Stuyvesant Town, in front of 653 East 14th Street, ca. 1949

I wish I could race back in time and be in this photo for just a moment, see my mother this radiant and happy and feel what it was like to be that child who was holding on for support. For just one moment.

Now, the scene has changed and I am the parent attempting to make my child-mother comfortable and secure. I have to say honestly that I hate this feeling, I don’t want to be in this position, I want to be the child, but that time is gone.

It’s confusing and painful; I am supposed to remember that it is my mother who is in pain, the mother-child who fell did more than skin a knee. She broke a bone and by doing so lost her independence, totally, and her will to live is ebbing. She was always tiny. Now she is tinier. She was the “sickly” one in the family, but she turned out to be the tough survivor. I often ask myself how such a small woman got so tough. I wish I could be more like her.

Last night I received a call from an agency recommended by the advocate I hired. I told the story of my mother’s recent journey and the lovely lady on the phone cringed with every word. “Neglect!” she said. “When I see an elderly person I feel it is my mother or father and I treat them that way.” She was sickened by the details of my mother’s last few weeks and in disbelief.

Both the advocate and the lovely lady who called highly recommended “Cynthia.” She went to my mother’s bedside at 7:00 pm last night and stayed until 11:00 pm, as planned. Now, the picture above has changed. Cynthia has become the mother of my mother. My mother is holding on for support to a source of physical comfort she hasn’t experienced in a long time. Cynthia took a look at my mother and prescribed fresh chicken soup with carrots and potatoes, maybe a little celery and onion. No salt, of course. She would make some and bring it and hope that it would replace the cold, brown Ensure my mother has been subsisting on. No food in either rehab or the hospital has been edible to her. She has barely been eating. But, Cynthia will now trade in her island background and become my mother’s Russian parent and nurture her. “She needs food and attention,” she said.

Stuyvesant Town, at playground 5.
(East 14th Street is beyond the buildings to the left)

At 10:00 pm last night I received a call from “Joy,” who is a friend of the nurse at my mother’s assisted living. The word was out that I was looking for help. Here was another lovely lady who ascribed to the tenets of the agency lady: “we must treat them like out parents.” I could tell from the phone call this was a good person. We will see what happens when my mother is discharged; she’s going to need help for everything.

This morning at 10:00 am I received a call from another friend of the nurse at the assisted living. Rose. Another good person. “Leave it in God’s hands,” she said. All these women seemed to be reading from the same script of goodness. For a moment I was thinking that this is too good to be true. Again, it is possible that three women will have to come in and care for my mother.

I just hung up with Cynthia. My mother has refused the offer of chicken soup. “It’s too salty,” she said into the phone, sounding like someone I no longer recognize. “Everything tastes like poison, ” she added. I tried to explain that the woman sitting beside her was someone I sent to her, someone who might save her. I tried to explain that she would make the soup with love and not add salt, no not even a grain. But my mother was off in the distance and we weren’t connecting. I was talking at her, tapping on the invisible glass window between us, trying to get her attention.

It was if she were in a different dimension, on a different plane.

Is this what happens when someone dies?

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

continued here

The series starts here