Memorial Day, 2020

In honor of those who have served the country and who still do.
In honor of those who serve others.
In honor of those who were lost over the last few months.
In honor of the elderly and who they once were.

This is a post of duty: I should be planting the tomatoes. I should be rewatching My Brilliant Friend. I should be calling a few of my brilliant friends. I should, I should, but I decided, I won’t should on myself. I don’t even feel like writing this post but I will, it is my duty to document the moments and all the events. I am pushing myself to write each word.

Yesterday was not a good day. I am amazed by the way I am still connected to my mother and her moods, the way I continue to feel responsible for her happiness and behavior. Aide #2 (Judy, who serves for three days) messaged me to inform me that my mother was anxious and agitated. I called, thinking I might be able to soothe her but when I heard the ranting in the background I knew that this one one of those moments, a reoccurring issue with anger, with futility, with a person who is confined to bed, harboring lifelong ideations that have until now been repressed, only to spill out and burn everyone and everything in the vicinity.

In fact, in being privy to the scene via the phone, eavesdropping on the particular moment, I was transported back in time to our Stuyvesant Town apartment. The scene changes to a flashback, please remain in your seats: I am a pre-teen. My mother is in the kitchen. It is daytime or evening, it doesn’t really matter as this scene has played during many different times.

If my mother is in the kitchen she is at the sink. She is preparing a meal, or, she is cleaning up. And, she is ranting to the cupboards, made of 1940s metal. The cupboard above the sink, (a double sink in fact, with a high “back,” now vintage, that I haven’t seen in years), when opened, has a clear, pinkish, plastic mug that says “ACCENT.” The mug has a handle with kind of finger grooves. We got said mug from “Uncle Albert Wong,” my dad’s wartime friend. Uncle Albert worked for the “Accent” company that made MSG. He and Aunt Helen owned the Cathay Chinese Restaurant in Waldwick, new Jersey, near their home in Franklin Lakes.

The mug held a few bucks of house money and my mother’s charge plate from the Abraham & Strauss Department Store in Brooklyn. I believe the “plate, ” a precursor to a bank credit card, was housed in a red leather slip case.

But, I am veering. The kitchen scene which should be placid and memorable, was repetitive and anything but. In the small kitchen my mother would, as I said, rant. She was likely complaining to the Universe about my father who was at the other end of the two bedroom apartment, sitting at his make-shift raw wood table where he would smoke a cigar and repair cameras: Precision Camera Repair Company. They were trying to make a living working four jobs.

It was an opera. Stage right was my mother, singing out her misery. Was it the aria about how he never helps, or none of us ever help her? Was she stressed, tired, disgusted? And he would respond, offstage from stage left, down the long hall. in a booming voice, tinged with anger and cigar smoke, echoing the sentiments, the frustration. The kids, who were center stage would cringe in fear and ride it out, anxious and frightened.

So, now, I am on the phone, and listening. I can’t see the kitchen in the 1950s from my phone-vantage-point, nor can I see the high-backed sink, the yellowish metal cupboards, the black wall phone, the small white refrigerator, Stuyvesant Town issue, that had to be dutifully defrosted lest one couldn’t fit in the cans of frozen orange juice or the ice cube tray into what was called, “the freezer.”

I am listening. I am privy. I am making a duty call and I am hearing my mother spewing from her bed about how the aide left her for four hours, all alone, about how the aides are number one thieves and pornographers. On and on in strings of words expressing thoughts that were useless drains of energy. And while she was on her soapbox, in bed, talking of the sweetest aide, so malevolently, I gave the aide my mother’s physician’s private phone number. Clearly there was a medication inadequacy in timing or dose; she had already called Hospice and a nurse was coming.

“She won’t stay covered, she won’t eat.” (The problem with not eating is that perhaps the meds are planted in the food.) By the time the nurse came she was calmer and no more meds were administered. I received the usual follow-up phone call from the nurse who I had never spoken to before, but like the story goes with the other Hospice nurse, she bought into my mother’s rant. That this issue was with the aide. And like the previous talk I had with that nurse, I went against my mother. All these years I was in her defense, I could not imagine,  could never conceive of my mother having hallucinations and expressing them so cogently. I told this woman, Dawn, not to believe everything she hears, that this has been going on what I now feel to be forever, all the while thinking that during my life knowing my mother, she had trust issues, and as she aged, I began to witness her strange ideations.

It was my duty.

I have gotten these follow-up calls from so many people. Hospice employees of various jobs from nurses to clergy. They are so impressed when my mother is calm and can hold a meaningful conversation.

In fact, here’s something I haven’t shared. A few weeks ago I received a call from the doctor who initially treated my mother in the Covid ward at the hospital. He was, following up on her condition. He and a colleague were volunteering to help NYC from San Francisco. In looking back and comparing notes, they agreed that my mother was one of their most memorable patients. When the doctor went into my mother’s room she introduced herself: My name is_____, my maiden name is _______, I was born in 1918. When my mother was released from the hospital, she held the other doctor’s hand. The doctor wanted to educate his colleagues about how the elderly can survive Covid. He was a darling man. He can now read my blog.

Those were special moments that my mother would soon forgot, her memory is less and less secure, it is like the old Grundig radio that sat in the living room on the coffee table under the book shelf. The radio that could pick up Short Wave I and Short Wave II. There would be clarity for a bit and then the static and fade-out. The radio that was moved down to Florida and sat in a storage room only to be dumped when she went into a special residence down there.

So, When I gritted my teeth and called today, and the phone was handed over to mom via Candy, aide #1, she asked me how I was. She always reads my voice, she knows without words that what I live with in my own setting is not easy due to a disabled partner. She knows. It’s noon, she wants me to take a nap. She wants to know if I visited her yesterday. “No mom, no one is allowed in your building.” “Oh well, there is another way people can get in, from 628 (an upstairs room, apartment or office in the building, not true.)

She had to go, it was her lunch time, it was chicken salad, something she said she never had before. (Not true). The call was ending. I was relieved of my duty. She asked me to call her, she is always alone. (With a 24-hour aide).

I think of all the people who have served, who have done their duty, including volunteers from other states who helped NYC. I think of all the children who have served their parents in later years.

Duty is what binds us.

The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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