It has been almost a year since my mother was brought back to her hometown, New York City. She has spent many of the subsequent months adjusting emotionally and physically. She spent about four of those months of adjustment ill and she always manages to make a comeback. She’s been been through a bunch of aides and is currently in transition again. This is the first time since March of 2013 that she hasn’t had twenty-four hour care. Paying for someone for round the clock care has depleted her of almost a whole life-time of her savings and her funds are getting precariously low. She does not need a nursing home; she is ninety-six years old, frail and functioning. In New York State she was able to qualify for various subsidies. New York recognizes that it is cheaper for a resident to “age in place” if nursing isn’t needed. Why spend  twenty to thirty thousand dollars a month for a person to be put in a nursing home and share a room, when they can stay in their residence for far less money monthly if they supply an aide?

The next step is underway. Hopefully she will be accepted for the program and will have various services provided and an aide paid for, but we still don’t know how many hours she will get. At any rate, this will help her hopefully have enough rent money for a while.

Today a nurse came to evaluate her for a long term care company. The young woman listened to my mother’s responses. “Wow” was repeated over and over; I suppose she didn’t feel all that comfortable and didn’t know what to say. Wow, wow, wow.

When it was time for mom to answer a few questions, she knew most of the answers. But, when she was asked where she was, where she lived, she didn’t know her full address. She couldn’t tell what city she was in. First I thought this was a good thing. Up until now she was sailing along with too perfect responses, maybe showing she was too competent. This indication of possible disorientation was finally displaying more need than initially thought. Still, I was cringing inside: could this be the beginning of something? She apologized and said that she was in Florida for about thirty years and that still, after a year here, she was unfamiliar with the area, even with her address. She did know the name of the street.

Wow.

A few nights ago my mother brought me to tears. She got to me. I offered to take her out, for a ride, to a museum. Any place for a change in scenery. She got ruffled. She retreated to life in the past, that’s where she hides.

“If I had my druthers I wouldn’t be in New York City,” she snapped. It’s dirty and crime-ridden and unsafe. She went on and on. “Why should I go to a play? I’ve seen them ALL when the actors were GOOD and singers could SING.” When I was young you could walk the streets at any time, day or night.

“I’ve DONE it ALL. I’ve been to night clubs and dancing and I’ve seen every opera. They are trying to bring back all the old Broadway plays and they are doing a lousy job.”

I tried to defend my city. I tried to keep my cool and explain that it wasn’t the same city as it was thirty years ago. That it was clean and low in crime and so very rich and full of culture.

She wasn’t interested. And why would she want to go to the Brooklyn Museum when she went there almost every weekend of her youth with her sister? And anyway she can’t walk, and who would push her in a wheel chair? And, and … she has seen it.

She became more and more agitated. I became more and more frustrated. And angry. She said that I must be feeling guilty. Why do I feel guilty , she asked, when she is content?  At that point I was nothing more than a confused, powerless child. She was committed to shrinking her life.

Her voice raised: “Don’t you know I’m a hundred years old!? I know you want me to be young and run around but I can’t. I have no interest. I’ve done it all. I’m on a strict schedule for my meals (only because she chooses to eat in her room and they are delivered), and the doctor says I need to gain weight. I need to eat! I need to be quiet!! Do you know what that pink paper is on the refrigerator? IT SAYS DO NOT RESUSCITATE!! If something happens THAT’S the end! Do you understand? This is my last chance!”

I realized that every human action is motivated by the terror of death. That’s what this was all about. Extreme fright. Fear of The END. There was no more joie de vivre, no need to run or explore, no more curiosity. It was all over. And it was all committed to memory and filed in fading photo albums.

She comes off pissed and defiant and its done in such a way that the other party feels criticized. She is actually flailing and sinking and saying, “save me!”

“Don’t you know I’m not criticizing you?!” She says this to me, she says this to the aides, still there is a need to say it.

“I’m one hundred years old!!!”

“No you’re not!”

“Yes I am!!”

I step back and ask myself why I am arguing with my not one hundred year old mother.

Then we go through the ritual of her thanking me profusely for doing all I do and return to calm. It’s a cycle. Be it rational or not. The reality is she is ninety-six. Whether she knows it or not or doesn’t want to know it, she’s back where she started in the same city where she was born. She has come full circle and there’s only one thing left at the end of the tunnel. She was the sickly one and she outlived them all. But, she is the last Mohican. The tribe fades away daily; it can end at any time.

“There’s a pink paper on the fridge that says DNR!”

Wow.

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