It has been a while since I have written about my mother. I recently mentioned a fund-raiser for her building that I attended, I likely mentioned that we have changed aides; I’ve been relatively quiet on the parent front. I’ll say a few words.

It is just over a year that my mother was moved back to New York City from Florida. I had seen her during the summer before the beginning of a decline. She had begun to fall and was likely having panic attacks which drove up her blood pressure in the evenings. She kept a packed bag by the door and her Do Not Resuscitate papers in her small purse. A series of in-and-out visits to the emergency room ensued. I would get calls in the middle of the night. From the hospital. From the nursing staff at her assisted living facility where she was living independently.

She was ninety-four years old.

A fall in February 2013 put her in the hospital, then a rehab where she got worse, then the hospital, then a rehab. She was getting weaker, sicker, more and more miserable and convinced she was going to die.

She didn’t.  I hired an advocate, a full-time aide, and she went home at my insistence.  She was released on hospice in March, before her ninety-fifth birthday. Then she got pneumonia. This was it for sure. The hospice nurses wanted to put her on morphine. THAT is really the end. The aide refused to allow it. My mother survived despite shrinking to under eighty pounds.

Rats were discovered in her lovely apartment. Then in the kitchen of the facility (after I called the health department and reported the place). My mother’s aide was bitten by a rat at 4:00 a.m. one morning. I am not sure if her health bills were ever paid by the director of the assisted living: he tried to hand her a gift card to Walmart to shut her up. That didn’t work. He got fired.

My mother’s place in Florida was beautiful, on a lake, she loved feeding the water fowl. The weather was always warm. She had escaped the cold of New York City winters in the mid eighties and never looked back. Now she had to. I was moving her to an apartment a few minutes away from me. A residence, NOT a facility. It had, I felt, wonderful amenities and a gorgeous roof-top, both enclosed and open. Her aide came up with her and stayed two months.

My mother hated her. She saw her as controlling and a religious fanatic. But the truth is, my mother was fighting for her independence, secretly wishing to regain her youth and whenever I reminded her that Cynthia saved her life by proactively watching over her, my mother would rant that she didn’t want to be saved.

When Cynthia went back to Florida I hired a series of other ladies who all seemed so nice. One snored and kept my mother up. Out! Her friend was great but the two ladies took an oath to never take a job away from the other. Done. The daughter-in-law of the snorer seemed OK and she worked for about six months until my mother started telling me stories about her neglecting her in the shower and giving her attitude.

In the meantime I had applied for Community Medicaid through an agency. It took about six months to process and is still being refined. My mother was awarded eight hours of an aide. In addition she is using two more hours in the late afternoon for meal assistance and getting ready for bed through the long term care plan she paid for for years. It seems to be working out. In theory.

There was an aide assigned who is suspected of stealing. She told my mother she owned a strip club. My mother saw her kissing the food delivery man from the building. Don’t mess with my mother. If behavior is inappropriate, my mother will let the culprit know–or the culprit’s supervisor, or me. When we speak on the phone she complains about what the aides do. What the aides don’t do. In short, her expectations are never met. 

When I go there, usually dragging a delivery of all the paper goods, cleansers, garbage bags, laundry money magazines, and Ensure behind me, whatever she told me about on the phone is repeated.

My mother’s biggest gripe though all this assistance is that the women who surround her are from another culture where marriage is not a big deal. They have kids out of wedlock. They’ve never been to a museum. They know nothing about good music, the opera or theater. They just sit and play with those “remote controls.” (phones). She makes them watch PBS.

What I find very interesting is that my parents never exposed us children to “good” music, they never took us to anything cultural unless you consider a walk to the United Nations exterior or a trip on the bus to Macy’s that type of event. There was the Grundig radio in the living room that would play pop music and that my mother would tune to Kismet and sing along to as she dusted the drum table. So for all intents and purposes, I ranked myself culturally along with the help.

Culture was ranked higher than a good heart.

While I continue my tale, please take a break and read this article in today’s the New York Times about the elderly and services. A Father’s last Wish, and a Daughter’s Anguish. You should know what goes on with the elderly and NYC is a most generous state.

Fighting to Honor a Father’s Last Wish: To Die at Home

My mother is now ninety-six. When I visit she always says she doesn’t know why the good Lord hasn’t taken her. “There’s a reason for me to still be here,” she says.

My mother is lucky. She isn’t ill although she considers herself ill; she is frail. She possibly will have enough funds to squeak by and manage the rent (I do the finances). She has a lovely little studio and a tree outside her window. Her meals are wonderful though she refuses to go to the dining room and is paying extra to have them delivered. My mother is at home. It isn’t where she was born in Brooklyn, it isn’t Stuyvesant Town in lower Manhattan. It is in Queens where most faces she sees are Asian and she insists that her building caters to Asians. “Oh my dear you just don’t know!” I don’t. I don’t know what catering to Asians means. The choice of meals is extensive, there are many restaurant type meals that reflect the multi-ethnic populace and their holidays. “Why don’t they just serve plain American food?” she keeps asking.

She usually chooses the “alternate” on the left margin of the menu. The “roast chicken leg, mixed vegetables, baked sweet potato, dessert and tea.” The desserts, like the meals are home made and wherever possible the food is locally sourced and organic.

“It’s my teeth.” “It’s too spicy.” “It comes up too early.” “The aide who is supposed to help me served me and fell asleep.” “It was tough.” “It had too much pepper.” “I can’t eat that,” “That is one of my food allergins.”

“I told you not to come when I am eating. Now I can’t eat my dinner. I am too aggravated.”

She left her fish, sweet potato and vibrant colored peas and carrots on her plate and let it get cold. Talking about the aides makes her lose her appetite. “I just don’t feel like eating.”

She doesn’t partake in activities and there are plenty. She used to go to yoga but no more. She rarely leaves the room. Sometimes the aide takes her up to the roof. That is where my mother says she saw her kissing a man who works there. That is where my mother says she was left alone. Could it have been that my mother was sitting and the woman saw a worker and went to say hello, maybe stayed three minutes instead of two, gave the man a peck hello? Could the scene have been misconstrued?

I listen to my mother’s complaints.  She says she is very grateful, but that she has no one to talk to, that she needs to vent. Why can’t I just listen and let it roll off my back, she asks? I can’t help internalizing it, it gets to me.

Why can’t she chat with residents, partake in an activity, go down to the movies, go to Friday Happy Hour … I think anger may be part of aging, giving in to it, giving up, losing your mojo, your joy and desire for fun.

I try to understand; then I personalize it and I fear my own future as a very elderly person, I lose it sometimes and want to scream at my mother, my patience wanes and I get spiteful: I tell her that she is lucky she didn’t end up in a nursing home.

“Bite your tongue!” she screams, almost knocking over the bright green peas.

I do. And hide behind my other face.

 

This blog is part of a series.

The next installment is:

Part 79: Observing. A Look At My Mother