Learning to listen

 

Blog-world denizens, I don’t know where to begin so please indulge me in a little cathartic airing-out of my grievances.

We all have our way of looking at things, our perceptions shape our reality. No two realities are the same.

 

Yes, this post is part of the series about my mother. It continues where we left off with the potential for everyone to live happily-ever-after, for me to have some stress and pressure removed, for my mother to live close-by and accessible.

The aide is a live-in has to be fed, we must feed her and provide her with a place to sleep. She was taken to a NYC supermarket where she spent $150 on food claiming she can stretch a dollar by cooking for herself. We were all a little bit taken aback.

I bought a very nice day-bed that will double as a couch for the aide to sleep on and for guests to sit on. (now we are renting a cot to the tune of $10/day.) My mother’s comment: why am I spending so much?! The an exclamation: The aide is two-faced! I am very unhappy! I don’t want her here!! I don’t want someone here all day, I want the aide to go home at night!

Next grievance: My mother asks the aide to keep the toilet seat up because it is too heavy for her to lift with her bad hand, the aide “ignores” her request. (She feels it is more sanitary with it down which is probably true). She further complains that the aide smirks when she asks her for something, that she is being mocked.

She expects both the aide and me to ask her how she is everyday, to ask what she needs and how we can make her happy.

 

What is happening? Need a translation?

There are two very headstrong women trying to live according to their own rules in a three hundred and fifty square foot space. It’s as bad as two freshman crammed into a dorm room while trying to maintain their dignity, their individuality and their sanity.

My mother has had several screaming matches with the aide and Saturday night my mother yelled to/at me for over an hour after throwing the aide OUT of the room so she could talk in private. “She is evil, wicked, doesn’t listen, she is an anti– blah-blah, reads the Bible before helping me sometimes for an hour in the morning when I need to get to the bathroom, puts herself first, doesn’t change the towels, insists I take a shower every day, (“what for? Why do I have to go into the tub when the Hospice nurse used to wash me around with a wash cloth!) She didn’t show up last Sunday when I needed her to pack and left me with a stranger-substitute.” (I heard that one about fifteen times). “I need her to unpack my clothes; she unpacked HER clothes, hung up her clothes, my stuff is still in the suitcases. (story told at least another fifteen times). She is so selfish!” (The aide’s rationale was that when my mother’s furniture arrives, everything will have to come out of the loaner furniture, be put back into the suitcases, the temp furniture removed, her stuff brought in and set up and then the bags unpacked and placed again.)”

Each woman lives by a different set of rules. They are from different cultures and generations. Each one is stubborn and demanding and oft times unyielding.

“I can’t live with her, I am very unhappy! I am going to die, that is how miserable I am, YOU don’t listen to ME you listen to HER!” At this point I am beginning to feel sick to my stomach, I am swallowing bile, trying to keep it together. Getting those feelings of anxiety again.

This aide is the woman who was sent to my mother’s bedside when she was near death, in Florida, from neglect in a rehab center. Though the story is evolving daily, the aide wants to maintain protective control and my mother wants to break free despite her need for help. What we have is a fifty-six year old caretaker-parent looking over a ninety-five year old toddler who has her marbles.

I am in the very uncomfortable role of mediator.

 

         Notice how my gut is fashioned after a roller coaster?  I am trying to stay objective and find my center. I have been absorbed by the world of others’ ups and downs, trying to make everyone happy. In the end I lose my self.

Yesterday I had a long talk about the situation with the social worker, who tended to side with my mother. I forgot to tell you what pushed ME to the edge and to making the call: I didn’t hear the phone ring. It was my mother calling at 10:00 AM leaving a frantic message on my machine, not realizing she was talking to a machine. I didn’t hear it until several hours later. Screaming, carrying on, “talk to me!” “Hello! Hello!!”

Her complaint: she told the aide she was down to the last Tums and would need more by the next morning. The aide didn’t anticipate her need and look for them in preparation in the still packed luggage. My mother had to demand she do so.

While my mother was watching a movie downstairs, the aide filled me in, making my mother out to be the rebellious teenager who doesn’t understand the right way, her way of doing things. The social worker didn’t buy it. “Your mother is fastidious about her appearance, needs to be catered to and isn’t being treated the way she wishes to be. Tell the aide, and I’ll try to talk to her too, to just do what she wants if she wants peace!”

Back to last night, after dinner while my mother was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, I was talking to the aide on the phone. When my mother emerged she demanded to talk to me and told the aide to leave the room immediately so she could have some privacy. “Get out! I want to talk to my daughter!” The aide was banished to the corridor all the way down near the elevator to a chair.

Then, all hell broke loose, and speaking of loose I began to lose it my self. The list of grievances poured forth. Endlessly. Remember, they arrived on Tuesday night. By Saturday, four days later, while we are all trying to make sense of life and adapt, while we are all trying to make sense of a radical move, in this short time I was informed that:

The aide:

• is a liar and a cheat!
• calls you (me) “sister” and it’s all an act
• laughs at me
• never offers me water
• doesn’t act friendly
• doesn’t say, “how are you today, P- what do you need, how can I make you happy?”
• made me late for dinner and there was no room at the table for me so I had to eat with other people (which actually worked out OK)
• won’t put my clothes away! I am not a rag picker! I need my clothes ironed! (Then to me: Bring me an iron and an ironing board!)
• cooks all day and stinks up the room! Then opens the window and I get cold!
• she hovers over me and tells me I am going to fall! It makes me very nervous, I can’t take it!!! Do you hear me??? I feel like you listen to her and not to me!
• she doesn’t let me talk to you, I called and you didn’t answer! I bet she gave me the wrong number when I tried to call you.
• no one knows how I have suffered! No one knows what I have been going through!

Like I said, I began to lose it, “stop yelling this minute, I can’t listen to this, stop right now! I have been doing the best I can for almost a year, I have been on the phone some days for twelve hours  to keep you alive, to plan, arrange, worried sick, not eating or sleeping. I still have tons of stuff to do with the lawyer. Please stop!”

It was another battle of wills. Perception vs. perception, need vs. need. Life vs. life.

“Do you understand, I am ninety-five, I don’t have much time left! If I am so unhappy I might as well die right now!”

There it is, the bottom line. Time and it’s unknown length… Quality of life. The need for peace of mind. Fear of the end.

“Spend all my money! I don’t care! I NEED THE HELP!”

 

Let’s reframe

 

“Mother, did anything good happen today?”

“She ruined my life! What happened today with the Tums was catastrophic!”

“Didn’t anything good happen?”

“The food is good. The people are nice. She made me late for dinner and I ended up sitting with a man who worked at the opera and we were talking about Pavarotti and Domingo. I played the piano. I watched a good love story in the movie room.” She started to calm down. “I like to go up there and see the view of the city, it’s gorgeous.”

(The aide didn’t make her late for dinner, she went down late because she took a long time in the bathroom and I was there talking to the aide about the upcoming bed delivery)

“How was the party on the roof Friday night?”

“Too much food, we just ate dinner and people were eating like pigs, ridiculous. It was too windy outside but very nice in the main enclosed part.”

When she was finished blowing off steam, she announced she was going to get the aide. My heart went into arrest. She was alone in the room, trying to get out of the chair. She could have fallen and no one would be there to pick her up. The moment of truth. She was pushing herself, grunting, all eighty-three pounds hauling herself up and pushing her wheelie-thing to the door. I held my breath. I heard my mother open the door. She yelled, “Cynthia!” over and over as loud as she could to the large woman in purgatory sitting at the end of the hall around the corner like a child wearing a dunce cap.

Finally Cynthia responded and came back. My mother handed her the phone and said, “say good-night.” I held my breath again. She had told me earlier that she had promised her little grandson that she would be back in Florida in two weeks. She alluded to helping my mother get set up and situated, did she mean she intended to come back? Stay? Go? After buying all that food? Was this a way out, were we all off the hook? Was this marriage which was never made in heaven though I wanted it to be, though I thought it could be, headed for a separation?

The aide could barely be heard on the phone, and I knew she had been stricken. I could see her face through her voice. Her rules and regulations were challenged and she couldn’t win. Did she hear my mother screaming from down the hall in the apartment?  Could anyone come out a winner? How did my mother, who was near death in March, choking from pneumonia and on Hospice care, summon so much strength to yell, to pick herself up and walk, to make demands?

My turn. “I have a headache!”  This is all too much.” I said to the woman who sat in a Florida rehab center next to my mom just a few months ago after my mother’s fall and arm fracture. My mother was draining each day, closer to the end, was neglected, giving up. This aide cleaned my mother’s mouth for the first time in a month.

All I could muster was, “like I said before, if you want peace, just do what she asks. See what she needs, tend to her first, clean the room after you help her, don’t make her wait.”

Will giving one a piece of mind bring peace of mind?

First we all must listen.

 

 

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

 to be continued