is justice in this instance?

Hopefully I will eventually realize that if I am still angry about this then I am foolishly allowing the wretched thief to continue to hurt me.  My anger merely keeps the sin alive.  True forgiveness involves freeing oneself from anger and allowing the sin to rest only with the sinner.   Perhaps that is justice?  I don't know.

Death and Dying

My mother passed away quite peacefully earlier this week surrounded by 4 of her 5 living children and a wonderful Hospice nurse.  It was beyond lovely.  We were talking about her, telling stories, and she quite simply took her last breath and "gave up the ghost."  It was an unbelievably wonderful experience.  She was not in pain, went on her own terms, and she was feelin' the love.  

I had been staying in my mother's room at the nursing home for five nights prior to her death.  The nursing home was totally supportive of her and the family.  They transferred her to a large private room so we could all come and go as we wished.  We maintained a 24/7 vigil so she would never be alone. It was fascinating to observe the organizational behavior in a nursing home, and I came to know many of the staff members.  I can tell you they are overwhelmingly good-hearted folks. They all seem to do the very best they can.  The nursing home staff spend their days and nights working hard, quietly caring for and about people.  I noticed they proudly and carefully built relationships with each patient. I was moved by the many nurses, aides, food service workers, custodial staff, and administrators who came to her room to say their goodbyes, or to see how she was. They all seemed to genuinely like her. They told stories about her. They knew her.  Their kindness was an extraordinary gift.  Is the nursing home a perfect place?  Not by a long shot.  But what is?  Seriously.  Everyone is just trying to find a way to roll with the punches in this mysterious world we inhabit.

It took my mother a week to die.  She had been faring poorly for weeks, and had been refusing to eat.  She had a stroke during the night and did not wake up on February 24.  As always, my younger brother and sister were right there to take care of business.  When my older sister and I arrived from opposite coasts on Wednesday, February 25, the nursing home staff was still trying to give my mother morphine for the pain.  Unfortunately, she always had a bad reaction to morphine.  Wednesday afternoon we called Hospice.  A Hospice nurse arrived Wednesday evening to evaluate Mom and to set up her new pain management routine.  This particular nurse had started her day at 6:00 am that morning and would not go home until close to 11:00 pm that night. She was determined to stay until she found a better painkiller for Mom than morphine, and she did.  She found dilaudid the wonder drug.  Thank you, Hospice Nurse.

The Hospice nurse first tried to increase the morphine, because increasing the dosage sometimes works.  We tried that, but it did not work for Mom.  Morphine made Mom agitated and uncomfortable.  The Hospice nurse immediately sat down and did some research.  Mom was in the advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease and could not swallow pills.  Hospice Nurse found a liquid form of a drug called dilaudid that could be administered to Mom orally.  Unfortunately the local pharmacies did not have that particular liquid version on hand. The bad news: it had to be rush ordered from Indianapolis, 3 hours away.  The good news: the company would send it out right then and it would arrive before morning.  As soon as it arrived she would be administered the dilaudid and she would then be free from pain.  In the meantime, Hospice had the nursing home staff continue giving her adavin and morphine to try to relax her and free her of the pain caused by Parkinson's Disease cramping.

That was my first night in the bed next to hers.  By the time I awoke at 5:30 Thursday morning, I figured the new drug had arrived.  The medications given throughout the night were wearing off and Mom was grimacing and writhing once again.  I went to the nurse station twice asking for them to start her on the dilaudid.  I had been told the dilaudid arrived in the wee hours of the morning, but it had not been given to Mom yet.  Each time I went down there the Night Nurse told me they would get it to her in “a few minutes,” but no one came.  I was trying to be a nice person, but you know – my sweet mother was in great pain and I was the only one there to make it stop.  It was a job I did not want, but it was a job I absolutely had to do well.  I did not want to get angry, but my patience was wearing thin.  One of her favorite nurses aides stopped by to see how Mom was doing.  I told her what was going on and how many times I had been down there begging for help.  She said she would remind the people at the nurse station to bring the drug to us as she passed them walking back to the residential area of the nursing home.  She also told me to press the button on the call light for help to get their attention and remind them I was waiting.  At this point my sweet mother was literally writhing in agony.  I pushed that damn button and waited for 10 long minutes, but the Night Nurse never answered the buzz for help.  She never acknowledged it. Damn it!  I had to leave Mom alone again and speed walked down to the nurse station to demand the new drug.  I think of that movie with Shirley Maclaine running up to the nurse’s station screaming for pain meds for her dying daughter.  I get it.  I had to get right up in someone’s face to get some attention. I told the Night Nurse not to tell me again she would get the drug to Mom in a few minutes unless she specifically meant she would be there in 180 seconds, because that’s approximately what a few minutes are.  I told the two nurses that I understood they were busy and I knew they were understaffed, however, my mother was dying in agony and it was not about us, it was about her.  They were undergoing a changing of the nursing staff (from night staff to day staff) at that moment, and they made me wait another 10 long minutes for them in the room as my mother moaned and grimaced in pain.  Ten minutes, by the way, is 600 seconds.  I was in tears.  I was failing her when she needed me most.  I was not able to find the right words or do the right things to stop her pain.

When the Early Morning Nurse finally came down with the painkiller, she was clearly angry with me.  She told me that she was actually giving my Mom the pain meds 15 minutes before they were due.  I could not *&^%$# believe it.   Night Nurse had not updated the Early Morning Nurse at the change of guard about what was happening with the change in Mom’s pain meds.  I told Early Morning Nurse this was not a routine procedure, so when her drugs were "due" was not relevant.  I told her Mom was being taken off the morphine that morning because Hospice had determined it was not helping.  I told her Mom had never had the dilaudid previously AND that we had been waiting all night for it.  I told her that we had been promised that it would be administered as soon as it arrived.  I could not tell Early Morning Nurse exactly what was on my mind right then because, well, Mom was there and who knew what she could still hear. 

Early Morning Nurse was clearly hearing this information for the first time.  The realization that this was a simple "mistake" (yeah, let's call it a mistake) at the worst possible time nearly did me in.  My eyes were rolling back in my head and veins were popping out all over my forehead.  Clearly when I was down at the nurse station they were just “handling” me, biding their time until they thought Mom’s meds were due.  Why they kept saying they would be down in “a few minutes” instead of just telling me the truth (i.e., “We are not going to give her any more drugs until she is due for more drugs”) I will never understand.  It was the most infuriating example of “by the book” mentality and lack of communication I have ever experienced.  Had they told me the truth, I could have respectfully solved the problem immediately.  It was, as my sweet Mom would say, a sin and a shame.

This was the only bad experience we had with the nursing home during that long week of death and dying.  Hospice straightened everything out once they were informed and there were no further issues, nor any pain after that.  I made up with Early Morning Nurse (there was some hugging involved) as well as Night Nurse (who I actually came to like by the end).  I forgave them, they forgave me, and we got on with the business of dying. 

Beautiful!

I am sad to say that my mother is dying. I flew to Northern Indiana early Wednesday morning to be with her and help my siblings care for her in her final days. We have spent the last few days making sure all of Mom’s 16 grandchildren have had a chance to talk to (at, really) her on the phone and give her their love or say their goodbyes from whatever part of the country they happen to be in.  

Mom has been unresponsive for most of the time I have been here. It is best when she is unresponsive, because she is in so much pain when she is semi-conscious. She rarely opens her eyes now. 
It is likely she had a significant stroke overnight between Monday and Tuesday. She has a do-not-resuscitate directive in place.  Interestingly, terminal DNR patients are not taken to the hospital. The nursing home simply tries to make the patient as comfortable as possible until the end.

The first couple of days she was in agony, and she was not tolerating morphine well to combat the pain.  It was awful. My brother called Hospice and a kindly team of nurses and aides came to the nursing home to take over pain management for her. What a truly wonderful organization Hospice is. They care. Of course the nursing home staff care, too. They have been very sweet to all of us. They moved Mom into a private, larger room which can accommodate the many children and grandchildren who are stopping by. We are keeping a constant vigil in her room, day and night.

ERB told me that on Tuesday afternoon a number of family members were in the room with her, including 3 grandchildren. She, of course, is comatose.  However, in the midst of their visit she suddenly tried to sit up and open her eyes. Then she laid back down and said "God, it's beautiful!" I was happy to hear this story, and even more happy that some of her grandchildren were there when it happened. That story will stay with them as long as they live, and it will reassure them that death and dying can be a beautiful part of life. 

My Mother's Daughter

About 15 years ago my mother moved from the family home to a small apartment. She made the change a few years after my father died.  For over 35 years she lived in the old barn-like house that 6 of my parents’ 7 children at least partially grew up in.  Of course it was not a barn, but it resembled one so I will henceforth refer to it as the Barn House.

There was 20 years between my oldest sister, CHD, and my youngest brother, WW. CHD was grown up when we moved into the Barn House.  She only lived there for a couple of months before she found an apartment and got on with her adult life. I must have been about 12 when we moved in.  I was in 7th grade.  There was a lot of living that made THAT old house a home!  At first there were only five children living there, because CHD had moved out in 1965.   Good Catholic that she was, my mother was soon pregnant again and we had a sixth child living with us (the 7^th sibling) in the Barn House by 1966.  In The Borg society, I am referred to as 3 of 7.

When Mom made the decision to move, I went to Northern Indiana to assist my siblings in paring down her belongings.   The goal was to keep only the “essentials” enabling her to fit into a one-bedroom apartment.  My sweet mother is a fully realized pack rat.  She saves everything because everything is on her “essentials” list.  It was always chaos in that house, but after 35 years the Barn House was jam-packed with memories and odd treasures.  Old pictures were in every drawer, and filled old purses and boxes tucked away in the back of her closets.  Cookbooks were stuffed with additional handwritten recipes.  Her bibles, St. Joseph Missal (Latin/English) and post Vatican II missal (English only) were chock full of genealogical goldmines in the form of funeral cards and obituary clippings.  She saved every saint medal, holy card, rosary, ceramic Blessed Virgin Mary statue, and wall crucifix her kids and grandkids ever gave her.  She has 7 children and 16 grandkids so that made for a lot of Catholic tchotchkes.  I do not know how many years worth of braided palm leaves we found.  For those of you who do not know, you get palm leaves when you go to mass on Palm Sunday.  You take them home, braid them and put them up in the house.  It is a Catholic thing.  I actually had one up on my bulletin board in the NYS house. Why not?  I threw it away last February before WE moved. Actually, I regret throwing that braided palm away.   What was I thinking?

It was fun wading through each room of my parents’ house one last time.  Of course I wanted to help my Mom and my siblings, but I must confess my primary purpose was to wallow in my mother’s things for the last time. I savored every drawer full of "stuff" and every room full of junk. That "stuff" was soul deep.  It was about my past.  It was about my parents’ life together.  It was about my mother’s neurosis. It was all a living testament to my mother’s strengths and weaknesses.  I wondered if our lives would change once her "stuff" was gone.  Interestingly, it was also about old time Roman Catholicism, the kind of mystical/devotional life every Catholic was taught to observe back before Vatican II modernized the church in the mid 1960’s. I have to stop before this post turns into my standard rant against Vatican II changes.  It always shocks people who mistakenly presume my normal liberal views would support saying the Mass in the vernacular.  That rant will have to wait for another post.

Unlike my more pragmatic siblings, I could not fault her when I found stacks of old church calendars in a corner of the kitchen.  These are calendars that each parish church gives out free to parishioners every year. The pictures of saints, the BVM, and her illustrious son were reason enough to keep them. They were beautiful.  There are many things one might fault the Roman Catholics for, but their art is not one of them.  For crying out loud, wouldn’t it be a venial sin to throw out things like that anyway?  OK, I threw them away when she was not looking, but still – I was so happy to get my grubby little hands on them for a few minutes. I stood firm in defending this collection, although I did kind of wonder why the pile was stacked on top of chocolate covered cherry boxes filled with old recipes and newspaper clippings that were stored underneath a chair pushed in a corner of the kitchen.  But then again, the opposite corner held a cart filled with old newspapers and magazines.  Maybe it was about balance, or a feng shui decision meant to increase the flow of favorable energy in the room?  I am willing to give the old lady the benefit of the doubt.  I love her madly and I find her quirkiness endearing. 

Believe it or not, I found a handwritten Pillsbury Flour Contest recipe submission that my maternal grandmother (who died before I was born…) submitted in the 1940s.  It was lying between two magazines in a pile of many.  I wish I knew how it got there.  If I had just picked up the entire pile of magazines and dumped them in the trash this recipe would have been lost forever.  Talk about treasure!  I probably slowed everyone down because I insisted on looking at every knickknack and perusing old recipes to my heart’s content.  I did not care, though.  On that day I imagined myself an archaeologist of sorts, and I am nothing if not self-indulgent.  It made the old lady happy, too.  She was thrilled that I valued her stuff.  I was having fun and I might even have been her favorite child for a few fleeting moments there.  When you are 3 of 7 you appreciate those fleeting moments.

I took pictures of rooms and furniture and piles of junk.  My younger siblings thought I was nuts.  They seemingly had no nostalgic feelings about the Barn House.  They just wanted to throw everything away so the house could be cleaned out, cleaned up and sold.   I was shocked and disturbed.  Why wasn’t I practical and focused?  Could it be that I am like my mother?  Oh, HELL no!

The best part was when three of us went through the linen closet with my Mom present.   She had a huge upstairs hallway closet with lacquered wooden doors that opened up like French doors.  This linen closet was wide enough that all four of us could stand and sort through the shelves at the same time.  We found many linens, very few of them useable.  There were old tablecloths with holes in or stains on them, sheets so threadbare you could see through them, and old towels and doilies that were tattered and torn.  Unfortunately, our sweet mother did not see them in the same way we did.  These things held different meanings for her.  She became agitated and defensive, not wanting to throw anything away.  Her standard response if we posed the question “Can we throw this away?” was “No, it is still good, someone could use that.”  She displayed classic Depression Era post-traumatic stress syndrome with subsequent hording behavior. It was amazing to observe at close hand. Her eyes were wild. She positioned herself behind us so she could see exactly what each one of us was doing.  She pulled things off the trash pile if we tried to sneak them there without asking her first.  We made four piles on the floor: the trash pile, the Goodwill pile, the give-to-a-family-member pile, and the keep-for-the-new-apartment pile.  I think you can imagine how much went on the trash pile. 

After 15 minutes our sweet mother could no longer stand the sight of us.  We took a break.  We three siblings conspired when Mom went to the bathroom (do not get me started on her bathroom…). We decided to reassure her by putting the unusable things she could not bear to throw away on the Goodwill pile and then throw things away when we took them away from her house.  We also agreed to “take” many things she wanted to pass on to family that in reality no family member would possibly want, and to quietly dispose of them accordingly.  Sorting into piles became easier for all of us.  She was happy, we were happy, and the job got done.

I came home from that visit with many amazing treasures:  An aluminum potato ricer I have absolutely no memory of, the tin French fry slicer that had intrigued me my entire childhood even though I do not make French fries, a heavy metal meat grinder I will almost certainly never use, the no-tech haircutting tools my grandmother used to cut our hair as children (giving us Mamie Eisenhower bangs in the 1950s).  I foolishly brought home two boxes filled with the inexpensive Currier and Ives-style china that my Mom had painstakingly purchased piece by piece at the grocery store.  I did not want them, but it made her so happy when I said I would take them.  I also had Mom’s old Singer sewing machine even though both my daughter and I already had new machines.  I took many funeral cards and all the Blessed Virgin Mary statues that I ever bought her, despite the fact that I have not been a Roman Catholic since 1968.  It made me happy to take these things, but I found it made me sad to have it all. I am happy T and I were able to get rid of so much “stuff” this past year in anticipation of our move to Florida. That is when I finally gave the potato ricer, the china, and the old sewing machine to the Salvation Army.  They were still good.  I am sure someone is using them.

My Mom

My mother is 87 years old and is experiencing the advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease.  Consequently, she has recently moved into a nursing home.   

My parents always owned their own house.  When my father died in 1996, my mother continued to live alone in the family house for a number of years.  Eventually, it became too much for her, she sold the house and moved to an apartment. When it became clear that she was no longer safe living alone she moved again, this time into an assisted living community.  There she had her own private efficiency apartment within the larger setting.  She is a quiet, private person, shy even, but she seemed to enjoy assisted living.  At first it was hard for her to be in a setting with so many other people around.  However, she became accustomed to the apartment-based living arrangement and it felt like home to her.   She would use her walker to go down to the dining hall for lunch and dinner, but chose to have breakfast alone in her apartment.  In the last few years she chose to stay in her apartment more and more, and she no longer participated in the social events that were organized for the participants.  She lived a simple life, and she did not socialize much.  She has never been a very social person, so her gradual withdrawal seemed fairly normal to the family.

Just before Christmas, she was moved into a nursing home.  She could no longer dress herself or go to the bathroom alone.  Walking with a walker had become increasingly problematic.  She needed more care than she could afford in assisted living, where each assisted task is charged on an individual basis.  Although her mind remains sharp, her body has been ravaged.   Parkinson’s is a progressive disease.  She now needs professional care round the clock.  It has become that time of her life we all knew would eventually come, but all tried not to think about it until we had to.   It sucks…

I cannot imagine any one wants to move into a nursing home.  The loss of privacy represents a loss of dignity.  We are a family of limited means.  For people like us once a parent’s money has been depleted, and if the children are not wealthy, nursing home care means a shared room and Medicaid.   In our capitalist society you get what you pay for.  I have no illusions about it being any different when I am old and infirm.  All of her social security and small pension now go the nursing home.  The difference between her fixed income and the total cost of nursing care and medication is paid for by Medicaid.  Theoretically she gets to keep a little over $50 per month from the income stream. Beyond that her children pay for her telephone, newspaper, and getting her hair done.  We try to pick up or send her cookies, pretzels, and hard candy for her room.  Her roommate does not even have a television, so my mother shares hers with the roommate.  It seems like a nice place in many ways, it is clean, the food is good, the aides are kindly, and the nurses are competent.  Still, the economics are such that places like this are routinely understaffed.  Waiting for help with basic needs is the norm.  Betty Davis once said “Growing old ain’t for sissies!”  Too true.  Under these circumstances elderly people are heroic, striving to derive pleasure and joy when they can.   If the food is prepared well and tastes good, they all talk about it.  If they watch sports and their team wins, they are thrilled.  If a family member or old friends comes to visit, they appreciate it.  A card in the mail screams “Someone cares about you!”  Every kindness is treasured.  

Apparently when the elderly get urinary tract infections (UTI) they can become confused and agitated, very much like dementia.  The confusion goes away after a few days of antibiotics.  It is apparently a common phenomenon in a nursing facility.  This happened to my sweet Mother last week, in the first month of her stay at the nursing home.   Mom has not displayed dementia previously, except for a short-term incident about 8 years ago related to and following major surgery.  So we were concerned last week when her caregiver, our sister ERB, stopped by to see her after work and found her to be a bit out of touch with reality.  Mom insisted certain things happened that did not happen and was seeing and talking to people who were not there.  When ERB reported it to the nurse, the nurse said it was likely a UTI and she would have the doctor check it out.  Sure enough, that is what she has.  However, today is day 4 of the antibiotic and she is still slipping in and out of reality.   Disturbing.  In the words of my sister ERB, “I want my Mom back.”