Hello, Blog World. Sorry for the long silence.
First of all, let me thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all of your notes of sympathy about my mom. I really appreciated it, and it definitely helped me through this difficult time.
During the last couple of weeks I have been lost in the Facebook world playing interminable games of Bouncing Balls and my latest addiction, Pool Practice. Yes, pool, as in billiards. It's a great FB game that actually allows you to practice all your best shots. And it must work well, because I am lousy at the exact same shots online as I am in the real world. Those corner pockets get me every time; but I'm a whiz on the side ones!
I guess playing these online games is a way to procrastinate and avoid cleaning out my mother's apartment. I have done very little so far, and as a result had to pay the rent for the month of July, since June is now over without progress being made. I really must get it cleaned out this month. I did manage to wash some laundry and throw out some food and other stuff but there is still a lot to do.
I seem to be lost in the doldrums. I'm not sure if it's the heat that is now upon us, or the aftermath of my mother's death, but I am lacking in motivation these days.
Then today I learned some more sad news: Marie from The Attentive Aphorist passed away over the weekend. She was a wonderful person and her voice will be sorely missed. Marie had been having health issues since last year but she had been doing better so I was shocked to hear the news. My deepest sympathies go out to her family and friends.
We're up at our cabin for a whole week, which is heaven compared to the 100 degree heat back home in New Jersey. Our place is at 1000 feet of elevation and there is a nice breeze here at the top of the hill, wafting through the quaking Aspens, Hemlocks, and oak trees that tower above the cabin. Before leaving New Jersey, we did go to the annual fireworks at our local county park on Friday night, so we got our dose of 4th of July before coming up here. We heard the fireworks going off last night in Ticonderoga but were too lazy to drive up and see them there. We did have a hot dog for lunch on the 4th, so that counts for something.
When I logged on today I realized that this is my 500th post since I started blogging in late 2006. I realize some people manage 500 posts in their first year, so I take no great pride in this achievement, but thought it was worth noting. I am sorry I am not coming up with something more brilliant for such a milestone, but it is what it is.
Now that we're up here, I'm hoping to take more time to visit everyone else's blogs, as the 3G MiFi connection here is not ideal for playing online games, which will leave me much more free time to actually read blogs, which is a much more constructive pursuit.
In my recent obsession with Facebook games, I haven't been paying that much attention to the news. Of course, Robert Byrd passed away at 92, the BP oil spill continues, and Congress grilled Kagan. But it all seems to be happening at a distance. I'm hoping when we get home Baxter will be able to catch me up with what's been going on as I'm sure he's been keeping track.
Speaking of Baxter, he is not very happy with the new addition to the family: my mother's cat, Zoe. We brought her over to our house a couple of weeks ago and settled her into the spare bedroom. Baxter is very jealous and anytime the door to that room is open he comes in and tries to eat her food and poke around. They have met up with each other a few times, which resulted in loud hissing on both sides. Also, she eats wet food and until now, Baxter had no interest in it. But all of a sudden he wants wet food too, since Zoe gets it!
So when we came up to the cabin on Saturday we decided to bring Zoe with us and leave Baxter home. He will be happier at home anyway, and we didn't want to leave her home locked up in the spare room. Please don't feel sorry for him. If he were here he'd be spending the whole week hiding under a bed anyway, as he did when we first brought him home.
As it turned out, bringing Zoe up here was the best decision we could have made. She was the perfect traveler and it turns out she loves it up here at the cabin. She has no fear whatsoever, and wanders at will throughout the place, jumping up on windowsills and looking outside. We brought a cage with us that used to belong to our previous dog, Alice, and Zoe is happily sitting out on the deck in the cage surveying the landscape as I write this. I wouldn't dare let her loose on the deck as she could easily jump over the edge and be lost in the woods instantly.
Unlike Baxter, Zoe was able to put the dog in her place immediately. Diva came over to sniff at her while she was in my lap and Zoe immediately let rip a mighty hiss, and smacked her on the left eyebrow. Diva now is afraid to walk anywhere near her, and the cat is now in charge. The ironic thing is that she weighs about 5 lbs. - about a quarter the size of Baxter - but she isn't afraid of anything. Baxter runs out of the room if the dog looks at him.
I'll try to post some pictures of her soon. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend.
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Monday, July 05, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
In Memory of My Mother
In the end, my mother got an infection that weakened her beyond the point of no return. After she was able to get off the ventilator successfully, I had hope that she might surprise everyone one more time and recover enough to at least go to a nursing home and continue to enjoy a few more days and weeks. But c. difficile, brought on by the strong antibiotics they were giving her to ward off pneumonia, did her in. She became weaker and less responsive, and was unable to get off the bi-pap mask that kept her breathing. Like a very old cat who had used up the last of her nine lives, my mother was finally giving up, little by little.
The last night before she died, I had gone to see her in the hospital and could see how weak and unhappy she was.
I had sent my husband up to Cape Cod that day because that week was the week we had originally booked to take my mother up for one last trip to the Cape, and the cottages were paid for. His dad was going to join us on Monday so I told him to go anyway and at least he and Dad could enjoy a week up there. So I was alone that night after I left my mother in the hospital, and I didn’t feel like cooking for myself.
So where else would I go but Star Tavern, where all the waitresses know me and I could sit at the bar and have a pizza and some wine, and think? I arrived and found myself a seat at the bar. The woman behind the bar asked me what I’d like and I ordered a glass of wine and a mushroom pizza. There was a man sitting next to me who turned out to be her husband, and I started talking to him, telling him about my mother’s situation.
They say angels come in all forms and perhaps he was one of them. He had gone through the same thing with his mother in 1994, and told me that I couldn’t ask my mother to make the decision to end her lifesaving care. He said I had to make the decision for her. He said he did it for his mother and it was the best decision he ever made, that it gave him control over the situation and he was able to be sure to be there with her when she died. “You have to make the decision, not her,” he emphasized.
When I left that night and went home I knew what I had to do.
The next morning I called the hospital and told them that when I got there I wanted my mother taken off the bi-pap machine and that I wanted to let her go peacefully.
My aunt and I arrived at the hospital at around 11:30 and sat with my mother for about an hour, talking and reminiscing about happy times in our lives together. My mother was alert and was listening to us. Then finally the doctor’s orders to take off the mask were finalized and the nurse came in and removed it. I looked at Mom and said, “I’m here, Mom,” and she smiled at me. My aunt later told me my mother had squeezed her hand at the same time.
A few minutes later she had trouble breathing so I told the nurse and she came in and administered morphine to calm her…she must have been close to the end because within five minutes she gently stopped breathing and was gone.
Naturally I am sad, and of course I still keep reliving that scene in my mind, and thinking about all the decisions I’d made or events that had happened that had led up to that moment. Should I have stayed home that last weekend she got so sick instead of going to the cabin? If she’d gone to the hospital sooner, would she still be OK? Should I have let her go when she choked on the milk five days earlier, so she wouldn’t have suffered with the infection? Should I have said something to the doctor when he ordered the additional diuretic two weeks earlier, when I knew my mother could easily become dehydrated as she had once before?
But when it all came down to it, I knew I was quibbling about details, about days or weeks, not months of life. My mother was 91 and she had lived a good long life – and was never ill until the last few months of it. My mother hated being sick; she considered it some kind of moral failing. I knew she hated being an invalid and wouldn’t have wanted to keep going in the condition she was in.
Rather than have a viewing, I decided to have her cremated and have a memorial service later, in June. I rode up to Cape Cod that Monday with my father-in-law and we enjoyed a peaceful week at the Cape, reminiscing about my mother and remembering all the good times she had there with us. We had the funeral home divide her ashes so I could bring some of them up to the Cape and scatter them there later this summer; the rest are buried next to my father in the cemetery.
So now I’m left with the other tasks that fall on those who are left when a loved one passes. I worked with the funeral home to finalize her obituary – how do you sum up someone’s life in a few paragraphs? Next comes the planning of the memorial service, which will have a bagpiper play at it as my mother once said she wanted at her funeral. And finally, the mundane things: canceling the cable TV, the telephone service, the newspaper subscription; cleaning out the apartment.
Once all that is done, perhaps I can start thinking about something else. But right now I am still trying to think of a way to honor my mother’s life with something longer than the brief paragraph in the newspaper: “active for many years in the Community Church, sang in the choir, medical writer, avid bowler, Girl Scout leader for over 25 years…” Yes, all those things were important, but don’t sum up who my mother was.
To begin with, she grew up in Massachusetts but once she graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a journalism degree, she took the big step of leaving home and coming to live in New York City, working at a small publication in her first job. I always thought that was pretty brave and rather glamorous.
She then moved to New Jersey and worked for Hoffman LaRoche, writing for their in-house magazine, the Roche Review, for a number of years, before getting a job at a medical advertising agency, Paul Klempner Agency, where she met my father. After they married in 1951, they were very active in the Nutley Little Theater, taking part in a number of plays. When I was born, my mother stopped working, because back then, that's what you did. I don't think she ever really minded, though. She once told me that raising a child is the most important thing she could have done.
In 1962 when we moved up to Penfield, New York, she and my dad were founding members of their little theater group, the Penfield Players. I grew up hanging out at rehearsals and helping my parents learn their lines. Both of them were in the old classic, Arsenic and Old Lace, once in Nutley, once in Penfield. My mother played Aunt Martha in Nutley and Aunt Abby in Penfield; my father Dr. Einstein in both productions. Lines from that play became family jokes for years thereafter..."I've completely lost track of Mr. Spenalzo," for instance, was a line we used whenever we had trouble finding something at home.
My mother also was active in the neighborhood up there, putting her journalism skills to work writing a neighborhood newsletter for the neighborhood association, as well as continuing to be a Girl Scout leader, which she had begun when I was in the Brownies back in Nutley.
We moved back to New Jersey in 1967 as my father got a job in New York at another medical advertising agency, and my parents didn't move again after that. After my father died, my mother moved into the senior citizens apartment down the street from me and enjoyed her time there for four years.
My mother enjoyed telling stories about her time in college, and always remembered the Hurricane of 1938, the unnamed hurricane that unexpectedly slammed into New England one fall. She was trying to make her way home from college in the middle of the storm and had to spend the night at a gas station because the roads were blocked by fallen trees.
She also reminisced about her days as an air raid warden during World War II, which was after she had moved down to New Jersey. She had to go around and knock on people's doors to tell them to turn off their lights during air raid warnings.
My mother's life was not without its tragedies. When I was about two years old, she had another baby, my sister Jessica. Sadly, Jessica was born with a heart defect and back then they couldn't operate on a tiny baby the way they can now. She only lived to be four months old. My mother didn't have another child after that, as by then she was 37, which in those days was considered "too old."
Also, in his later years, my father had bouts of intractable depression and twice had to be hospitalized after attempted suicides; then in his last years he had dementia and eventually had to be in a nursing home before he passed away in 2005. But my mother took it all in stride. She was the kind of person who did what she had to do, didn't complain and didn't bemoan her fate.
I think the best way to describe her personality is just plain nice. It sounds trite to say someone is “nice,” but niceness is woefully underrated in this world. With the exception of Republicans, my mother never said a bad word about anyone, and was unfailingly polite until the very end. Even in the hospital during her last stay, whenever a nurse or aide came in and did anything for her, she always said “thank you.” Her home aides loved her because she was patient and sweet and never complained.
But of course she was more than just nice; she had plenty of personality, and certainly wasn’t without a temper from time to time. And back when I was growing up, of course there were plenty of times we got into arguments, as is natural. But as we got older we got along better and better and truly were in synch.
My mother always loved to read, and it was sad when her macular degeneration got too bad and she was no longer able to read on her own. So during the last two months I took to reading to her; we went through a couple of her beloved Dorothy Sayers short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, and I would read the comics in the paper to her every day. I hope it gave her back a little of the joy she got from reading.
Of course her love of reading was passed on to me – when I was a child she’d read me Winnie the Pooh and other stories, and I soon loved to read as much as she did. I read all her old favorites as well as many new books I discovered on my own, and still love to read to this day.
When I think back, many of the interests I have today were passed on to me by my mother.
It is from her that I get my love of nature – many a time we walked in the woods with our binoculars, bird watching together. She loved wildflowers, too, and was always pointing out the special ones, the Lady Slippers or the Jack-in-the-Pulpit or the Solomon’s Seal.
As my Girl Scout leader, she took me and the troops on many a campout, where we learned to build fires, tie knots, cook on our tin-can stoves with our Buddy Burners, and hike in the woods. I remember one night we kids were all in a tent telling ghost stories and she came around the outside of the tent and went “Woooooh!” and scared the bejeesus out of us. My mother later told me she never realized a bunch of 10 and 11 –year-olds could make such a loud screeching noise!
After I got older, Mom continued to be a Girl Scout leader – the Junior age group was her favorite (the 5th and 6th graders) and those troops are the ones that she led for the remainder of the time she was active in Girl Scouts, right into her 70s.
I think they finally kind of “retired” her by telling her there were fewer troops that last year and there wasn’t one for her anymore. They gave her a plaque thanking her for all her contributions, but I think they had decided they needed some new blood. Mom still liked teaching the campfires and the knots, while the Girl Scouts had moved on to trying to instill “self-esteem” and other modernistic ideas. I felt bad for her, but as with everything else, she took it in stride and didn’t let it get her down.
A few years later she received a letter from a woman in Florida who had once been one of her Girl Scouts. She had decided to write to my mother and tell her how much she had appreciated the things she learned from her in Girl Scouts.
A friend of mine, another one of her former Girl Scouts, also wrote to her later on telling her that she was now a Girl Scout leader herself. I think my mother felt good to know that her efforts were appreciated. And I’m sure there were many others who felt that way but never wrote to tell her.
Undaunted by the end of her Girl Scout career, my mom went back to watercolor painting, a talent she had been developing back in the old days. For the rest of her life, she painted idyllic scenes in Scotland and other locations; she painted her own Christmas cards each year until the last year of her life.
The other thing I get from my mother is her love of politics. She and my father were both dyed-in-the-wool , liberal Democrats. They worshipped FDR and JFK, were pro-civil rights, and pro-gay rights even back then. My mother had two good friends who were lesbians and they were part of our inner family circle – I loved going on our frequent visits to Jay and Claire, who treated me as if I were their niece.
My mother woke me up about midnight on Election Night in 1960 to let me listen to the returns coming in on my dad’s transistor radio, since she knew it would be the first presidential election I’d remember. I still remember hearing the announcer saying Kennedy was winning by 100,000 votes. Later, in 1968, she and I went around distributing campaign literature for Hubert Humphrey (since Bobby Kennedy didn’t live to be the nominee). My parents hated Nixon and we were very disappointed when that cliffhanger election was finally won by Nixon by a fraction of the vote.
Politics has always been a big part of my mother’s life, and right until the end she had CNN and MSNBC on all day and was still up on things. I remember when she got out of rehab at the nursing home in March she said she was thrilled to find out that the healthcare bill had passed (her roommate in the nursing home didn’t watch CNN, she watched soap operas, so Mom hadn’t been able to keep up with current events).
My mother had a little trouble with dates toward the end; when asked what year it was, she kept saying 1992. But if asked who the President was, she was able to correctly answer “Barack Obama.” I asked her once why she kept thinking it was 1992. She said “I guess because that was the last time someone I liked was President.” I’m glad that she was able to live to see another Democrat in the White House.
My mother was always a Boston Red Sox fan, having grown up in Massachusetts. She was born in 1918, the year they had last won the World Series – shortly before she was born. I too was a Red Sox fan for much of my life, until I met my husband, a Yankees fan. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox. I was glad my mother lived to see the Sox win not just one more championship, but two, before she died. My mother never gave up hope, and in the end, her optimism paid off.
Of course, another trait I get from Mom is my love of animals. My father had never had a pet when he was young, so it was Mom who brought in our first one, a beautiful tortoiseshell/tiger cat named Boots. She quickly became “his” cat but of course I loved her too. I was only about 3 when we got her so I grew up with her. Later we got another cat named Silly (I named him Silver Gray for his color, not very original – but we called him Silly). Still later, when I was 9, came our Pekingese dog, Suki, and then Mittens, a kitten I got on a sleepover at someone’s farm with my Girl Scout troop. Since my childhood, I’ve never been able to think of a house being a home without a pet, thanks to my mother.
Until the end of her life my mother always had a cat – the last one is Zoe, a tiny little 15-year-old orange tiger cat who has outlived her and will be coming to stay with us now. I know when my mother was in the hospital and nursing home for her rehab she missed Zoe a lot, as she kept looking for her and wondering where she was. I was happy to be able to see her sitting in her chair with Zoe in her lap those last couple of months. At least she got home to see her again.
Both of my parents gave me my love of writing and all things medical. Since both of them were medical writers, medical subjects were always discussed in our house, and medical books were around constantly.
My mother may have stopped working when I was born, but her love of writing continued to influence her life and was passed on to me. It is because of her I know the difference between “lay” and “lie,” “might” and “may,” and many other grammatical rules. One of her pet peeves was the use of “of” when it wasn’t needed – as in, “it’s not that big of a deal.” To the last, she corrected me on that. Another usage she deplored was the use of “anymore” without a negative. For instance, “He’s really tired anymore.” Correctly it should be used only with a negative, such as “He doesn’t have any energy anymore.” A few years ago I even encouraged her to write some blog posts which I posted on a blog I opened for her – it is still on Blogspot, here: Marge's Words to the Wise.
I can also credit my mother with my choice of a college – her own Simmons College. Originally I hadn’t intended to go to the same school my mother did; but once she took me up to Boston I fell in love with the area and I liked the campus and the people I met there. It is also a women’s college, and I am very grateful for having gone there, since I think the supportive atmosphere of a woman’s college is what I needed to come out of my shell and give me the confidence I sorely lacked during high school. Although originally a Biology major, I soon fell back to a more natural talent – writing – and majored in Journalism. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, even though my career was in market research. Good writing is important in any job.
My love of travel I can also trace to my mother. I think if my father had been on his own he probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere outside the metro area. My mother first introduced him, and then me, to her beloved Cape Cod, where she’d been vacationing since she was a child. But then she branched out and we made two trips to England and Scotland, as she had always loved all things Scottish, which she traced to the small amount of Wallace blood she had in her ancestry. Then when I was older, she and my dad went on to travel to various places in Europe, including a trip to Paris and Amsterdam that she always remembered fondly. I think her favorite trip was to Israel in 1990. She was proud that she swam in the Dead Sea and saw all the historic sites in Jerusalem.
Once I met DH and we started traveling together, we took my parents to Scotland twice for visits to my mother’s favorite country. She loved seeing all the old places she remembered and her beautiful “green velvet mountains,” as she called them.
Last, I’d have to say that any optimistic attitudes I have about life come from my mother. She always saw the bright side of every dark cloud, and truly seemed to believe that bad things would never happen. Even to the end I don’t think she really believed her smoking had anything to do with her lung problems. You can call it denial or you can call it optimism – I’ll choose to call it optimism.
My mother was always disappointed I never had children. Although she has grandchildren through my half-sister Joy, they are of course only related to our father and not by blood to her. She sometimes bemoaned the fact that I will have no one to pass on our few family heirlooms to, and that her family line would die out with me. She said that my having children would have been her “immortality.”
I disagree. Whether or not there is an afterlife – and let’s face it, no one knows for sure – anyone’s immortality is probably best expressed by how their lives affected others who came in contact with them when they were here on earth. Each of us is like a pebble thrown in a pond – the concentric ripples that come out from the center reach far beyond the one pebble, and roll toward distant shores.
I like to think of all the girls my mother came in contact with during her years as a Girl Scout leader, and how they are now passing her love of nature down to their own children – or their own Girl Scout troops – and beyond. I like to think that even my humble efforts at blogging, which would have never happened without the interest in writing that was passed on to me, may influence someone somewhere about some subject that I’ve written about. We never know what we do that will affect someone else, and that is the beauty of the kind of immortality I’m talking about.
I remember once a long time ago I asked my mother if she was afraid of dying, or did she ever think about death, and she said no, she didn’t worry about that; she felt there would “always be a little more time.” I think she thought that to the very end too, which is why I told her I’d take her to the Cape later in the summer just as she was breathing her last. I wanted her to go out thinking she still had that little bit more time.
I hope somewhere, she is having a lot more time. But I won’t know until my own time comes.
Below is the sunset over the pond at Cape Cod, which my husband took the night my mother died. She would be happy to know there was a beautiful sunset in her honor, as she always loved a good sunset.
The last night before she died, I had gone to see her in the hospital and could see how weak and unhappy she was.
I had sent my husband up to Cape Cod that day because that week was the week we had originally booked to take my mother up for one last trip to the Cape, and the cottages were paid for. His dad was going to join us on Monday so I told him to go anyway and at least he and Dad could enjoy a week up there. So I was alone that night after I left my mother in the hospital, and I didn’t feel like cooking for myself.
So where else would I go but Star Tavern, where all the waitresses know me and I could sit at the bar and have a pizza and some wine, and think? I arrived and found myself a seat at the bar. The woman behind the bar asked me what I’d like and I ordered a glass of wine and a mushroom pizza. There was a man sitting next to me who turned out to be her husband, and I started talking to him, telling him about my mother’s situation.
They say angels come in all forms and perhaps he was one of them. He had gone through the same thing with his mother in 1994, and told me that I couldn’t ask my mother to make the decision to end her lifesaving care. He said I had to make the decision for her. He said he did it for his mother and it was the best decision he ever made, that it gave him control over the situation and he was able to be sure to be there with her when she died. “You have to make the decision, not her,” he emphasized.
When I left that night and went home I knew what I had to do.
The next morning I called the hospital and told them that when I got there I wanted my mother taken off the bi-pap machine and that I wanted to let her go peacefully.
My aunt and I arrived at the hospital at around 11:30 and sat with my mother for about an hour, talking and reminiscing about happy times in our lives together. My mother was alert and was listening to us. Then finally the doctor’s orders to take off the mask were finalized and the nurse came in and removed it. I looked at Mom and said, “I’m here, Mom,” and she smiled at me. My aunt later told me my mother had squeezed her hand at the same time.
A few minutes later she had trouble breathing so I told the nurse and she came in and administered morphine to calm her…she must have been close to the end because within five minutes she gently stopped breathing and was gone.
Naturally I am sad, and of course I still keep reliving that scene in my mind, and thinking about all the decisions I’d made or events that had happened that had led up to that moment. Should I have stayed home that last weekend she got so sick instead of going to the cabin? If she’d gone to the hospital sooner, would she still be OK? Should I have let her go when she choked on the milk five days earlier, so she wouldn’t have suffered with the infection? Should I have said something to the doctor when he ordered the additional diuretic two weeks earlier, when I knew my mother could easily become dehydrated as she had once before?
But when it all came down to it, I knew I was quibbling about details, about days or weeks, not months of life. My mother was 91 and she had lived a good long life – and was never ill until the last few months of it. My mother hated being sick; she considered it some kind of moral failing. I knew she hated being an invalid and wouldn’t have wanted to keep going in the condition she was in.
Rather than have a viewing, I decided to have her cremated and have a memorial service later, in June. I rode up to Cape Cod that Monday with my father-in-law and we enjoyed a peaceful week at the Cape, reminiscing about my mother and remembering all the good times she had there with us. We had the funeral home divide her ashes so I could bring some of them up to the Cape and scatter them there later this summer; the rest are buried next to my father in the cemetery.
So now I’m left with the other tasks that fall on those who are left when a loved one passes. I worked with the funeral home to finalize her obituary – how do you sum up someone’s life in a few paragraphs? Next comes the planning of the memorial service, which will have a bagpiper play at it as my mother once said she wanted at her funeral. And finally, the mundane things: canceling the cable TV, the telephone service, the newspaper subscription; cleaning out the apartment.
Once all that is done, perhaps I can start thinking about something else. But right now I am still trying to think of a way to honor my mother’s life with something longer than the brief paragraph in the newspaper: “active for many years in the Community Church, sang in the choir, medical writer, avid bowler, Girl Scout leader for over 25 years…” Yes, all those things were important, but don’t sum up who my mother was.
To begin with, she grew up in Massachusetts but once she graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a journalism degree, she took the big step of leaving home and coming to live in New York City, working at a small publication in her first job. I always thought that was pretty brave and rather glamorous.
She then moved to New Jersey and worked for Hoffman LaRoche, writing for their in-house magazine, the Roche Review, for a number of years, before getting a job at a medical advertising agency, Paul Klempner Agency, where she met my father. After they married in 1951, they were very active in the Nutley Little Theater, taking part in a number of plays. When I was born, my mother stopped working, because back then, that's what you did. I don't think she ever really minded, though. She once told me that raising a child is the most important thing she could have done.
In 1962 when we moved up to Penfield, New York, she and my dad were founding members of their little theater group, the Penfield Players. I grew up hanging out at rehearsals and helping my parents learn their lines. Both of them were in the old classic, Arsenic and Old Lace, once in Nutley, once in Penfield. My mother played Aunt Martha in Nutley and Aunt Abby in Penfield; my father Dr. Einstein in both productions. Lines from that play became family jokes for years thereafter..."I've completely lost track of Mr. Spenalzo," for instance, was a line we used whenever we had trouble finding something at home.
My mother also was active in the neighborhood up there, putting her journalism skills to work writing a neighborhood newsletter for the neighborhood association, as well as continuing to be a Girl Scout leader, which she had begun when I was in the Brownies back in Nutley.
We moved back to New Jersey in 1967 as my father got a job in New York at another medical advertising agency, and my parents didn't move again after that. After my father died, my mother moved into the senior citizens apartment down the street from me and enjoyed her time there for four years.
My mother enjoyed telling stories about her time in college, and always remembered the Hurricane of 1938, the unnamed hurricane that unexpectedly slammed into New England one fall. She was trying to make her way home from college in the middle of the storm and had to spend the night at a gas station because the roads were blocked by fallen trees.
She also reminisced about her days as an air raid warden during World War II, which was after she had moved down to New Jersey. She had to go around and knock on people's doors to tell them to turn off their lights during air raid warnings.
My mother's life was not without its tragedies. When I was about two years old, she had another baby, my sister Jessica. Sadly, Jessica was born with a heart defect and back then they couldn't operate on a tiny baby the way they can now. She only lived to be four months old. My mother didn't have another child after that, as by then she was 37, which in those days was considered "too old."
Also, in his later years, my father had bouts of intractable depression and twice had to be hospitalized after attempted suicides; then in his last years he had dementia and eventually had to be in a nursing home before he passed away in 2005. But my mother took it all in stride. She was the kind of person who did what she had to do, didn't complain and didn't bemoan her fate.
I think the best way to describe her personality is just plain nice. It sounds trite to say someone is “nice,” but niceness is woefully underrated in this world. With the exception of Republicans, my mother never said a bad word about anyone, and was unfailingly polite until the very end. Even in the hospital during her last stay, whenever a nurse or aide came in and did anything for her, she always said “thank you.” Her home aides loved her because she was patient and sweet and never complained.
But of course she was more than just nice; she had plenty of personality, and certainly wasn’t without a temper from time to time. And back when I was growing up, of course there were plenty of times we got into arguments, as is natural. But as we got older we got along better and better and truly were in synch.
My mother always loved to read, and it was sad when her macular degeneration got too bad and she was no longer able to read on her own. So during the last two months I took to reading to her; we went through a couple of her beloved Dorothy Sayers short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, and I would read the comics in the paper to her every day. I hope it gave her back a little of the joy she got from reading.
Of course her love of reading was passed on to me – when I was a child she’d read me Winnie the Pooh and other stories, and I soon loved to read as much as she did. I read all her old favorites as well as many new books I discovered on my own, and still love to read to this day.
When I think back, many of the interests I have today were passed on to me by my mother.
It is from her that I get my love of nature – many a time we walked in the woods with our binoculars, bird watching together. She loved wildflowers, too, and was always pointing out the special ones, the Lady Slippers or the Jack-in-the-Pulpit or the Solomon’s Seal.
As my Girl Scout leader, she took me and the troops on many a campout, where we learned to build fires, tie knots, cook on our tin-can stoves with our Buddy Burners, and hike in the woods. I remember one night we kids were all in a tent telling ghost stories and she came around the outside of the tent and went “Woooooh!” and scared the bejeesus out of us. My mother later told me she never realized a bunch of 10 and 11 –year-olds could make such a loud screeching noise!
After I got older, Mom continued to be a Girl Scout leader – the Junior age group was her favorite (the 5th and 6th graders) and those troops are the ones that she led for the remainder of the time she was active in Girl Scouts, right into her 70s.
I think they finally kind of “retired” her by telling her there were fewer troops that last year and there wasn’t one for her anymore. They gave her a plaque thanking her for all her contributions, but I think they had decided they needed some new blood. Mom still liked teaching the campfires and the knots, while the Girl Scouts had moved on to trying to instill “self-esteem” and other modernistic ideas. I felt bad for her, but as with everything else, she took it in stride and didn’t let it get her down.
A few years later she received a letter from a woman in Florida who had once been one of her Girl Scouts. She had decided to write to my mother and tell her how much she had appreciated the things she learned from her in Girl Scouts.
A friend of mine, another one of her former Girl Scouts, also wrote to her later on telling her that she was now a Girl Scout leader herself. I think my mother felt good to know that her efforts were appreciated. And I’m sure there were many others who felt that way but never wrote to tell her.
Undaunted by the end of her Girl Scout career, my mom went back to watercolor painting, a talent she had been developing back in the old days. For the rest of her life, she painted idyllic scenes in Scotland and other locations; she painted her own Christmas cards each year until the last year of her life.
The other thing I get from my mother is her love of politics. She and my father were both dyed-in-the-wool , liberal Democrats. They worshipped FDR and JFK, were pro-civil rights, and pro-gay rights even back then. My mother had two good friends who were lesbians and they were part of our inner family circle – I loved going on our frequent visits to Jay and Claire, who treated me as if I were their niece.
My mother woke me up about midnight on Election Night in 1960 to let me listen to the returns coming in on my dad’s transistor radio, since she knew it would be the first presidential election I’d remember. I still remember hearing the announcer saying Kennedy was winning by 100,000 votes. Later, in 1968, she and I went around distributing campaign literature for Hubert Humphrey (since Bobby Kennedy didn’t live to be the nominee). My parents hated Nixon and we were very disappointed when that cliffhanger election was finally won by Nixon by a fraction of the vote.
Politics has always been a big part of my mother’s life, and right until the end she had CNN and MSNBC on all day and was still up on things. I remember when she got out of rehab at the nursing home in March she said she was thrilled to find out that the healthcare bill had passed (her roommate in the nursing home didn’t watch CNN, she watched soap operas, so Mom hadn’t been able to keep up with current events).
My mother had a little trouble with dates toward the end; when asked what year it was, she kept saying 1992. But if asked who the President was, she was able to correctly answer “Barack Obama.” I asked her once why she kept thinking it was 1992. She said “I guess because that was the last time someone I liked was President.” I’m glad that she was able to live to see another Democrat in the White House.
My mother was always a Boston Red Sox fan, having grown up in Massachusetts. She was born in 1918, the year they had last won the World Series – shortly before she was born. I too was a Red Sox fan for much of my life, until I met my husband, a Yankees fan. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox. I was glad my mother lived to see the Sox win not just one more championship, but two, before she died. My mother never gave up hope, and in the end, her optimism paid off.
Of course, another trait I get from Mom is my love of animals. My father had never had a pet when he was young, so it was Mom who brought in our first one, a beautiful tortoiseshell/tiger cat named Boots. She quickly became “his” cat but of course I loved her too. I was only about 3 when we got her so I grew up with her. Later we got another cat named Silly (I named him Silver Gray for his color, not very original – but we called him Silly). Still later, when I was 9, came our Pekingese dog, Suki, and then Mittens, a kitten I got on a sleepover at someone’s farm with my Girl Scout troop. Since my childhood, I’ve never been able to think of a house being a home without a pet, thanks to my mother.
Until the end of her life my mother always had a cat – the last one is Zoe, a tiny little 15-year-old orange tiger cat who has outlived her and will be coming to stay with us now. I know when my mother was in the hospital and nursing home for her rehab she missed Zoe a lot, as she kept looking for her and wondering where she was. I was happy to be able to see her sitting in her chair with Zoe in her lap those last couple of months. At least she got home to see her again.
Both of my parents gave me my love of writing and all things medical. Since both of them were medical writers, medical subjects were always discussed in our house, and medical books were around constantly.
My mother may have stopped working when I was born, but her love of writing continued to influence her life and was passed on to me. It is because of her I know the difference between “lay” and “lie,” “might” and “may,” and many other grammatical rules. One of her pet peeves was the use of “of” when it wasn’t needed – as in, “it’s not that big of a deal.” To the last, she corrected me on that. Another usage she deplored was the use of “anymore” without a negative. For instance, “He’s really tired anymore.” Correctly it should be used only with a negative, such as “He doesn’t have any energy anymore.” A few years ago I even encouraged her to write some blog posts which I posted on a blog I opened for her – it is still on Blogspot, here: Marge's Words to the Wise.
I can also credit my mother with my choice of a college – her own Simmons College. Originally I hadn’t intended to go to the same school my mother did; but once she took me up to Boston I fell in love with the area and I liked the campus and the people I met there. It is also a women’s college, and I am very grateful for having gone there, since I think the supportive atmosphere of a woman’s college is what I needed to come out of my shell and give me the confidence I sorely lacked during high school. Although originally a Biology major, I soon fell back to a more natural talent – writing – and majored in Journalism. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, even though my career was in market research. Good writing is important in any job.
My love of travel I can also trace to my mother. I think if my father had been on his own he probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere outside the metro area. My mother first introduced him, and then me, to her beloved Cape Cod, where she’d been vacationing since she was a child. But then she branched out and we made two trips to England and Scotland, as she had always loved all things Scottish, which she traced to the small amount of Wallace blood she had in her ancestry. Then when I was older, she and my dad went on to travel to various places in Europe, including a trip to Paris and Amsterdam that she always remembered fondly. I think her favorite trip was to Israel in 1990. She was proud that she swam in the Dead Sea and saw all the historic sites in Jerusalem.
Once I met DH and we started traveling together, we took my parents to Scotland twice for visits to my mother’s favorite country. She loved seeing all the old places she remembered and her beautiful “green velvet mountains,” as she called them.
Last, I’d have to say that any optimistic attitudes I have about life come from my mother. She always saw the bright side of every dark cloud, and truly seemed to believe that bad things would never happen. Even to the end I don’t think she really believed her smoking had anything to do with her lung problems. You can call it denial or you can call it optimism – I’ll choose to call it optimism.
My mother was always disappointed I never had children. Although she has grandchildren through my half-sister Joy, they are of course only related to our father and not by blood to her. She sometimes bemoaned the fact that I will have no one to pass on our few family heirlooms to, and that her family line would die out with me. She said that my having children would have been her “immortality.”
I disagree. Whether or not there is an afterlife – and let’s face it, no one knows for sure – anyone’s immortality is probably best expressed by how their lives affected others who came in contact with them when they were here on earth. Each of us is like a pebble thrown in a pond – the concentric ripples that come out from the center reach far beyond the one pebble, and roll toward distant shores.
I like to think of all the girls my mother came in contact with during her years as a Girl Scout leader, and how they are now passing her love of nature down to their own children – or their own Girl Scout troops – and beyond. I like to think that even my humble efforts at blogging, which would have never happened without the interest in writing that was passed on to me, may influence someone somewhere about some subject that I’ve written about. We never know what we do that will affect someone else, and that is the beauty of the kind of immortality I’m talking about.
I remember once a long time ago I asked my mother if she was afraid of dying, or did she ever think about death, and she said no, she didn’t worry about that; she felt there would “always be a little more time.” I think she thought that to the very end too, which is why I told her I’d take her to the Cape later in the summer just as she was breathing her last. I wanted her to go out thinking she still had that little bit more time.
I hope somewhere, she is having a lot more time. But I won’t know until my own time comes.
Below is the sunset over the pond at Cape Cod, which my husband took the night my mother died. She would be happy to know there was a beautiful sunset in her honor, as she always loved a good sunset.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Alone Time
A month ago yesterday my mother came home from the nursing home where she was having rehabilitation.
As usual in such situations, the nursing home gave very little warning that her Medicare coverage was being withdrawn because she had "stopped progressing" in her rehabilitation. There was a "family meeting" on a Friday and I was informed that she had to leave by the following Wednesday, March 24, and oh, by the way, she needs 24/7 care now.
I don't mean to be cranky about this; it is the way things work, and nursing homes can get in trouble with Medicare if they let a patient stay longer just because it isn't convenient for them to come home so soon.
Be that as it may, it basically gave me two business days to set up care for my mother and make arrangements for whatever she would need when she returned to her apartment.
Luckily, with the help of information supplied by the nursing home administrator, I was able to line up overnight care for my mother through an agency, and did receive all of the necessary equipment in time for her return to her studio apartment. She needs to be on oxygen, so that included an oxygen concentrator machine, as well as a wheelchair, a walker, and a hospital bed so her feet could be put up at night.
At first I had the overnight aides coming at 9 p.m. and leaving at 9 a.m., but that meant I had to rush over there by 9 a.m. every morning, seven days a week. If I wanted to get away for an hour here or there I had to get my long-suffering husband or my aunt (who luckily lives one floor above my mother) to come Mom-sit. I am so grateful to both of them for all their help. My husband has come over to Mom's apartment and made us all dinner or we've brought her to our house and had dinner together a number of times, and he is always ready and willing to lend a hand.
I eventually changed the aides' hours to 11 p.m. to 11 a.m., which gave me back my mornings, and hired another aide privately three evenings a week so I could escape by 7 p.m. for a more normal evening.
The rest of the time I've been spending with my mother. And I'm happy to report that mentally she has improved remarkably since she got out of the nursing home. It makes me realize how important it is that health coverage for seniors should include at-home care instead of only nursing home care.
No matter how good a nursing home may be (and the one she was at was lovely and the people couldn't have been nicer) it is still not the same as being in familiar surroundings. Some people do well in a nursing home, if they're naturally gregarious and enjoy having a lot of activity around them. My mother isn't one of them. She found the ongoing commotion confusing and the soap operas her roommate favored on television made her think people all around her were in terrible predicaments. Her roommate also watched the Catholic Mass on television and I'd come to visit my mother and she'd be expecting me to take her to church. So I'm so grateful she was able to come home and is getting back to her normal self. And I'm lucky I was able to retire just when my mother needed me.
However, I had no idea how all-consuming being a caregiver can be. I figured if I did the daytime care, I'd be able to sit and blog or play on Facebook or read a book, chatting occasionally with my mother and making her meals. No such luck. For one thing, my mother's eyesight has gotten too bad for her to read, so she is only able to watch (mostly listen to) television, so I feel kind of bad reading while she can't. The other reason is that just as I might be getting into something, either in a book or on the computer, Mom has a request..."Could you please put another pillow behind my back?" or "I need to go to the bathroom." She can walk by herself but needs help.
Sometimes she'll take a nap but inevitably just as I'm settling in to watch one of my own personal guilty pleasures (such as one of HGTV's home makeovers or a cooking show) she'll wake up and want to get up again.
Mom loves MSNBC and CNN so that's what's on most of the day. I am now more well-informed on political issues than I ever was before. And I'm grateful that she is into politics because we have that in common and now that she's coming around again mentally we can discuss the issues, and it's great.
But the only problem is these programs are all covering the same Big Stories every day, multiple times. One day they kept showing a speech by Sarah Palin campaigning for John McCain that nearly drove me insane. If I had to hear her screechy annoying voice once more I might have lost control. I finally had to switch to a public television station and watch a cooking show, much to my mother's dismay.
The other thing that takes up a lot of time is dealing with the comings and goings of the aides, and the visiting nurse who comes twice a week but I never know when until a half hour before when she calls to say she's on her way. Plus there was a physical therapist who came three times a week for the first month. And on top of that I had to get Mom to two different doctor appointments during this past month when she was still quite unsteady and needed the wheelchair.
At first I was doing fine with all of this, but then it started to wear on me and as my mother got better and I was no longer expecting her to die at any moment, I found myself getting cranky to her by the late afternoon, and then of course feeling really guilty about it.
I found the cocktail hour was getting earlier each day. I'd go home for an hour while my aunt sat with Mom and I would walk the dog and then sneak a glass of wine on the deck, sitting in the sun. Or I'd bring a bottle over to Mom's and have two or three glasses of wine while she'd have her evening sherry, which she is now able to enjoy once again. I'd get an evening off and go out with friends and drink way more than usual just to de-stress.
I started having trouble sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night confused, worrying about my mother, sometimes not even sure if I was in my own house after being at her apartment all day.
I finally realize what my problem is - I'm not good at being with anybody all day long. I was brought up as an only child and I need my alone time!
So I'm finally having some this weekend. I managed to get two aides to cover the daytime with my mother, and the usual overnight aides are covering the nights. And we headed off to our cabin in the Adirondacks for three nights.
On the way up Route 22 from Whitehall to our turnoff there was a large male turkey in the middle of the road, strutting his stuff, showing off for a modest female who was at the side of the road, studiously pretending to ignore him. We had to wait while he ambled off the road.
Then came the turn toward our cabin, and then we were going up the familiar gravel road. As we pulled into the property in the early twilight we saw our personal Great Horned Owl fly across the pond from one tree to another. Later that night we heard him calling in the woods.
This weekend was the first time we were able to get to the cabin since the first weekend in December, and we were pleased to find it just as we left it. No one broke in, no trees fell on it, and it didn't burn in our absence. Within a half hour of arriving, we had the propane flowing, the generator generating, the well pump pumping, and the water running.
We've managed to have beautiful weather even though at home it is now raining. Somehow we always manage to get lucky with the weather.
Ed's dad joined us on Saturday and he has been enjoying his own escape - from visiting the nursing home where Ed's mom is every day, twice a day. No matter how much you love someone, you need time away in order to get back to them again with your patience intact.
When I return to the "real world," I'll need to reconsider the care my mother is getting, as the expense is untenable. We will be getting her on Medicaid shortly, but it won't cover the amount of care she has been receiving.
Somehow there has to be a balance achieved between leaving her alone some of the time but not endangering her welfare. I don't know yet what that balance will be. As she has improved I think she may be able to stay alone at night but won't know until I stay there myself and see how she is.
Long-term care is another area of our health care system that desperately needs reform. As the Baby Boomers age, I am hoping our generation will take on this task because you know we will not be willing to go gentle into that good night without making some major changes in how we are treated on that last journey!
Naturally from my constant exposure to news programs over the past month, I have a lot of fodder for commentary here but first wanted to let you all know why my posts have been so few and far between.
I am incensed about the new immigration law in Arizona, am glad that President Obama will get to appoint another Supreme Court Justice, and have lots of other opinions on various subjects to share. Baxter too is waiting patiently to get his turn to blog, so either he or I will be back soon to do so!
As usual in such situations, the nursing home gave very little warning that her Medicare coverage was being withdrawn because she had "stopped progressing" in her rehabilitation. There was a "family meeting" on a Friday and I was informed that she had to leave by the following Wednesday, March 24, and oh, by the way, she needs 24/7 care now.
I don't mean to be cranky about this; it is the way things work, and nursing homes can get in trouble with Medicare if they let a patient stay longer just because it isn't convenient for them to come home so soon.
Be that as it may, it basically gave me two business days to set up care for my mother and make arrangements for whatever she would need when she returned to her apartment.
Luckily, with the help of information supplied by the nursing home administrator, I was able to line up overnight care for my mother through an agency, and did receive all of the necessary equipment in time for her return to her studio apartment. She needs to be on oxygen, so that included an oxygen concentrator machine, as well as a wheelchair, a walker, and a hospital bed so her feet could be put up at night.
At first I had the overnight aides coming at 9 p.m. and leaving at 9 a.m., but that meant I had to rush over there by 9 a.m. every morning, seven days a week. If I wanted to get away for an hour here or there I had to get my long-suffering husband or my aunt (who luckily lives one floor above my mother) to come Mom-sit. I am so grateful to both of them for all their help. My husband has come over to Mom's apartment and made us all dinner or we've brought her to our house and had dinner together a number of times, and he is always ready and willing to lend a hand.
I eventually changed the aides' hours to 11 p.m. to 11 a.m., which gave me back my mornings, and hired another aide privately three evenings a week so I could escape by 7 p.m. for a more normal evening.
The rest of the time I've been spending with my mother. And I'm happy to report that mentally she has improved remarkably since she got out of the nursing home. It makes me realize how important it is that health coverage for seniors should include at-home care instead of only nursing home care.
No matter how good a nursing home may be (and the one she was at was lovely and the people couldn't have been nicer) it is still not the same as being in familiar surroundings. Some people do well in a nursing home, if they're naturally gregarious and enjoy having a lot of activity around them. My mother isn't one of them. She found the ongoing commotion confusing and the soap operas her roommate favored on television made her think people all around her were in terrible predicaments. Her roommate also watched the Catholic Mass on television and I'd come to visit my mother and she'd be expecting me to take her to church. So I'm so grateful she was able to come home and is getting back to her normal self. And I'm lucky I was able to retire just when my mother needed me.
However, I had no idea how all-consuming being a caregiver can be. I figured if I did the daytime care, I'd be able to sit and blog or play on Facebook or read a book, chatting occasionally with my mother and making her meals. No such luck. For one thing, my mother's eyesight has gotten too bad for her to read, so she is only able to watch (mostly listen to) television, so I feel kind of bad reading while she can't. The other reason is that just as I might be getting into something, either in a book or on the computer, Mom has a request..."Could you please put another pillow behind my back?" or "I need to go to the bathroom." She can walk by herself but needs help.
Sometimes she'll take a nap but inevitably just as I'm settling in to watch one of my own personal guilty pleasures (such as one of HGTV's home makeovers or a cooking show) she'll wake up and want to get up again.
Mom loves MSNBC and CNN so that's what's on most of the day. I am now more well-informed on political issues than I ever was before. And I'm grateful that she is into politics because we have that in common and now that she's coming around again mentally we can discuss the issues, and it's great.
But the only problem is these programs are all covering the same Big Stories every day, multiple times. One day they kept showing a speech by Sarah Palin campaigning for John McCain that nearly drove me insane. If I had to hear her screechy annoying voice once more I might have lost control. I finally had to switch to a public television station and watch a cooking show, much to my mother's dismay.
The other thing that takes up a lot of time is dealing with the comings and goings of the aides, and the visiting nurse who comes twice a week but I never know when until a half hour before when she calls to say she's on her way. Plus there was a physical therapist who came three times a week for the first month. And on top of that I had to get Mom to two different doctor appointments during this past month when she was still quite unsteady and needed the wheelchair.
At first I was doing fine with all of this, but then it started to wear on me and as my mother got better and I was no longer expecting her to die at any moment, I found myself getting cranky to her by the late afternoon, and then of course feeling really guilty about it.
I found the cocktail hour was getting earlier each day. I'd go home for an hour while my aunt sat with Mom and I would walk the dog and then sneak a glass of wine on the deck, sitting in the sun. Or I'd bring a bottle over to Mom's and have two or three glasses of wine while she'd have her evening sherry, which she is now able to enjoy once again. I'd get an evening off and go out with friends and drink way more than usual just to de-stress.
I started having trouble sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night confused, worrying about my mother, sometimes not even sure if I was in my own house after being at her apartment all day.
I finally realize what my problem is - I'm not good at being with anybody all day long. I was brought up as an only child and I need my alone time!
So I'm finally having some this weekend. I managed to get two aides to cover the daytime with my mother, and the usual overnight aides are covering the nights. And we headed off to our cabin in the Adirondacks for three nights.
On the way up Route 22 from Whitehall to our turnoff there was a large male turkey in the middle of the road, strutting his stuff, showing off for a modest female who was at the side of the road, studiously pretending to ignore him. We had to wait while he ambled off the road.
Then came the turn toward our cabin, and then we were going up the familiar gravel road. As we pulled into the property in the early twilight we saw our personal Great Horned Owl fly across the pond from one tree to another. Later that night we heard him calling in the woods.
This weekend was the first time we were able to get to the cabin since the first weekend in December, and we were pleased to find it just as we left it. No one broke in, no trees fell on it, and it didn't burn in our absence. Within a half hour of arriving, we had the propane flowing, the generator generating, the well pump pumping, and the water running.
We've managed to have beautiful weather even though at home it is now raining. Somehow we always manage to get lucky with the weather.
Ed's dad joined us on Saturday and he has been enjoying his own escape - from visiting the nursing home where Ed's mom is every day, twice a day. No matter how much you love someone, you need time away in order to get back to them again with your patience intact.
When I return to the "real world," I'll need to reconsider the care my mother is getting, as the expense is untenable. We will be getting her on Medicaid shortly, but it won't cover the amount of care she has been receiving.
Somehow there has to be a balance achieved between leaving her alone some of the time but not endangering her welfare. I don't know yet what that balance will be. As she has improved I think she may be able to stay alone at night but won't know until I stay there myself and see how she is.
Long-term care is another area of our health care system that desperately needs reform. As the Baby Boomers age, I am hoping our generation will take on this task because you know we will not be willing to go gentle into that good night without making some major changes in how we are treated on that last journey!
Naturally from my constant exposure to news programs over the past month, I have a lot of fodder for commentary here but first wanted to let you all know why my posts have been so few and far between.
I am incensed about the new immigration law in Arizona, am glad that President Obama will get to appoint another Supreme Court Justice, and have lots of other opinions on various subjects to share. Baxter too is waiting patiently to get his turn to blog, so either he or I will be back soon to do so!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Cabin Fever
This endless winter seems to be finally nearing its end. We've had several beautiful almost-spring days in a row; even today, which was supposed to be drizzly, has been relatively pleasant.
At last, birds are singing in the morning, and the Mockingbird and his mate have apparently staked out their territory. I saw him sitting on a high wire pouring out his usual torrent of mixed-up birdsong, effortlessly moving from the Cardinal to the Robin's song, followed by a few scraps of other birds' songs that weren't quite recognizable. The Mockingbird is the only bird I know of in this area that actually sings in the middle of the night. I've often heard him at 1 or 2 a.m. during the breeding season.
Another morning when we were walking the dog we heard, far overhead, the sounds of Canada Geese honking. No, they weren't the usual non-migrating New Jersey geese just going from one office park to another. These were serious geese. There were two big long lines of them, high above, which gradually managed to come together and start forming the requisite V. They were clearly headed north and in it for the long haul.
The snow has all melted except for a few lumps here and there where the plows had piled it up; now it has changed into that crunchy icy stuff, flecked with black. (I always wonder where the black comes from. The road? The air? The snow itself?).
I've seen buds on one or two of the early shrubs and trees. We even managed to sit outside on our deck on a couple of afternoons when the temperatures hovered around 60 degrees.
But the grass is still brown and the trees are still bare and the next four days are supposed to be chilly and rainy. We are still stuck in the house. That is one form of "cabin fever" from which we are suffering.
The other form of cabin fever we have is that urge to get away from it all and go to our cabin in the Adirondacks. Unfortunately spring up there is 2-3 weeks behind New Jersey. I'm sure there is still plenty of snow on the ground and it will still be cold enough at night to freeze pipes for a few weeks yet, so we are still stuck in New Jersey for another month or so.
In the meantime, my days are filled with errands and visits to my mother in the nursing home, where she is still getting rehabilitation. It's amazing how the days fly by when they are all so similar.
Unfortunately, my mother seems to be developing dementia as time goes by. At first I thought it was due to her lung condition, but as it turns out her blood gas levels are all normal, so it isn't due to that. Interestingly, I just read an article about nicotine containing compounds that may actually be beneficial in preventing or mitigating Alzheimer's Disease. There are a number of recent studies that back up this possible connection, although of course it is far from a cure.
My mother, a lifelong smoker, smoked until she went into the hospital. She has now been nicotine-free for over a month and her congition has declined markedly. I realize it could be the result of her recent illness, stress, or hospitalization, but I am wondering if she would have done better if she'd had the nicotine patch as she did the last time she was hospitalized. I wish I had asked for it, in retrospect. Hindsight is always 20-20, as the saying goes.
I hope to talk to the doctor about her condition and see if Aricept or another drug might have the same beneficial effects without her having to go on the nicotine patch. Of course, I know that it may be too late to bring her back to the way she was, and I may need to accept that and just enjoy the time we have left together in whatever condition she may be in.
Thinking of the migrating birds, and my mother's long life, now closing in on its end, reminds me of the Sandy Denny song, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." I first knew this song as it was sung by Judy Collins, and her bell-like voice is just unmatched by anyone. So I will post a video of her singing the song in concert in 2000.
At last, birds are singing in the morning, and the Mockingbird and his mate have apparently staked out their territory. I saw him sitting on a high wire pouring out his usual torrent of mixed-up birdsong, effortlessly moving from the Cardinal to the Robin's song, followed by a few scraps of other birds' songs that weren't quite recognizable. The Mockingbird is the only bird I know of in this area that actually sings in the middle of the night. I've often heard him at 1 or 2 a.m. during the breeding season.
Another morning when we were walking the dog we heard, far overhead, the sounds of Canada Geese honking. No, they weren't the usual non-migrating New Jersey geese just going from one office park to another. These were serious geese. There were two big long lines of them, high above, which gradually managed to come together and start forming the requisite V. They were clearly headed north and in it for the long haul.
The snow has all melted except for a few lumps here and there where the plows had piled it up; now it has changed into that crunchy icy stuff, flecked with black. (I always wonder where the black comes from. The road? The air? The snow itself?).
I've seen buds on one or two of the early shrubs and trees. We even managed to sit outside on our deck on a couple of afternoons when the temperatures hovered around 60 degrees.
But the grass is still brown and the trees are still bare and the next four days are supposed to be chilly and rainy. We are still stuck in the house. That is one form of "cabin fever" from which we are suffering.
The other form of cabin fever we have is that urge to get away from it all and go to our cabin in the Adirondacks. Unfortunately spring up there is 2-3 weeks behind New Jersey. I'm sure there is still plenty of snow on the ground and it will still be cold enough at night to freeze pipes for a few weeks yet, so we are still stuck in New Jersey for another month or so.
In the meantime, my days are filled with errands and visits to my mother in the nursing home, where she is still getting rehabilitation. It's amazing how the days fly by when they are all so similar.
Unfortunately, my mother seems to be developing dementia as time goes by. At first I thought it was due to her lung condition, but as it turns out her blood gas levels are all normal, so it isn't due to that. Interestingly, I just read an article about nicotine containing compounds that may actually be beneficial in preventing or mitigating Alzheimer's Disease. There are a number of recent studies that back up this possible connection, although of course it is far from a cure.
My mother, a lifelong smoker, smoked until she went into the hospital. She has now been nicotine-free for over a month and her congition has declined markedly. I realize it could be the result of her recent illness, stress, or hospitalization, but I am wondering if she would have done better if she'd had the nicotine patch as she did the last time she was hospitalized. I wish I had asked for it, in retrospect. Hindsight is always 20-20, as the saying goes.
I hope to talk to the doctor about her condition and see if Aricept or another drug might have the same beneficial effects without her having to go on the nicotine patch. Of course, I know that it may be too late to bring her back to the way she was, and I may need to accept that and just enjoy the time we have left together in whatever condition she may be in.
Thinking of the migrating birds, and my mother's long life, now closing in on its end, reminds me of the Sandy Denny song, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." I first knew this song as it was sung by Judy Collins, and her bell-like voice is just unmatched by anyone. So I will post a video of her singing the song in concert in 2000.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
My Three Mothers
I consider myself to be very lucky that at my age, nearly 55, I still have my mother with me, living down the street in her cozy senior citizen's apartment.
But in fact, I am lucky enough to have three mothers. I am truly blessed.
My husband's parents have always treated me as the daughter they never had (DH is an only child) and I really do feel as if his mother is another mother to me.
When we were all younger, DH's parents were always helping us; when we bought our fixer-upper of a house 21 years ago, they came up regularly to help us bring it back to its former glory. They single-handedly painted many of the rooms in the house, including the seemingly endless woodwork. They even wallpapered the living room for us!
We enjoyed going on many trips with them throughout the years; Portugal, Italy, and numerous times to Hawaii. And of course they welcomed us to their home for countless dinners and barbecues.
Adventurous travelers themselves, after my father-in-law retired, he and my mother-in-law went on some great trips of their own - an Asian cruise that stopped in Bali and Singapore; a trip to China and Hong Kong; and they went skiing in the Alps every winter until about three or four years ago when my mother-in-law could no longer ski. They were great role models for us - I only hope we will be as adventurous when we are that age.
Throughout our relationship, my mother-in-law was nothing like the mothers-in-law everyone jokes about. She bent over backwards not to interfere in our lives. An immaculate housekeeper herself, she ignored the clutter in our house, and if I apologized for it she would just laugh and say it looked lovely. No white gloves ever came out to test for dust! (And a good thing, too!)
Even though she probably wished for a grandchild, she never said a word to us wondering if it would ever happen. No "When are you going to have kids?" "When will you give me a grandchild?" She was just happy to spend time with us.
DH had been married before, but you would never know it - the name of the first wife never passed her lips for the entire time I have known her. No comparisons, good or bad, were ever made. As far as she was concerned, I walked on the same water her son did, and she made me feel like her own daughter.
Sadly, as you know, my mother-in-law now has Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home, but we are grateful to still have her with us on this Mother's Day.
Who is the third mother, you are probably wondering? That would be my aunt - my mother's sister. She was the sister who didn't marry, the one who ended up caring for my grandparents when they got old and frail. We were always close to her throughout my childhood and saw her almost every weekend.
When I was little she babysat for me, took me to the park, and sat on the floor and played with me when I'd come to visit. She and my grandmother would keep me entertained for hours while my mother went shopping or ran errands. One of our favorite games was "Button, button, who's got the button?" They would hide a button somewhere in the living room and I'd have to find it while they told me if I was "cold" or "warm." Kids nowadays probably wouldn't enjoy something so mundane but I thought it was great.
When I was a little older I thought my aunt was quite exotic, sort of a Mary Tyler Moore-type role model. She was the career woman of the family; she had a job down in Newark and was the supervisor of a lab at a company called Englehardt Industries, which processed and sold precious metals for industry. I thought it was quite impressive that she worked and had an important job like that. She went off on vacations with her girlfriends to the Virgin Islands and other far-off places; she took a tour of the Canadian Rockies by train; she went to Colorado and saw the Grand Canyon.
When I was in my early teens, she joined my parents and me on a trip to the British Isles and we had a grand time touring around together.
She's always been at every Mother's Day celebration because she deserves the same recognition as all the mothers out there. I always manage to find the appropriate card - "To an aunt who's like a mother to me" and we all celebrate together.
My mother and she are opposite sides of the same coin. My mother is the optimistic one who never worries; my aunt worries about everything. My mother is neat, my aunt more on the sloppy side. My mother sleeps till noon and is up till two a.m., my aunt is up at dawn and asleep before midnight. My mother is always late, my aunt is as punctual as Big Ben.
If you met them you'd practically think they were twins - two little ladies with similar features, one with wavy silver hair turning white, the other with darker, straighter hair, both with their glasses and smiling faces. But their personalities are opposites!
We always joke that I've inherited my aunt's worrying and sloppiness, and my mother's lateness and night-owl tendencies. I do think, though, that I have my mother's inherent optimism underneath my anxiety!
Since both DH's and my families were small, we always celebrated Mother's Day together. We'd have my mother and aunt, and DH's mom and dad over to our house and have one big get-together for Mother's Day.
This year we celebrated it separately for the first time.
My father-in-law brought my mother-in-law home to his house from the nursing home today for a Mother's Day brunch of waffles and ice cream. We met them there and helped Mom into the house in her wheelchair. It was her first time back at her home since she had gone into the nursing home in February. She seemed to be glad to be there and was talking a lot by the time she finished her waffles, not making a lot of sense most of the time, but I think we all understood what she meant.
After that DH and I came home and went over to my aunt's for Mother's Day dinner and had a nice evening with her and my mother.
So all in all, it was a good Mother's Day - with my three mothers.
Haiku for My Mom:
She was always there
Wielding the Mercurochrome
Whenever I scraped my knee
Then came the Band-Aid,
The kiss to "make it better,"
Off I ran again.
She made me my lunch
Peanut butter and jelly
And a glass of milk.
Oh, and carrot sticks.
Can't forget the carrot sticks.
And then a cookie.
I brought home a mouse
Please let me keep it Mommy!
It lived in a jar.
Then it got bigger.
It was time to set it free.
So we let it go.
She put up with me
When I found caterpillars
And kept them in jars.
They made their cocoons
And hibernated for weeks;
Became butterflies.
My mom loves nature
We used to go birdwatching
And hike in the woods.
She loves the Red Sox
She brought me up on baseball
It's still the best game!
When things got me down
I could always talk to Mom
She would lend an ear.
So here's to my mom
And my other two mothers
Happy Mother's Day!
But in fact, I am lucky enough to have three mothers. I am truly blessed.
My husband's parents have always treated me as the daughter they never had (DH is an only child) and I really do feel as if his mother is another mother to me.
When we were all younger, DH's parents were always helping us; when we bought our fixer-upper of a house 21 years ago, they came up regularly to help us bring it back to its former glory. They single-handedly painted many of the rooms in the house, including the seemingly endless woodwork. They even wallpapered the living room for us!
We enjoyed going on many trips with them throughout the years; Portugal, Italy, and numerous times to Hawaii. And of course they welcomed us to their home for countless dinners and barbecues.
Adventurous travelers themselves, after my father-in-law retired, he and my mother-in-law went on some great trips of their own - an Asian cruise that stopped in Bali and Singapore; a trip to China and Hong Kong; and they went skiing in the Alps every winter until about three or four years ago when my mother-in-law could no longer ski. They were great role models for us - I only hope we will be as adventurous when we are that age.
Throughout our relationship, my mother-in-law was nothing like the mothers-in-law everyone jokes about. She bent over backwards not to interfere in our lives. An immaculate housekeeper herself, she ignored the clutter in our house, and if I apologized for it she would just laugh and say it looked lovely. No white gloves ever came out to test for dust! (And a good thing, too!)
Even though she probably wished for a grandchild, she never said a word to us wondering if it would ever happen. No "When are you going to have kids?" "When will you give me a grandchild?" She was just happy to spend time with us.
DH had been married before, but you would never know it - the name of the first wife never passed her lips for the entire time I have known her. No comparisons, good or bad, were ever made. As far as she was concerned, I walked on the same water her son did, and she made me feel like her own daughter.
Sadly, as you know, my mother-in-law now has Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home, but we are grateful to still have her with us on this Mother's Day.
Who is the third mother, you are probably wondering? That would be my aunt - my mother's sister. She was the sister who didn't marry, the one who ended up caring for my grandparents when they got old and frail. We were always close to her throughout my childhood and saw her almost every weekend.
When I was little she babysat for me, took me to the park, and sat on the floor and played with me when I'd come to visit. She and my grandmother would keep me entertained for hours while my mother went shopping or ran errands. One of our favorite games was "Button, button, who's got the button?" They would hide a button somewhere in the living room and I'd have to find it while they told me if I was "cold" or "warm." Kids nowadays probably wouldn't enjoy something so mundane but I thought it was great.
When I was a little older I thought my aunt was quite exotic, sort of a Mary Tyler Moore-type role model. She was the career woman of the family; she had a job down in Newark and was the supervisor of a lab at a company called Englehardt Industries, which processed and sold precious metals for industry. I thought it was quite impressive that she worked and had an important job like that. She went off on vacations with her girlfriends to the Virgin Islands and other far-off places; she took a tour of the Canadian Rockies by train; she went to Colorado and saw the Grand Canyon.
When I was in my early teens, she joined my parents and me on a trip to the British Isles and we had a grand time touring around together.
She's always been at every Mother's Day celebration because she deserves the same recognition as all the mothers out there. I always manage to find the appropriate card - "To an aunt who's like a mother to me" and we all celebrate together.
My mother and she are opposite sides of the same coin. My mother is the optimistic one who never worries; my aunt worries about everything. My mother is neat, my aunt more on the sloppy side. My mother sleeps till noon and is up till two a.m., my aunt is up at dawn and asleep before midnight. My mother is always late, my aunt is as punctual as Big Ben.
If you met them you'd practically think they were twins - two little ladies with similar features, one with wavy silver hair turning white, the other with darker, straighter hair, both with their glasses and smiling faces. But their personalities are opposites!
We always joke that I've inherited my aunt's worrying and sloppiness, and my mother's lateness and night-owl tendencies. I do think, though, that I have my mother's inherent optimism underneath my anxiety!
Since both DH's and my families were small, we always celebrated Mother's Day together. We'd have my mother and aunt, and DH's mom and dad over to our house and have one big get-together for Mother's Day.
This year we celebrated it separately for the first time.
My father-in-law brought my mother-in-law home to his house from the nursing home today for a Mother's Day brunch of waffles and ice cream. We met them there and helped Mom into the house in her wheelchair. It was her first time back at her home since she had gone into the nursing home in February. She seemed to be glad to be there and was talking a lot by the time she finished her waffles, not making a lot of sense most of the time, but I think we all understood what she meant.
After that DH and I came home and went over to my aunt's for Mother's Day dinner and had a nice evening with her and my mother.
So all in all, it was a good Mother's Day - with my three mothers.
Haiku for My Mom:
She was always there
Wielding the Mercurochrome
Whenever I scraped my knee
Then came the Band-Aid,
The kiss to "make it better,"
Off I ran again.
She made me my lunch
Peanut butter and jelly
And a glass of milk.
Oh, and carrot sticks.
Can't forget the carrot sticks.
And then a cookie.
I brought home a mouse
Please let me keep it Mommy!
It lived in a jar.
Then it got bigger.
It was time to set it free.
So we let it go.
She put up with me
When I found caterpillars
And kept them in jars.
They made their cocoons
And hibernated for weeks;
Became butterflies.
My mom loves nature
We used to go birdwatching
And hike in the woods.
She loves the Red Sox
She brought me up on baseball
It's still the best game!
When things got me down
I could always talk to Mom
She would lend an ear.
So here's to my mom
And my other two mothers
Happy Mother's Day!
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