Miz S

Decompressing.

Fatty-fat Catty-cat

Josh and I are not taking a vacation this summer, what with one thing and another. This is much harder on him than on me, since I get 2 months off every year, and fiddling around inside my VERY OWN house this past month has been like heaven and very relaxing.

Not that he's complaining at all, but you know, it's healthy to get away from the workaday world to decompress now and then. We are taking a mini-vacation this weekend and driving up to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It is only for a day/night, but we like driving places and walking around little towns and stuff like that. We were planning on bringing either kayaks or bikes, but it's going to be rainy and the water is too low for kayaks so I guess we'll just, I don't know, EAT.

The process of settling back into the house has been delightful. Buying new bedding for the guest room. Arranging my spices just so.  Yard work. Arranging freshly sharpened pencils on my desk.

Sometimes I just sigh happily. And at least once every day I say to Josh, "OMG I LOVE BEING HOME."

Josh's father is doing okay on his own, I guess. He goes over to Alix's (Josh's sister) for dinner once a week, and he comes over here sometimes, and Josh and Alix both go over there to socialize or to help with something in the house. He still refuses to move or get help in. He feels well right now, so he doesn't think he needs anyone. Stubborn old dude, I'll tell you what.

Oh, you guys. I am getting killed by spam in my comments. Fucking KILLED.  I don't want to do the verification code thing, but I may have to. In the meantime I have enabled comment moderation so that I can at least catch the spam before it gets published in my comments. 

That's all for right now. I must go pack for my 24 hour vacation. I'm thinking underwear, a toothbrush, and an extra t-shirt.

Talk to you soon.

Home.

So. Here we are. We moved home.

You know what? Let's do this in the contrived form of an imaginary interviewer asking me questions, because it's all so hard to explain, and, God, I'm exhausted at the very thought of writing a blog post.

 

Q. You moved home? Where have you been living if you weren't at home?

A. We moved to my father-in-law's house in Washington DC  in October of 2011, shortly after my mother-in-law passed away from lung cancer.  (Which sucked, fyi.)  My father-in-law is in his nineties and needs a little help.

 

Q. Did you like living in DC?

A. Meh. It was okay. It was only 15 minutes from our house in Maryland, so it's not like it was culture shock or anything.  It was inconvenient that we had to hide our cars all the time because the police gave us tickets for not getting DC plates. It's hard to find a good hiding place for three tons of metal.  On the flip side, we liked being right across from Rock Creek Park.

 

Q. What was it like living with a 90-something-year-old Jewish man?

A. Equal parts hilarious, depressing, and really fucking annoying. We missed our own house so much. And we missed our life. You feel me?

 

Q. So why did you move there in the first place? You must have known it would be hard. Are you and Josh the kind of people who don't think things through?

A. Possibly. And we were reeling from the death of Josh's mother, who was the heart of the family.  My father-in-law's doctor spoke to us and said, "He can't be alone. He'll die. He won't eat. He can't be alone." So we were all, "WAAAAAH! WE'LL MOVE IN! WAAAAH!" 

Is that what you meant by not thinking things through? 

 

Q. Yes, that's what I meant. Hang on a sec. I am perusing your archives.  I just read this entry.

And in that entry, you said, "We are here for the duration. A year? 6 months? 5 years? It doesn't matter."   

But here you are moving out after a measly 20 months! ARE YOU QUITTERS?

A.  Evidently.  Here's the thing: We had no idea it would be so hard. We underestimated the toll it would take on us. We fought a lot. I cried a lot. We both gained weight. I went to work early and stayed late. (Which is nothing new but I think I took it to the next level.)  In short, we were miserable about 50% of the time.

 

Q. Yeah, but don't you feel kind of like an asshole, anyway? 

A. Definitely. Because we thought we could do it.  We wanted to do it. We wanted to be unselfish, good people who take care of their elders.  As it turns out, we are very ordinary people and slightly self-centered. Just like everyone else. It was HAAAAARD. Oh, and did I mention that during this same time period my father died and one of my kids got married? And I changed schools? Hmmm?

 

Q. Oh, I see. You're a big whiner, too.

A.  Shut it.

 

Q. What will your father-in-law do now? 

A. Continue being a stubborn old man. He has known for 3 months that we were moving out on July 1st. Josh and his sister have taken him to visit assisted living communities and had many conversations (high-decibel) about what should happen next. He won't (or can't) make a decision and rejects all sensible alternatives. It's frustrating, as many of you know. We (Josh, his sister, me) will continue to make sure that he eats by having him over for dinner. Josh's sister takes him to doctor appointments. We'll help him as much as we can. But at the end of the day we will be able to go home to our own house.  

This elder care business is hard, y'all.

Okay. That's all I have for right now. But if you need me, I'll be here in my little yellow house, artfully arranging my coffee cups in any damn cabinet I want.   

Clever, naughty, diapered Edgar.

Do you guys remember my late mother-in-law's poodle, Edgar Allen Poo? Clever, naughty Edgar?

Edgar is still super playful and has picked me as his special favorite. Here he is being excited because I came home one evening.

Edgar has earned advanced degrees in dog obedience but is decidedly disobedient when it suits his purposes. He will nip at people who bother him, he is an incorrigible beggar, and he once chased our cat around our house with obvious malevolent intent. Poor Pushkin, who had never been chased by a dog, was considerably shook up and stayed under the bed for a full day. (Imagine Pushkin's horror a few years later when we moved into Edgar Allen Poo's house.)

 

2 summers ago, he bit my sister-in-law's finger HARD, and there was some controversy about whether it was Edgar's fault or SIL's fault. We are still reviewing the videotape to try and reach a settlement agreement.

But that was all years ago. Edgar is 15 now, almost completely blind, and more or less compliant. He chased Pushkin a few times after we moved in here last October, but it was obviously a huge effort and not worth his time. They coexist peacefully now.

But lo, how the mighty have fallen.

Edgar was just diagnosed with kidney disease and high blood pressure. He is on 2 different medications and a special diet. And, best of all, he gets to wear doggie diapers inside because he no longer has full contol of his bladder.

Doggie diapers are the funniest thing ever.

Edgar standing guard at the front door, barking at dogs passing by.

Honestly, when he wore the diapers for the first time yesterday I followed him around for like an hour taking pictures and squealing.

2 questions:

1. Why didn't we ever do this with Rosie? Rosie was an inveterate sneak-urinator, and we were never able to completely house-train her. (The poor little lamb. May she rest in peace forever-n-ever Amen.)

2. Why is an old dog in diapers SO ADORABLE whereas an old dude in diapers is just sad? We need to change our mindset, people. That way it will be easier for us when the inevitable arrives.  We'll be all, "Cool! Dad's wearing diapers! He looks so cute! Dad! Turn around so I can take a picture of your adorable diapered bottom!" etc.

That's all I got for right now. Remember, I'm super out-of-practice with this blogging thing. I have to go do my algebra homework now. 3 more days of class AUGGGHH!

Oh, and here is a video of Edgar Allen Poo dancing with my late mother-in-law. I swear to God, it is really cute. You should watch it. If my mother-in-law were here she would make you watch it.

 

 

 

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.

Mother's Little Helper.

When I was in Italy I never smelled Betadine.

The cystoscopy was unpleasant but blessedly brief. Afterwards the doctor was all "Blah blah blah prolapse blah blah blah complications blah blah blah surgery blah blah damn, girl, your thing is all fucked up blah blah blah."

Then I got dressed and went to work. Oh, I looked quite gorgeous.  I dressed up for the doctor. A skirt, and high-ish heels, and a pretty blouse. Then, the rest of the day at work, when the breeze was just right, I would catch a little whiff of Betadine. Nice, huh?

Speaking of work, I am having a little bit of a nervous breakdown. There are only 23 days left, and there's a lot to do, but that's not the part that's bothering me. What's bothering me is much more complicated to explain, and honestly I think you have to be a teacher to understand. It's a great big package of regrets and frustrations and small disappointments. I am not yet the teacher that I want to be. Part of what gets in my way just comes with the territory--too many directives from above, too much testing, never enough time.  And part of it is just me and my tendency to lay down and play dead when I get overwhelmed.

Moving on.

I am in a little bubble of peaceful time right now. In about an hour I have to go to my parents' house because I had a bright idea that for Mother's Day my siblings and I should all get together and clean out her screen porch. This came about because a couple of weeks ago I went over to visit my parents, and my mother said brightly, "Let's sit out on the porch!". She shuffled out there, brushed a cloud of cat hair off the sad, faded wicker rocker, and I gingerly perched on the edge of a filthy seat cushion, my feet dangerously close to a small puddle of CAT PISS on the ancient straw floor covering that she bought 30 years ago at Pier 1, while my  dearly befuddled mother chattered on about how she really needed to get out here and give it a good sweeping. So, my sisters, my brother, and I (and Josh, and Sasha) are converging on the porch today to scrub, paint, etc.  This is the kind of project  that Evangeline would be very unenthusiastic about, so it's a good thing that she is still at her small pretentious college in the Midwest.

Now, my parents could easily afford to pay someone to do this. But they never would. Not because they are cheap, just because, I don't know, it doesn't seem that bad to them, I guess.  Anyway, my mother and father will enjoy all the busy activity and the sibling banter.

Tonight, it's a 21st birthday party for Paul (Sasha's boyfriend) at his parents' house. Tomorrow: more Mother's Day stuff, including a cookout over here.  Somewhere in there we have to find time for lawn mowing, grocery shopping, and house cleaning. Oh, and I have to do some teacher work. I'll probably get fussy.