Written, Saturday, 8/15/20

Was yesterday a turning point? The Hospice nurse and social worker called to report their visit: my mother was sleeping. She was barely eating or drinking. The end was near. Anytime. Big difference from a visit a week ago where my mother was chatty and could spell her name. I had a sick feeling in my gut. I jumped when the phone rang. I imagined the scenario, of what I would do, how I would react. Imagining the date. Standing over a gravesite. Writing her day of birth and death on paper. Imagining feeling numb, incredulous, off-balance. Then not imagining, but connecting with those feelings.

I had not seen my mother since the beginning of March. There was no visit on her birthday. The virus took over and closed my mother’s senior residence. Since then at least a dozen people died. I never expected my mother to survive the virus. I never even imagined that she would reach one hundred, let alone one hundred and two. But she came home from a week in the hospital, and displayed major changes in abilities of mind and body. She was there but different.

Five months later, today, I visit my mother. People are now allowed in with masks, there are protocols at the door: temperature taken, hand sanitizer. On and on. But the usual bustle in the lobby was gone, the activities were curtailed, and for the first time the place looked deserted. There were no meals served in the dining room, no hoards waiting at the elevators. It was quiet.

I had called Judy, the aide, in advance to find out if she thought visiting was a good idea and she affirmed that my mother would be happy to see me. We are back on the roller coaster. Yesterday my mother was descending. Today she is chatty and eating. A little.

Written, Sunday, 8/16/20

I entered the elevator with a couple. The woman had a funny metal-pokey-key-looking-thing that she used to press the buttons. “My daughter gave me this,” she said. I wonder if she ever blasts it with disinfectant. I exited at the fifth floor thinking that when I grew up in Stuyvesant Town we also lived on five. We’ve come full circle, it seems. I rounded the corner, where I saw an old bleach stain in the corridor on the nice new carpet, which always seemed to have a bleach stain near the laundry area. I think they gave up repairing it. The lack of color has become a permanent fixture of someone’s inability to deal with Clorox.

I notice that every door now has a kind of plastic holder into which they likely throw the menus and notices  rather than the old shove of same under the door. I guess those who delivered don’t have to bend any more. My mind continues to babble as I approach the apartment. It is mid-hallway. I chose this apartment at the encouragement of an administrator. It has a lovely large tree in front. I thought the view would be nice. The former resident had just passed. Alan. He died suddenly seven years ago and now my mother has had the apartment all those years. It was a relief to get her back to NYC and not have to worry about her being in Florida where it was becoming impossible to deal with issues from afar. And NYS has much more to offer the elderly. So…

Here I am at the door, in my pink mask, with a tote bag full of mail. Let me insert here that I have filed papers for a Fair Hearing to go up against the state and challenge the fact that despite my mother’s receiving 24-hour care, she really needs two-twelve hour shifts, so that if she is up all night, the aide would be working, not trying to sleep. I am upset because had I not gone to my mother’s and checked the mail, after having filed a change of address form for her mail to come to me, I would not have seen it. The state addressed the mail to me at my mother’s address, and that’s where it went.

The hearing is on August 31 at 10:00 am. My mother might not even be alive by then. Over the years EVERYTHING has been a fight, an exhausting fight. Endless head butts and sleepless nights of holding onto the aggravation of the day.

Back to the door. I knock. Judy says, “Just a minute!” in her sweet voice. She is a large woman, she hovers over me and gives way to my mother who is lying in the bed in a semi-darkened room, the blinds partially opened. She is surrounded by the bolsters I sent her from Amazon and at the foot of the bed is the lovely screen I sent with a Japanese motif of cherry blossoms, to separate the aides’ bed from my mother’s. The entry way to the apartment is always darkish. There’s the closet on one side and the bathroom opposite, her wheelchair, two canisters of oxygen that haven’t been used for months. I scan the room: everything is still intact. I stared at the mahogany curio cabinet near the desk. Everything still in there, little antiques and tchotchkes. The art is still on the walls, the rollator is shoved in a corner, actually there are two, one was brought up from Florida, a maintenance man gave it to my mother when she was living (independently) in a lovely assisted living housing before it was sold, fell apart, was run by crooks and infested by rats. If you’ve been following, you remember. If not, you can be appalled. My mother was on Hospice in Florida and the vent grates yielded rat tails and nightly visits from the gang of big rodents. The aide was bitten on the finger in the middle of the night. Ahh, Florida.

And so she had to be moved up to NY, half dead or not, and she lived another seven years, so far.

I know you see my thoughts digressing, filling in with my streams of flashes and playbacks, but actually I am avoiding the pain.

My mother.

She’s now maybe seventy pounds. About 4’8″. She has huge red bags under her eyes, she looks like she is wearing a white mask across her face. Her face looks two-toned. She has bed sores, even on her heels. She says things are very hard, she is obviously unhappy.

The once dyed black hair has grown in white but most has fallen out.

The mother I once knew is already dead. Unrecognizable in every way.

DON’T COME IN! You’ll catch it! That is the acknowledgement I receive of my presence. She knows it is me, but I am equal to a stick of furniture. No time has gone by since I last saw her five months ago when she was becoming more and more paranoid but still able to walk to the bathroom. Before Covid.

It was as if we had just finished a phone call and were now starting another.

I have recently found out, that the virus was given to her by one of the aides who was filling in for the regulars. It was that aide, who was coughing, who sent her to the hospital, without my knowledge and without the knowledge of the doctor. We were on the phone when they took her away. At that point in late March my mother could have gone either way had she stayed home. She was sleeping, not eating, coughing. She is still sleeping, not eating and coughing but because she is losing herself, shutting down and choking on liquids needing a thickener.

Judy tells her to comb her hair. She has a metal, rat-tail comb in her hand that could be a deadly weapon if used so. My mother combs her hair and has motions of teasing the ends with little repetitive strokes. Whatever she touches falls out.
As always she asks me how she looks. As always, I tell her, “great.”

I sit on a chair near the bed. Judy is in the semi darkness near the door. Occasionally during the interaction I turn to Judy to see her reaction. She is looking at her phone.

I am closing my eyes and asking for strength.

I say, “give me the comb, I’ll leave it here on the nightstand.” She becomes agitated and refuses, holds it close to her and then tries to find a place for it on the bed. “Everyone uses my comb!” I don’t want anyone to touch it!” She acts like it is a bag of diamonds. It ends up in her purse which is behind a pillow on the far right of the bed. When she moved to NY I went shopping at Macy’s, got her so many nice things, one thing was a new purse.

She never used it.

I try to have a conversation with the woman who is my mother and who never smiles. She has difficulty processing. Her mind flits like a fly and won’t stand still.

She says she has terrible dreams. I ask her who Rose is and she doesn’t hear or refuses to. Rose keeps popping up in her dreams to beat her for coughing and sneezing.

She calls Judy, “DeeDee.” Judy responds.

I was told by Candy, the other aide, that one night my mother was calling for my father. “Jack! Jack! I don’t like it here! Take me home!”

She says her dreams are awful, she doesn’t want them, she doesn’t want these people coming to her at night. Scaring her.
I tell her she has to have positive thoughts, that she must repeat: I am fine, I am so lucky, so many people are taking care of me… she repeats. I assume the words and thoughts fly off.

I get up and walk behind the screen and to one of two dressers where I pull out the photo album I made in 2010 for her birthday. I had sent it to Florida. I want to show Judy what my mother looked like once, what we all looked like. I wanted to plead my mother’s case: Here she is, she was once young and beautiful, once sane, once a bride, once a mother, a mother again, on trips, smiling having fun. The family lives have been intertwined, the people in photos appeared to be happy despite their hidden problems. Judy is marveling at the pages in disbelief.

I go back to my seat and my mother tells me to do or not do something. I realize how controlling she’s always been due to her own anxiety. Go here, don’t go there, don’t do that…don’t go on Ancestry and look for relatives you are looking for trouble. Don’t write a book. Why are you doing that? And over the years I learned to ignore her, to pigeon-hole her commands and put them aside. Having my mother for a mother was not easy. She drained me, she was not who I would have chosen for a mother or as a friend. She was self-involved, wound up in her appearance. Rarely considered achievements or anything that wasn’t superficial. Here she was lying in bed, a fragile, miserable shadow. Everything has fallen away and revealed the reality. She was rarely happy.

Hey, ma, how about some Ensure! She goes for the idea. Judy puts thickener in it from John the pharmacist. It’s a boon for those who can’t swallow or who choke easily. I can see she has trouble holding the glass, she needs a straw, Judy gives her one. My mother thinks the drink is delicious.

I tell her that a nice friend brought me to visit and is waiting in the car. GO! She says.

I love you, Ma.

I love you very much. She says and goes back to the Ensure.

I take the big album with me. I will need it for the funeral which I am sure will not be far off. I want the photos of joy. Photos with me, of the family as it was years ago; though shaky with problems, it was intact.

When I get down to the lobby I show Terrance (Resident services) the album. He was chatting with an elderly lady from the building who had a little trouble following the conversation. I want you to see this, this was my mother.

The album cover has a window with my mother’s photo, her face as above, showing. Terrance is in disbelief. “That’s your mother!?” He looks at the book. He thanks me for sharing it. It brought him joy.

I go back to where I checked into the building and show the album to a few staff members. One gentleman is in awe.

This is my mother, I say. She was a beauty.

 

 

In the last six months, five women I know lost their mothers. One friend’s mother just went on hospice.

I think of you all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

The previous post is here

The next post is here