Miz S

Mom is on a journey.

Mom, in a contemplative mood.

When I stopped in at my mother’s house a few nights ago, she was very busy in her bedroom trying to pack things up because she thought she was on a train. My nephew, who is one of Mom’s caregivers, had been unable to distract her or convince her she was home. 

In this scenario, the train ride was over and “the men” were coming to remove all her belongings.  Mom was shuffling around with her arms full of random objects trying to figure out where to put them. Thus, I found myself making room in my late father’s underwear drawer for a large and dusty framed picture and some balls of yarn.  My mother was pleased with that solution but then cast her eyes upon the wooden wall alcove that holds a lovely carved statue of the Virgin Mary.

I rolled my eyes. “Ma, we can just put that here on the dresser. We don’t need to pack it right now. Let’s go into the dining room and have a cup of tea.”

Mom eyed me reproachfully. Then, using my childhood nickname, she said, “Oh Mee-el. You know I would be brokenhearted if anything happened to this.”

The "Oh, Mee-el" killed me dead.

And so I dutifully secured the Virgin Mary in her wooden stand using rubber bands (my mother’s suggestion) and carefully packed her into the bottom drawer of the dining room sideboard, covering her with the old table linens so that all I could see were her sympathetic, saintly eyes gazing up at me through the stained and tattered remnants of an ancient tablecloth. My mother supervised, as she always has.

Later, Benjamin fixed dinner while Mom and I enjoyed a cup of tea together (after she wisely stashed some silver spoons in her purse, lest "the men" lose them when they arrived to help her disembark). At some point, the train delusion seemed to fix itself. She expressed her surprise that I had known what time she was getting in and had known where to pick her up.

"But how did you know?" she asked me. "How on earth did you know where to find me?"

I searched my brain for the right response, the answer that wouldn't let on that she was lost in Alzheimer's World.

"Um." And then it came to me. "I checked the train schedule, of course!" I answered triumphantly.

"Of course!" she laughed.

And all was well in Alzheimer's World.

Pianissimo

Arya napping on Josh.

Christmas felt funny/odd this year. Emma and Nate are in Kentucky visiting Nate's mom, so we had already planned that we would do Christmas present-opening when they return this weekend. But we (Josh and I) didn't really have any other plan for Christmas morning.

That's not entirely true. We picked up my mom and brought her over to Sophie and Paul's house to see the Christmas tree and eat french toast. Mom was enchanted with their new dog, June, and gave dog-handling advice non-stop the entire visit.

But I was feeling fussy, to be perfectly honest. I couldn't wait to take Mom back home and just not have to DEAL. She was super disconnected from reality and, just, I don't know...I was fussy.

When we finally got back to our own house, there wasn't really anything to do. No new sweaters to wear or new books to read. No mess to clean up. I suppose we could have worked on the household budget or cleaned out the closets or caught up on the laundry. Or gone for a walk or volunteered in a homeless shelter or, I don't know, picked up trash in the park? Taken down the Christmas decorations?

Instead, I took a long nap with Pushkin. Later, we went to our friends' house for dinner, which is usually a boisterous affair with lots of drinking and debauchery but even that was low-key.

I need to plan better for next year. I guess we need to create new traditions.

I know I sound a little Debby Downer-ish. Sorry about that. I'm just a little off right now. 

How is Mom doing? And some pictures.

One of my mother's old friends came with her son to the funeral and to the post-funeral gathering. Her son brought a book that my mother sent to him on the occasion of his birth more than 50 years ago in an African country (the Congo, actually. Can you imagine giving birth to your first child in the FUCKING CONGO in 1958??)  where the father was serving as a diplomat. Here you see my mother, a little confused, reading the inscription that she wrote so many years ago.

As well as can be expected for an 86-year-old woman with Alzheimer's experiencing severe cognitive decline, I guess.  She is devastated, grief-stricken, confused. Her tangled brain has trouble processing what happened.

Mom's bewilderment about my father's sudden death is made worse by the fact that she doesn't remember that he had serious health problems during the last 2 years of his life.  As far as Mom knows, he was perfectly healthy up until the day he went into the hospital and then dead less than 48 hours later.  She thinks that a simple germ felled him, something that could have been fixed with proper care and the right medicine. "If only Mother had been here," she laments, thinking back to the childhood pneumonia that almost killed her in the days before antibiotics, and how my grandmother pulled her through it with nothing but aspirin and bed rest.

A quiet afternoon the day after the funeral, looking at her college yearbook. 

My siblings and I were shocked as well, because Dad had been in a sort of holding pattern for awhile with no recent hospitalizations, no falls, no UTIs or pneumonias in the last 8 or 9 months--perhaps a testament to the vigilance of Pam, Samelia, and Eleni, the caregivers. But we haven't forgotten all the close calls and how much he suffered during some of those previous hospitalizations. We are grateful that it happened so quickly and that we didn't have to make any really tough decisions about life-sustaining procedures.

Someone is with Mom all the time, of course. A caregiver during the day, one of us on several weekday afternoons/evenings, and one of us on the weekend days. She is sad when we are not there.

She misses him so much, you guys.

My impossibly slim and naturally still-blonde sister Sarah organized a pansy-planting activity last weekend. It's hard to see her behind the handrail, what with the impossibly-slim thing.

Ok fine, I'll show you a picture of her where you can see her. Can you believe she's 52 years old?   I used to be that skinny. DAMN YOU, O THOU LACK OF SELF CONTROL.

The caregivers, who all loved my father,  are grieving, too.  Samelia said to me once, "He is my father now, too."   (All the more poignant because her father died when she was a teenager, killed in the Liberian Civil War.) Pam and Samelia were in the hospital room with us when he died. Pam, Samelia, and Eleni all came to his funeral and wept.

That kills me. I love them so much for what they have done for our family, and I can't believe how lucky we have been. I heard dire warnings from so many people about locking up valuables, sloppy care, etc. Our experience has been the complete opposite.

I have so much more to tell you.  Thank you for listening/reading. Sorry I haven't replied to the all the comments, but I have read them all, of course, often more than once.  I have even quoted a few of them (I'm always embarrassed to say, "This person who comments on my blog said...."  Instead, I say, "This friend of mine said....")  

I really do consider you friends, even the people I have never met in person. Thank you for all your support.

Josh, Sophie, me, Emma. Check out Emma's cool vintage dress -- worn by my mother back in the 1950s.

Emma, Paul (Sophie's fiance), and Sophie. Random picture of the kids goofing on each other, but you can see more of Emma's dress here. It had a low back which is really pretty too.

Sorrow A Hundredfold.

My father reading to the 7 youngest grandchildren, probably around 1994.

Last Thursday, I stopped by my parents' house after work and hung out for a bit. My brother and my niece were there. My oldest nephew was in and out.  Hilarity abounded.

On Saturday, my sister Julie went to my parents' house and fixed lunch for them. My father ate like a trencherman.

On Sunday (which now seems like a thousand years ago), my sister Sarah and I met there at noon to fix lunch, hang out, and cook an extra meal for dinner that the aide could serve to them later. 

My father didn't come to the table because he felt nauseated. It's not like him to refuse food. 

So we took him to the emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital with a bowel obstruction.

That evening, he was transferred to the ICU because of difficulty breathing. He spiked a fever.

Do you see where this is going?

The doctors asked us, "If it becomes necessary to intubate him, do you want us to?"

Wait. SHIT. What?

We said, "Yes."

Late in the afternoon on Monday the doctors told us that Dad had developed severe sepsis, and the situation was grave. We told them that we did not want intubation, chest compressions, or any extraordinary measures.

A priest came and gave him the last rites. I watched my father make a wavering, loopy sign of the cross. This killed me dead.

They began to try and keep him comfortable with morphine, and after that he was sort of out of it.

On Tuesday morning, the family assembled. When we were all there, the nurse turned off the medications that were maintaining his heartbeat. He died about 3 or 4 minutes later.

It was 48 hours from his first symptom to his dying breath, and for that I am thankful.

But, goddamn.