Estate planning

Who are we after we bury our mothers?

Do we attain serenity, finally?
Is it a big-step metabolic passage to equal the revolutions of adolescence, marriage and parenthood?
Does all of our hair fall out overnight?

Do we break into bloom once our dear mothers are gone? Do we "come into our own"?

Or is this the crisis when orphaned older ladies kick over the traces and run off with Habitat for Humanity or Peace Corps?
No, wait. That's what happens after the spouse dies.

There aren't two categories under Bildungsroman. There aren't also coming of age novels devoted to Life After Mom.
No, because we think we know what comes next, and nobody likes to look at it: definite old age. Not just "that age used to be considered old" or "I can't tell how old she is" but, for sure, "that's an old person, right there. That person is too old to have a mother alive on this earth."

That old person is in charge now?
That old person must know some answers?

Or, that old person will soon be a drag on society. Stand up, you clod, and help that old person take a seat on the bus. Get out of the way everybody, old lady coming through. Stand clear of the cane, please.

That old person is regretting the remains of the day. Sad.
Or, he's yearning for love and lurking about the schoolyard. Icky. Or, getting it on like the geezers in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Terms of Endearment. Cute.

Are these the only options — cute, sad, icky, wise?

What about the stylish figure in black stepping lightly to the lip of a cliff, daring and afraid? Here we stand next in line at the edge, uh, woo-hoo?!
What will the world look like above that precipitate drop? Beautiful, wild? Oblivious, distant?

Is the edge of the cliff where we will finally get perspective on how we have spent our little lives so far and all the choices we have made along the way?

Will we finally be able to see exactly who we have been all along?

A Better Place

   When my mother first entered the nursing home and was so obviously dying, my sister and I went to see her every day. For about six months I put an extra 350-500 miles a week on the car, rushing from work to the nursing home, sometimes twice a day, not getting home until after dark every day. 

What Mom sees when she's lying in bed

   Michael felt helpless and lonely, and everything was just hell. I'd wake up weeping, go to sleep weeping, start weeping as soon as I turned off JFK and headed toward Dark Hollow. By Justin Matthews I'd get myself back in hand, by thinking about public safety.
    Never assume the people driving the other cars aren't weeping.

The Pilgrims are on the wall to her right

   
   Since her condition stabilized in March (thank you, palliative care), I visit her just three times a week ... most weeks. Some weeks I only make it twice. Every so often, Michael fills in. My sister or her husband is supposedly coming three other days a week, but they broke down in the stress of everything being hell and started getting respiratory infections. That seems to be clearing up now.
   And my nieces and nephew visit when they can work out transportation. 

   If all these people have anything in common (besides everything we have in common as relatives), it's that none of us wants to visit Mom. We talk about this. Once we get there, she's so cute, we're glad we went. But there's a dread that builds as visiting day rolls around, again and again. Is she going to remember me? Will there be some problem with her clothes — like, will she need more clothes? Is she going to keep asking to go home with us? Will she say only one sentence over and over for an hour or more? Are we going to have to come up with cheery things to say while we crouch in the hallway beside her chair? Will we need to brush her teeth? If we do, will it make her choke?

Loves George but foggy on Abe

   Monday she was asleep in bed with her mouth open, which typically means she won't wake up. But I didn't want to walk in and walk out, so I sat down to knit while she slept. Nobody was around, so also I sang at her quietly. I like sad ballads. She likes "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window." She surfaced during the second verse of "Doggy" and lay there looking pleased and calm, blinking at the ceiling.

 
   "How Much Is That Doggy" was the No. 1 pop tune in the nation the year she met my dad. 

   She didn't seem aware that I was there. But I went on singing and knitting, just enjoying being nearby.
   When the aides came in with the lift to move her from bed to her geri chair for supper, a blonde with  pixie-cut hair and sparkly earrings almost shouted, "Mrs. Loyall?" loudly, gleefully. 
    My immobile mother practically lifted off the bed and exclaimed with delight. "Oh helloooo! Are you married yet?" 
   The aide said no, but her wedding was coming up fast. She went on in a bantering tone about her dress and flowers, and Mom talked back and forth with her a little.

More George Washington

   In the bustle I slipped away, stopping just long enough to give Mom a peck on the forehead.
   
   My heart was so light on the drive home through Dark Hollow. It felt good to remember how eagerly she greeted that pretty young aide.

   She might know her caregivers better than she knows her children now. Maybe she has an easier time remembering them and their details. The aides are with her all day, every day. And they seem to like her, and they obviously like it when she talks to them. 

   She has buddies. 

Brain in a box

   One

   Last week the inflater in Mom's air mattress malfunctioned and blew up so high that she slipped out of bed. 

   Aides found her propped on the floor beside the bed, an upright burrito in her sheets. She kept saying, "I'm so happy. I'm so happy." 

   No new skin tears, no bruises.

   But now she has a different mattress, and one of the aides has crammed a pillow between the bed's half-railing and her mattress, walling her off from the room on her left. 

   She can't see over it when the bed is cranked flat.

   Two

   

   A roving band of church ladies came through, leaving behind a lap-size, overstuffed pillow on Mom's knees. It's a vibrant floral pattern, and the filling is crunchy. It is just fat enough she can't see over it to the room beyond her feet.

   Three

   She was asleep with her mouth open when I arrived Thursday. Roommate Sunny rolled her chair slowly from the restroom, stopping just beyond where I stood frowning down at Mom. I decided to sit down a while, gossip with Sunny.

  Our murmurs rose and fell, and Mom slowly emerged from the depths. I watched her blink at the dim white ceiling, her face otherwise immobile. 

   I spoke her full name. 
   Mom bit her lip. Her forehead wrinkled. 

   I said, "Hi, Mom. It's Celia." 

   She cocked her head, puzzled but thinking. "Celia?" Where was I? What was this place? A box with voices.

   Four

      Someone has painted Mom's nails a Goth midnight blue. 
      She touched the pillow. She poked it. 
      She said, "Hello?"  

Fresh and wholesome

   Judy was facing three-quarters away and leaning into the boxed mushrooms and the bags of greens, so I hesitated to say hello. What if she turned to face me as a total stranger? What then? But Kroger has white lights in its produce department and, whoever the woman was, they were icing the halo of her hair. I thought, "Live a little," and I called out what I hoped really was her name.

   She was exactly who I'd thought, and she remembered me, too, because she'd been a group mentor for the Artist Inc. program I was lucky enough to attend in 2014 — and unlucky enough to be attending in the early weeks after my mother collapsed. Mom appeared to be dying — she was dying, every day. And I was soldiering courageously on.

   We chatted during Artist Inc., but I wasn't in her small group, and the lighting in the building where we met wasn't of the caliber that sells produce. I'd never seen her eyes in good light before. Imagine the Arkansas River after a week of heavy rain. She calls them "brown," but to this potter, they are Salt Celadon Liner in its river-water mood.

   I was enjoying the novelty of looking right into those eyes when she mentioned these blog posts and Facebook and touched my sleeve. She said the words, "My mother ..." and I stiffened all over — but without registering that I had.
   Then came unexpected syntax. I forget the word-for-word, but she wanted to tell me about the difficulties of having a mother who is 91, independent and well — an eccentric person, but not demented.
   Feeling my neck and shoulders suddenly relax, I realized how I'd tensed myself, bracing.

   Almost never do I hear talk about healthy old people any more. Most all the time, when someone touches me on the arm and starts into "My mom" or "My dad," what follows is so heartfelt that I want to console them, to share their pain. Because this is not a joyous situation, having the demented parents. These good caregivers deserve to be comforted; and, yes, there probably is a lot of comfort to be had from being part of a group with a common problem.

  But I wanted to hug Judy to thank her for not being just like me. It was such a relief to be reminded that old people also can be healthy.

   Statistically, most old people are not demented. According to a 2015 report by the Alzheimer's Association, (see https://www.alz.org/facts/downloads/facts_figures_2015.pdf) one-third of Americans older than 85 have Alzheimer's disease.
   That means two-thirds DON'T.
 
   Most old people do not have dementia.

   Also, besides hugging her, I should apologize to her for not hearing the story she wanted to share about the problems of caring about an elder who is still independent. My self-awareness of relief got in the way of being able to listen to what, for me, seemed a novel concern but what in reality is more like what's reality for most people.




 

Greatness

   On Super Bowl Sunday Mom asked me what Michael was doing, and I said, "He's watching the Super Bowl."
   She said, "What's the Super Bowl?"
   I said, "It's a very big football game. There are two teams and lots of commercials and it's really loud."
   She said, "It's a super bowl?'
   And then, "What makes it super?"
 

Buying flowers

   This morning I stopped at Kroger to grab some flowers for two work friends: one has a new desk, the other has a new lease on life.
   I spent 20 minutes hesitating in front of this display and that display, picking dripping things up and putting them back, considering white orchids, speckled orchids, potted tulips, unfurled tulips in glass forcing jars, still furled tulips, pencil-thin roses and blousey ornamental cabbage leaves, small baskets, moss covered baskets ...
   Something was wrong with most all of them, a wilted blossom, a spotty leaf, or they seemed too frilly for the guy, too pedestrian for the woman. Finally I settled on a fistful of bright sunflowers for them both.
   While I was checking out I noticed the time.
   I spent far, far more time than I put into selecting the flowers I pick up to decorate Mom's room.
   Every week I run in, grab something for her room, something bright that looks likely to last a week, and then I run out. If there's a blue thing in a short vase, that's the one.

   Every so often one of my sisters who live far away overnights a box of thoughtfully chosen blooms. One time it was miniature dusky lavender roses from a plant Mom gave her years ago. Fragrant. Often it's Stargazer lilies or pristine white blooms of various species and various heights.
   She wraps the stems in wet paper towels and covers that with plastic grocery bags. She or her daughter carries them on the bus to the post office.

   Every so often another sister who lives even farther away sends something spectacular — a dried flower wreath in the shape of a heart, wonderfully preserved in muted pinks and lavenders and pale, dusty greens, or a confection of prettiness made by a florist in North Little Rock that really does things up well.

   Occasionally the brothers or their wives have a display delivered — a basket chosen for brightness and impact, crying "We remember you!" florally.

   We give her flowers because Mom was a student of growing things and an ardently uncritical appreciator, a universal appreciator, always planting and weeding and despairing over the plants and the weeds. She had a colossal collection of strappy mother-in-law's tongue; she had overgrown pots of amaryllis, a pineapple that made a baby pineapple, a 10-foot tall spindle of Norfolk pine she kept meaning to lop short.
   When I was young she dragged a pot of leggy pothos (Devil's ivy) from Virginia to Texas. We children had to wipe its dusty leaves as one of our many, many chores. And I remember a similarly sad but venerable pot of wandering Jew that kicked the bucket somewhere in Texas.
   She would exclaim "Ooo!" when anyone pointed out any plant to her, whether it was noteworthy or not. Her window sills were critical care wards where pallid clippings languished in green slimed juice glasses. "Don't throw that out, we can root it!"
   Among my earliest memories of our relationship, I bring her tributes of flowers from the yard — once a shoebox packed with cloyingly sweet, stemless clippings of bridal veil — and she generously coos over them before packing their miserable tag-ends into juice glasses.

    I am throwing money at flowers, and I am bringing the flowers to her room. If I slowed down to try to pick out flowers for her, I would never get out of that store.

Because

   Why is my sweet mother, who earned a doctorate in education by going to night school while bringing up six children and working full time, a Scottish/country/clog/square and ballroom dancer, a Master Gardener, who drank tea every day and loved puzzles and ate her weight in organic fruit and leafy green vegetables, went for daily walks, attended a weight lifting class, took classes to learn new skills, volunteered right and left, supported her church, had excellent stress-coping skills, watched her salt intake, subscribed to various hospital health letters, prayed every day, drank in moderation, helped out with civic clubs, had family living with her, visited the elderly in nursing homes, read fiction and nonfiction, stayed in touch with old friends and with current events, was curious about everyone she met ... why is this 91-year-old woman ending her days immobilized by dementia?

   She smoked for maybe 14 years as a young adult, is that why?

   Her sister had Alzheimer's and her family has a few reports about old ladies in Ireland wandering in their nighties ...

   She was subject to debilitating migraines before menopause ...

   She surrounded her head with a cloud of hairspray almost every day for four decades ...

   She stayed awake half the night working on lesson plans or IEPs and once became so chronically sleep deprived that she feel asleep into a bowl of soup. Is sleep deprivation why?

   She hated getting little basal cell skin cancers and so she hid from the sun for about a decade until she had osteoporosis and then took a course of Fosamax to fix her bones ...

   She spent a decade in agricultural areas of southern Texas with their water systems ...

   Her whole household didn't trust Sherwood water and so only drank home-distilled water and when that machine broke, they only drank juice, milk or soda pop. Sometimes they dehydrated themselves into odd health conditions ...

   She loved ice cream, is that ... ?

   My current theory is that she dehydrated in 2010 (possibly earlier) and had some small strokes that killed parts of her brain. For certain in the summer and fall of 2014, when all of the sudden she had atrial fibrillation, she was chronically dehydrated and prone to UTIs, which only deepened her confusion, making her even less inclined to drink water. But she was already demented then.
 
She seems to be about as demented as she has been for the past four years — it hasn't worsened. Only her body is radically weaker now.

   At Thanksgiving 2013, a friend who was sharing dinner with us was horrified to see Mom poking her vitamin D and calcium pills into the serving bowl closest to her plate. She always poked her pills into the food on her own plate so she could hoover them in without thinking about them — but this time she was confused by the extra dishes around her.
   Before she became that bent, silent biddy, Mom might have poked pills into a serving platter absentmindedly, while distracted.
   One time when she was about 70 and still vital and dancey, I watched her cross the kitchen to get milk for her tea, open the fridge, take out the milk, head for her tea cup but stop at the stove and pour the milk into a saucepan of boiling spaghetti. She had a lot on her mind that day, a lot; still, she would make little processing errors all the time ... use the wrong word, call her children by one another's names, forget where she put her hat, hit the accelerator instead of the brakes ... she'd joke that she needed to eat more kale — and then she would eat kale.
   Did she have a defective brain, is that why she has dementia now?
   Did I mention that she earned her doctorate by going to night school while working full time and raising six kids?

  I have no proof that dehydration caused her dementia, and I have no medical education to help me assess the quality of such proof if I did have it; but still, dehydration-caused stroke: That makes sense to me.