Travel Fashion Observations

We got back from Utah Wednesday and went out to Silver City Brewing last night.  While waiting to be seated at the restaurant I noticed that the young guys coming into the place were all dressed in jeans, most with torn knees, sport shoes (not white tennis shoes but the kind you ride bikes with or climb rocks with), flannel shirts and knit hats.  The tee-shirts varied, but most were black with some kind of message on them.  I hadn't realized until I saw all these guys that I had missed the "northwest style".

In Utah, the style is camo.  Camo shirts, jackets, ball caps, pants, gloves.  The footwear of choice is hunting boots.  At least in my sister-in-law's family.  There was a little more pink among the girls in the family.  But even the girls wear camo pajamas and underwear!  This is not a look I like as it conjures up hunting parties hauling home deer and bear.  And in fact, sister-in-law's house is dotted with animal heads and stuffed birds.  They even have a bear rug.  All of the family are gentle Mormons but they love to camp, hunt and fish.

We went to Vegas, too, and my observation about fashion there was that most people were wearing black.  There are people from all over the world there and I often felt like a minority to all the Asian and Middle Eastern people we encountered.  I guess the universal color is black.  Even at Christmas people were wearing black.

The Year

I was feeling a little emotional today.  I was making perhaps the fifth apple crisp of the season and I had the radio tuned to the station that plays Christmas music starting right after Thanksgiving.  The song playing was one my Mom loved to sing at Christmas and I began to think about her while I was peeling the apples.  I got an awful big lump in my throat.  I'm finding that music is what brings memories of Mom faster than anything else.  I finally had to turn the radio off or risk having a salty apple crisp.

As you can see by the pictures, we had a bumper crop of apples this year.  I've made so many batches of applesauce I've lost count.  We've given apples and applesauce away and I'm beginning to put the sauce in the freezer.  I have a bowl of applesauce almost every morning--a bowl of applesauce a day keeps the doctor away.  They are wonderful to eat right off the tree, too.  What an incredible thing it is to be able to pick fruit in your own back yard.  My husband's Mom used to pick grapes, avocados, apricots, lemons, oranges--she lived in California then.

It's the time of year to compose the Christmas letter and that requires reviewing the year.  Anybody who has been reading this blog knows what I've mostly been occupied with--first my Mom's health, then her death, now the house/brother situation.  It's not over yet.  The house is all packed up.  Next is the cleaning, which will be extensive.  My brother is currently living in a room attached to the garage that my other brother lived in for about a year.  He has to use the kitchen and bathroom in the house.  I talked to a real estate guy yesterday.  He was Mom's lawyer so he knows about my brother and his difficulty finding housing.  He'll be meeting me at the house next week to talk things over, let me know how we should proceed from here.  I don't expect the house will go on the market before the first of 2012.

The holidays will be strange without Mom around so I'm glad we've decided to go to Utah to spend them with Michael's family.  We'll take a trip down to Las Vegas, too, and see a couple of shows.  Christmas will be white and noisy in Utah with the nieces and nephews.  My mind won't be on my Mom as much as if we were home.

Other things happened this year besides all that involved Mom.  Michael got tons of jobs done in the yard, which he listed for me to put in the Christmas letter.  I had a big triumph--I got published finally.  I got word this month from GreenPrints that they found a place for my piece in their December issue.    
(www.greenprints.com) That was so exciting!

We had lots of alumni lunches and we actually went on trips to Vegas, Reno and Alaska and we took short breaks for overnight trips to a couple of local casinos.  And I attended a writer's retreat in November and went to visit Ali and Zuzu in Wisconsin in October.  So we got some pleasure out of the year, too.

My hope for next year is that there won't be as much drama and heartbreak.  I want things to get back to normal and a little boring.  Boring can be comforting.

Bloggily

Zuzu at the library

It's been a long time since I wrote here--since the beginning of September.  Have things changed much since then?  Not really.  I am no longer cleaning out The House (my mother's), but I am still involved with it in several ways.  Am I less tense about The House?  Yes, a little, but when I spent a week in Wisconsin with my son's family that includes two precious granddaughters and a daughter-in-law that is like my 3rd daughter, I had a bad dream every night about either my Mom or my Brother or both.  Am I more optimistic about my future?  A little.  When I got back from WI I called my Brother to find out if anything new had happened on the "finding someplace to live" front and he said that when he was on the phone with the Housing Authority talking about his impending homelessness, "someone" in the background said, "Oh, I think we can find something for him by then"--by then meaning October 31st.

Some things have happened.  A very sad thing--the beloved wife of an old classmate died unexpectedly and there is a memorial service for her this coming Sunday.  It still upsets me to think about that.

Zuzu is in striped skirt

And I visited my dear granddaughters, Alison and Zuzu.  I am much rejuvenated by being around them.  They are so sweet and loving, along with all the other things little kids are, that it rubs off on me and when I come home I am softer around the edges.  We had such a great time.  I was able to go to a library reading time and a music class with Zuzu and to dance classes with Alison.  Zuzu and I colored in many different coloring books making "colorful" kitties and doggies, meaning they were not one color, but many, many colors.  I helped cook dinner a couple of times and allowed Mama to take Ali to school without having to wake Zuzu up one day. I watched Zuzu playing Nick Jr. games on the computer and Ali attacking somebody on Backyard Monsters.

My son made wonderful blueberry pancakes, fantastic Chicken Tonkatsu and his famously delicious chicken enchiladas.  I discovered Bunny Snacks and drank Caribou Coffee.  We all went to the Crystal Cave and saw bats hanging from the ceiling.  We went to a "cheese store", a uniquely upper mid-west kind of place, and bought cheese curds.  I met lots of my daughter-in-laws friends, each one as concerned with their children and husbands and how they are doing as Irene is.  I listened to my son work from home, attending cyber-meetings, expressing his opinions in intelligent terms that made me proud.  At one point my daughter-in-law thanked me for raising my son so that she could find him and fall in love with him.  That made me glow.  Later I told my son about that conversation and though he doesn't show his emotions much, I'm sure it made him feel pretty good, too.

Ali is at the far left.

I came home with stories for my husband and a new way to pronounce my name--Zuzu used to call me Nama Fistine, but now that has evolved into Gramma Chrit-stine.  She never called me just Gramma.  So I took to calling her Granddaughter Zuzu.  And she has a wonderful way of showing her distaste for something--she growls out of the corner of her mouth.  Alison has stopped being Silky, the imaginary cat, and is now a Cheeta and she has learned how to run like one.  She still is obsessed with animals, particularly cats, and we played Animal Doctor many times.  I got to meet her best friend, Grant, who wears glasses and looks like a blond Harry Potter.  These kids are too young to have started the Harry Potter books yet, but I predict they will be favorites.  Alison loves to draw and had just been introduced to the works of impressionist, Joan Miro.  We looked at his paintings on the computer and she did several of her own versions of his style that were wonderful.  I wish her parents had allowed me to take one home with me, but they were taped to the wall before I left.  One day Zuzu was preparing to get dressed and put her clothes on the floor in the order she was going to put them on.  Ali was inspired and quickly drew head and hands to put on the clothes.  She wouldn't let Zuzu get dressed until she was done and until we had taken pictures.

The fake girl is in the middle

It was a lovely trip and I came home to all the dishes washed, the house tidied, lists of plans and a pile of mail.  Life goes on.  And I start up again, taking care of moving money into an "estate account" for my mother, trying to figure out what to do about all the paintings she left and what remains of the china and antique books.  I sold some of her glassware and two pieces of furniture to her old friend, Denis Hausen, who owns a large antique store in Silverdale.  I know Mom would have approved of that since she bought so many things from him long ago.

The future?  Trips, lunches, book club meetings, the Fall start-up of our writing group, a writing retreat in November and isn't it time to start thinking about the "holidays"?  Yikes!  I wish us all Good Luck with that!

Caregiving Journal Aftermath IV--Happy Day

I'm sitting outside on the patio, my bum on one stripey-pillowed patio chair, my feet stretched out and crossed on another.   I have my new hearing aids in, just recalibrated today, so that I can hear two squirrels squaring off with each other and yelling at the tops of their little lungs.  Who knows what they are communicating but I suspect it's got something to do with a land dispute and a little pique about the fact neither one of them can get to the highest bird feeder in the yard.  My husband has finally come up with a device that frustrates their constant efforts.

I've done a couple of jobs I needed to do, concerning Mom's estate today--set up an estate bank account and closed down a credit union account, so I feel satisfied about that.  And I got myself an iced, grande' Americano at Starbucks after the hearing aids and the banking, so I am a happy camper.

Tomorrow, which is supposed to be as warm and beautiful as today, we are going up to Bruce Johnson's farm in Sedro Wooley for an alumni picnic.  It should be a splendid day as there will be beer and Potato Salad by Ralph, two of my favorite things.  The farm should be peaceful, I love Bruce's wife and maybe I can get her to sing one of her songs that I also love, we'll talk about writing I hope and the November writer's retreat that I'm sure is in the works.  My dear old friend, Jeanette, might be there, too, and she is always a joy to be around.

I think I am coming out of the Forest and Fog of After Death Responsibility.  I seem to be thinking more clearly, though my memory is bad right now.  I have been lost in that forest, not sure which way to turn, loaded with "shoulds" and conflicting opinions, mine and a significant other's, for 3 months now.  Cleaning out the house of garbage and furniture is nearly done.  I had my brother in the kitchen day before yesterday, making decisions about which pots, pans and  utensils he'll keep.  There is only one cupboard left to go through.  I think that progress, which is easy to see, has caused the lifting of the fog.  Until now I could barely see to the end of the tunnel.  Now it's in sight and important duties are being crossed off the list.  The dumpsters were picked up yesterday.  We've had them since the end of June and filled them three times.  That's a lot of garbage.  I'm pretty much over the shock at how much my folks saved, couldn't throw away anything.  Must have been something about the Great Depression and WWII.  It was also about having two sons that stored all their stuff in the house, whether they were living there or not.

I'm reading Mom's diaries and reading fiction, too, but the diaries are more riveting.  I was living at the same time and in the same vicinity, visiting now and then, but didn't realize what was going on with Mom and Dad during Dad's last years of life.  Mom stopped writing in her diaries 6 months before Dad died.  I can read about all they were going through and I'm sad I wasn't more help, but I truly didn't know what was going on. Mom didn't confide in me.  It makes me wonder if I want to keep my journals around when I am getting close to death.  Mom always wanted somebody to read her diaries--she said so many times, but I'm not sure I want anyone to read those intimate thoughts about married life and my friends and children.  And would my children want to read them?  TMI, they'd probably say.

Anyway, today is calm, productive, warm, good-smelling, a little caffeinated, satisfying.  I like it.

Wild Morning

That title is a little misleading.  It's not wild here, it's wild on the Southern East Coast.  I've been watching the Weather Channel because my daughter, her husband and two sons live in Norfolk, Virginia and they are getting hit with high winds and rain, with the eye of Irene still a couple of hours away.  It tickles me to watch the Weather Channel guys on the beaches, their pants flapping violently, yelling as they attempt to be heard over the high winds.  A guy in Nags Head, NC, on the beach bracing himself against the wind and being hit by a knee high wave, while he tells the "anchors" in the dry studio that he's fine, no problem, and the sand is whipping up around his knees.  I can imagine how sand blasted his face will be later. when he finally leaves that beach.  But these guys don't care.  They love the weather.  I like the Weather Channel better than those on our local channels or anybody's local channels, because they don't sensationalize it as much as the locals.

My daughter  says the wind is blowing hard, so far no worse than the what she calls "Mom's Nor'easter", the storm that blew threw and flooded the basement, knocked out the lights, flooded the roads when I was in Norfolk a year and a half ago, in October.  We were without lights for 3 days, trying to find a sump pump to get the water out of the basement, eating cheese and apples, playing games in the candlelight.  We had a good time, but were getting dirty and finally were able to go out and shower at the local gym, which had power.  I think they are going to have a much worse storm this time though, as the eye is heading straight at them.  Norfolk floods easily, as it is all at sea level.  I'm sure my daughter has her camera at the ready in case the water comes all the way up to their porch, which is higher than the street.  Some idiots in a big black SUV just drove up behind the weather guy that's standing in a street in Virginia Beach, and waved at the camera.  Nuts!  It's an adventure for them, but it won't be funny when a branch flies off a tree and breaks their windshield.  Apparently there has been a tornado not too far away from there.  So the weather assault is getting dangerous.

And here at home, I've been watching 4 Stellar's Jays, the birds we Westerners call Blue Jays, flying and jumping around in the yard.  I am running out of birdseed in the feeders and don't have any left.  In order to keep this show going I have to go get some seed today.  I have to go back to Mom's house today and for a couple more weeks, I'm afraid, as the cleaning slows down, dependent on my brother to do his part.  He is taking that "sentimental journey" that I was taking in the early days after Mom died.  Picking up a picture and then engrossed in the memories and picking up another picture and so forth, until an hour had passed and no progress had been made.  In his case he is picking up magazines and looking through them, or model pieces, collecting pennies off the floor.  We are getting close though.  I can see the rug on his bedroom floor--we worked at it with hands, a hoe and a little snow shovel doing the work of broom and dust pan.  All the tiny bits of model parts are off the floor, all the cassette tapes are picked up, all the clothing, the magazines have been sorted and bagged.  All that is left to do is sorting through the items left on the bed and the table, taking clothes out of the dresser and then pulling all the magazine pictures off the walls.  My husband's tolerance level for helping out is very low.  He and I took furniture down the narrow stairs Thursday but there still is another coffee table upstairs, an end table, yet another coffee table and a full size bed to bring down.  It never seems to end.  He kept his cool on Thursday, keeping me posted as to the percentage of his tolerance--"I'm at 50% now".  "Okay," I'd say, "Only 2 more things to do and then you're done."

I took a break yesterday and we went to see an alumni friend up at Keyport.  I'd been telling my husband about his garage, which is a combination of work shop and museum and the incredible view from his patio.  We enjoyed both of them after a lunch at Silver City with my favorite beer and some fish tacos.  It was a beautiful day, a beautiful view, nice conversation.  Later in the evening a coworker from my days at the ESD came by to get the mink stole that my Mom had and we were able to sit on our patio and talk.  There's no view, except of trees, but it is quiet aside from the buzzing of the mosquitoes.

Eventually, I will write about our most recent cruise to Alaska, but for now the blue jays and Hurricane Irene are paramount in my mind.

Caregiving Journal 29-Aftermath III

This is not a picture of the room in my Mom's house, but it was just like this--no blue stuffed bunny, though.

It was bound to happen.  Something was going to appear that was going to force me to write a post.  I’ve wanted to for days, but this is the first day I’ve actually had some time to do it, and today this appeared in the USA Today column written by one of my favorite essay writers, Craig Wilson:

Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,

Where, in spite of all you can do,

There is no way out, there is no way back

There is no other way but through?

                                                            Annie Johnson

And this is the Red Sea place in my life.  The house.  Cleaning the house.  Helping the house become a place that others might want.  Taking all of my family out of the house, all of the artists and their artwork and their materials and their hundreds of pieces of art paper and canvases and found objects and tools and books, the upholsterer and his fabrics and his tacks and his springs and his wine –making bottles, the brother who saved every paper bag, the mother who saved all her People magazines and every book she ever read, the brother that never threw anything away, including every single piece of plastic that every model part was attached to, and every bit of clothing he ever owned from the time he was 20 and worked out for 6 hours every day to the present day when a workout is climbing the stairs to his room.  The house.  This will be “the year of the house”.

And indeed it is like parting the Red Sea.  I thought the basement was hard to muck out and it was.  But the third floor is harder.  Just when I seem to be making a path down the middle of the ocean of stuff, I find more things that have been thrown back into a tiny closet.  I don’t find treasures; I find more old clothes, my hiking brother’s old tent, some dishes, one shoe, more of Dad’s slides.  The slides might be treasures, I haven’t had time to look at them yet or even to read the labels he put on the cartridges they are stored in.  I was hoping I might find the old file box I kept my junior high notes in.  I’m referring to the notes my friends and I handed back and forth to each other during the school day; it would be like texting is now.   “Did you see who was holding hands in the hall?”  “No, who?”  “I can’t believe it!  I thought they broke up!”  “Are you going to the Tolo?”  “No, I can’t think of anybody to ask?”  Stuff like that.  But they would be so much fun to find. 

Yesterday I did find one pencil sketch I was looking for.  It was an 11 X 14 drawing that my mother did of my grandmother as a very young woman She had it matted and framed but it had disappeared.  I found it in a plastic bag with the original of a beautiful photograph of my own mother at about the age of 20.  The photo is damaged, but savable.  My theory is that when my Mom had her house fire, in 2003, and everything in the house was packed up and put in storage, the box these pictures were in was returned to my brother’s area by mistake.  The pictures were in the back of a tiny closet with things that belonged to both of my brothers.  Again, this affirms why I didn’t have some cleaning company come in to do the cleanup work, even though my body aches from my eye sockets to my ankles. 

I guess I am making progress.  The basement is done, except that the pool table is still in it.  My San Diego daughter wants it and is trying to figure out how to deal with it.  Mom’s bedroom is done but the bed and one dresser are still there—my brother is sleeping there now.  The living/dining room is clear of most of it’s furniture.  Two chairs, a spinet piano, TV and coffee table and small bookcase are still there for my brother.  All the books are gone.  The front bedroom upstairs is clean of the clothes that were piled in it, but there is still an old loveseat, a chair, a coffee table and some paintings.  The furniture is from my first marriage, circa 1968.  I can see the original wood floor now.  The windows still have my brother’s paint on them, something about “this flag doesn’t bleed” and Harley Davidson stickers.

The room I’m working on now has a twin bed in it and probably 30 of my brother’s paintings, some of them very large.  We have removed several big garbage bags of junk, and I do mean junk, as in broken ghetto blasters or boom boxes as we later decided to call them, remains of airplane models,  men’s clothes,  shattered glass, a television set, plaster board.  There were old records that went to the Goodwill, books of music (Goodwill), books like Moby Dick in paperback (Goodwill), a small box of toys that my Mom had collected for her grandchildren (Goodwill).  What remains are the large things I can’t move without help—a TV console, the bed, the plasterboard and all the paintings.  My husband is so burnt out by all the junk we keep finding that he starts to get grumpy before we even leave our place to go down to Mom’s house.  All he is willing to do now is cart the bags out, move the heavy stuff and take things to the dump, which is a huge help.  He will not do any active cleaning or sorting.  I am thinking of calling in the cavalry, better known as alumni friends, to help with the rest of it, just to keep peace at my own house.

I have been picking away at the kitchen, which is the easiest room.  Most of the pots and pans will go to Goodwill, with the rest going with my brother when we figure out where he’s going.  The bathroom will be the same.

The last room to be cleaned out will be my brother’s room.  Have you seen the reality show about hoarders?  His room is like that, though the height of the junk is not quite as horrible as I’ve seen on that program.  There still is no floor showing—when he cleans a portion of it, you can’t really tell.  He will need me to go in and say, “Are you keeping this?”  I’m afraid he will keep way more than he will be able to fit into the small apartment he will probably end up in.  His new place will end up just like his room is now and like the part of the living room he is occupying now.  It is becoming exactly as I thought it would—littered with magazines, coffee mugs, old prescription pill containers, cereal bowls full of cigarette butts, TV guides, empty latte containers.

So, you see, the Red Sea is not only the house—it is also moving my brother, literally and figuratively.  He is content where he is.  His cat is with him, the detritus of his life is around him.  But I must and will move through it and move him.  Today I savor a day at home, even though I have housework to do, plants to put into the ground, a job I have to help my husband with.  I have a rare moment to breath, to rest my ankles from the steep stairs and my hands from picking up and carrying garbage.  A breath in, a breath out.

Caregiving Journal 28-Aftermath II

I am sitting in my car, two windows and the strangely named moon roof open.  The breeze is blowing lightly through the car, dark clouds are glowering over the water and I can hear the happy laughs and voices of people who are neighbors to this park at Kitsap Lake.

I am in the “upper level” of the park, an area that appeared in the last couple of years.  It must have been donated; it wasn’t a part of the park when I used to come here to eat my lunch back in my working days.  I can see the lake but not be bothered by the guys backing their boat-hitched trucks down the ramp to launch.

Today I’m here taking a lunch break from my current job—the job of cleaning out Mom’s house.  I started doing this work in earnest about a week before Mom’s memorial service, just about a month ago, though it seems like longer.

A lot has gotten done—St. Vincent de Paul has hauled away half a garage full of furniture, clothing, books and now we have another half a garage ready for pick-up.  We have an 8 yard and a 6 yard dumpster, already emptied once, filling up again.

I was astounded by the number of scarves Mom had, but even more surprised by all the wine bottles Dad kept.  My husband and son-in-law found a cache in the basement a week ago and I found many more boxes of bottles, many of them jug sized, yesterday.  Apparently, Dad was making wine and who knows what else.  I found three bottles with clear alcohol of some kind in them and several bottles of wine that had turned reddish brown.  All went down the laundry room sink—the basement was redolent with alcohol smells for hours, mingling uncomfortably with the odor of mildew.

Upstairs in the living room I’ve managed to get all the books in boxes, helped my husband move the broken grandfather clock out to the garage and the vacuum cleaner chest, carefully upholstered in light-green vinyl, too.  The chest contained a vintage Electrolux vacuum that still started.  Dad, who took an upholstery course at Olympic College in his twenties, upholstered the chest.  He had given away most of his important tools when his hands wouldn’t cooperate with him anymore, but there remained many end bolts of fabric in the basement, not to mention scores of long tubes that used to hold fabric and hundreds of brads and tacks.

The entire 2 ½ weeks my daughter was helping me clean, she was searching for the key to open Mom’s cedar chest.  She didn’t find it so my husband jimmied it open yesterday.  All along I’d suggested it would probably be like Geraldo Rivera’s hope and excitement about  opening Al Capone’s vault.  We’d open the chest and there wouldn’t be anything there.  To the contrary, among some other not very important pieces of clothing was my mother’s wedding dress and beside it another fragile dress, one of my grandmother’s dresses from the time of the First World War.  Both dresses are the color of white roses starting to fade.  They are gossamer light, with almost no weight.

My husband asked me if I found any treasures in the cedar chest.  I told him about the dresses and his response was typical of a man who is unsentimental and who views antiques as just old junk.  He said, “Why would anyone want to keep those?”  I don’t really know what I will do with them, but I won’t give them to anyone who won’t appreciate their history.  I imagine my tiny mother, her dark hair spilling over the shoulders of her lovely wedding dress, nervous and excited on her wedding day, her mother and sisters assisting with the covered buttons down the back of her beautiful dress.  The dress itself never appeared in a photograph because her father forgot to follow through on his only task for the wedding—hiring the photographer.  My mother told me that sad story many times, with resignation.  Wedding portraits were taken later, but there is no photographic history of that day in April of 1942.

The basement contains a horrible amount of junk collected by my parents who experienced the Great Depression and must have felt that saving everything, even if it was broken, would somehow be a hedge against hard times coming again.  But there is also a full-sized pool table, cues, and balls, even chalk from the days when we used to go down after Thanksgiving dinner and play a game or two.  Dad loved pool, as did my brother, Dan, and I liked trying to hit the balls and loved the sound of the balls clicking and falling with a satisfying thud into the pocket, the squeak of the chalk against the tip of the cue, the kidding and joking of the men.  There was just enough room around the table so that your cue stick didn’t hit the wall behind you.  My younger daughter, who lives in San Diego, wants the pool table and I hope she can figure out a way to get it to her fiance’s home in Eugene.  She has good memories of the games, too.

At the urging and gentle encouragement of my older daughter, my brother is wrapping his Harley Davidson models, “Burrito Style” he says.  This is the one and only worry he has about moving. All the models he had when the house caught on fire in 2002 were ruined by the packers who put all of his and Mom’s belongings in storage.

The last frontier in this big challenge will be the third floor of the house, my brother’s bastion.  He has lived upstairs, unhampered by intruders or anyone who wanted to clean or to have him clean, since 2002 when his rooms were rebuilt after the fire.  That’s 9 years of accumulation by a person who uses the floor as a closet and who also doesn’t throw anything away.  Mom didn’t venture up those stairs and so she didn’t know how bad it was getting.  I haven’t been up there yet, but like explorers to a primitive Amazonian village, my daughter and son-in-law reported back that it was “frightening”.  I guess I’d better locate my pith helmet.

Caregiving Journal 27-Aftermath

ev'rything that happens will happen today

and nothing has changed but nothing's the same

& ev'ry tomorrow could be yesterday

and ev'rything that happens could happen today

David Byrne

Shall we put this heavy coat with the Goodwill bags or the Abused Women’s Shelter stuff?  Do you want this mouse pin?  Does Carolyn or Stanley?  I think I want that sparkly scarf.  Throw that tattered hat away.

These are the decisions being made as my daughter, her husband and my husband sift through the huge amount of history in an old house.  It has taken 3 days to go through all my mother’s clothes, jewelry, scarves, shoes, wigs, hats.  We haven’t tackled any other room except her bedroom yet and in the midst of this challenge, the water heater broke.  We got a new one at Lowe’s and the day before yesterday we gals cleaned out a swath of the basement so the guys could unhook the old one and install the new one.  Turned out the wiring on the old one needed upgrading and when that was done it worked again.  So the new one is going back.  In the meantime, we fill bag after plastic bag with my Mom’s belongings of more than 60 years.

Because my daughter is here it is easier.  She can “compartmentalize”, as she says, blocking the emotion that might come from looking at a familiar piece of jewelry or a memorable dress.  If I were doing this on my own I would be stopping to moon over many of the things she quickly puts in a bag.

I have never had to go through an entire house of someone else’s possessions and decide what to do with them.  I’ve moved and had to make the “shall we take this or not” decisions, but that’s different.  This is personal in a way that makes me feel as if I am intruding, I am fumbling around in somebody else’s private rooms, I am not being respectful of their belongings.  But I am trying to be.  I pause to say, “Mom loved this shirt”, or “This is a beautiful scarf.  I haven’t ever seen it.”  I talked to Mom yesterday, telling her she really didn’t need all those scarves and wondering if she really used all of them, but then I remembered all the scarves I have and how few I actually wear often.  Like Mother like Daughter—and Granddaugher.  My daughter, Erin, responded to my musings by saying, “Mom, you can’t ever have too many scarves!”

So we laugh, sweat, pack, decide, keep the very nostalgic, throw away the shabby and rejoice that Goodwill and the Women’s Shelter will receive a bonanza of pretty women’s clothing and shoes, not to mention a wide variety of scarves.  Next we will begin on the hundreds of books in the living room….and the nick-knacks.

And every day we take home a few more bags of the “keepers”, the old photographs of ancestors from the early 1800s, notebooks of Mom’s writing assignments during her writer’s group years, a favorite shirt that was way too big for Mom, an old pearl turtle pin loved from childhood, a leopard print hat.  These are the keepsakes that will remind us of our Mom and Grandmother, as if we would need anything tangible for those memories to be with us.

Life

Live it, love it, never take it for granted.

It's short and it can be sweet if you let it be.

It's your choice.

The Era I Grew Up In

Caregiving Journal 26

I am up in the middle of the night, or is it early morning--it's 3:10, you decide.  Too much of my own snoring, too much of my husband's restlessness, too much going on in my mind.  I'm drinking chamomile tea, hoping to calm body and mind and steal a couple more hours of sleep, but first the brain must be emptied.

Today is the private inurnment.  It's going to be the second goodbye.  The first was on May 22 in Mom's bedroom.  The third will be June 25th at the memorial service.  And then there will be all the other goodbyes.  The smallest things get to me--the latest ones have been commercials on television for Ensure and Twizzlers, two of the things I used to buy for Mom.  I'm afraid this inurnment will "get to me", too.  I've never done this.  Dad's ashes were put in the niche and there was no ceremony at the cemetery.  I scattered my brother's ashes in the Elwah River 3 years after he died.  There will only be the three of us, my younger brother, my husband and me, at the cemetery today.

I asked the funeral people to give my brother and me some of the ashes, my brother's to go into a heart shaped container and mine just in a little bag.  My cousin called the other day.  He told me he'd buried his mother's ashes between her mother and father in a local cemetery.  I'll put my portion of Mom's ashes there, too, next to her beloved sister and her mother and father.  I'd rather visit Mom in that cemetery than visit "the wall" at the other one.  I'll go to the Wall on Memorial Days with my little sprig of flowers, like I've been doing since Dad died 10 years ago.  But I'll visit Mom on beautiful Spring days, like the day she died, with the birds singing loudly and the smell of lilacs in the air.

After the inurnment the three of us will come home and put the funeral home lasagna in the oven and we'll make a toast to Mom.  Maybe we'll even be able to muster the good cheer necessary to tell stories.  We'll have a tiny wake.  Too bad we can't have alcohol at the memorial service later this month because I'd sure like to hoist a couple to Mom and sing some songs with all my old friends on that day.

Caregiving Journal 25

What I want to know is this:  WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH TO DIE?

Today I have to make Comfort Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Caregiving Journal 24

Tomorrow is the first lawyer appointment since Mom died.  Today the Sun will get the obituary right or somebody else will die.  Yesterday my dear cousin, Marc, son of my Aunt Carol, my Mom's sister, called and we talked for a long time.  Yesterday my best friend went, as if going to her execution, to a doctor at UW hospital to see if ANYTHING short of mutilation can ease her years long chronic pain.  Today my husband will go to Silverdale to run some errands and he is very excited to get out, that's how much he's hating this weather.  Yesterday I called Lincare for the third time to ask them to remove the oxygen equipment that Mom used for the 3 days before she died.  Today I am sending my grandson $20 for the birthday I missed.  Today I am sending a birthday card to Marty McLaren for her birthday that I missed (which is hard to do since it's on the same day as mine).  Today I am going to make a thank you card for the people at the ESD, where I used to work, to thank them for giving me a lilac bush in memory of my Mom. Today I am going to wash the dishes and do laundry and make dinner.  Today I am going to watch our three little red squirrels fight over the birdseed.  Today I am going to watch the swallows (either violet greens or tree swallows) swoop in and out of the nest box that is just above and to the right of the patio doors.  Today, if it stops raining for a few minutes, I will start digging the hole for my lilac bush.  Yesterday evening my husband and I went for a walk--I could smell Spring, late as it is.  Today, as I do every day, I will look in amazement at the huge sunflowers my friend, Kay, brought me last week.  Yesterday I emailed my friend, Kay, a dream my Mom had written about and the transcript of the conversation about heaven that we'd had at Northwoods, as preparation for the eulogy she will write.  Today, I might make cookies, though I lack the chocolate chips I want to use. Yesterday my brother called Social Security on his own, without being reminded. Yesterday I washed the sheets and blanket that were on Mom's bed--there were chocolate stains from an ice cream/Ensure shake.  The day before yesterday I cleaned out another of Mom's drawers--her makeup drawer--finding blue, black and brown used up eye liner pencils and bright red lipsticks, tiny perfume samples and sewing kits from various hotels, and many bobby pins.

The days go by.  There are fewer times of crying.  So many times I say to myself, "Mom would have liked that."  Or, "I would have told Mom about that."  There is a sadness that lies underneath.  There is  happiness that I loved my Mom and still love her.

Caregiving Journal 23

This is not the real wall that Dad's ashes are in or that Mom's will soon be in, 

but it's a good representation.

How long will I continue to call what I'm writing the Caregiving Journal?  I don't know.  As long as I feel I'm still writing about Mom or my brother and the aftermath of Mom's death, I guess.  Or my feelings about her or my feelings about the business part of dying and there always is a business component to it, isn't there?  The funeral home, the death certificates, the cancelled credit cards, the transference of the car ownership, and on and on.

I am sleeping better, but psoriasis has appeared on my elbows.  I use cow juice on it--it's not really cow juice but I can never remember the real name, which is Bag Balm.  I can also use some prescribed stuff I had for my scalp when it was so bad.  Remember the little shower caps I had to wear every night while I used Derma Smooth?  Thank heavens I know how to prevent an infected scalp now.  So my elbows are itching and I'm having some allergies, but then, so is everybody else.

I finished writing Mom's obituary on Saturday, added two pictures to it (Sun said one picture will go in the paper and two will go in the online version) and sent it into the cyber void.  Today the piece I wrote appeared online, but without the pictures I so carefully scanned and attached.  I am mad.  I know the paper will not have a picture either.  And I know what it's like to try to get the Kitsap Sun to fix anything they've botched.  I spent 3 months trying to get my Mom's newspaper mess ironed out.  I wanted to pay for it yearly, they were charging her monthly on her credit card.  I got them to stop doing that, after three calls to three different people at the Sun, but they didn't ever send the invoice for the year.....AND they stopped delivering the paper, too.  Since Mom got sick shortly after that I let it slide.  So now I get to wrangle with them again.  Can't wait.

The cremation will take place this week.  I spent some time with the folks, Bob and David, at Miller Woodlawn on Wednesday.  They were nice, particularly Bob, who talked to me a long time and instantly got my "I'm tired of talking now and want to wind this up" signal--I looked at my watch.  Can you believe my parting gift was a frozen lasagna?  Did I tell you this already?  I still can't get over it!  Lasagna.  My husband and I imagined the scenario.  The Lasagna company is going out of business but they have a whole bunch, thousands, of boxed lasagnas left.  "Who can we sell them to?  Schools?  No, they have their own kitchens.  Hospitals?  Their own kitchens.  Jails?  They eat better than this.  The fed government?  No, they eat chicken.  Welfare system?  No, they offer cheese, but no meat.  Oh wait !  Funeral homes!!!  They have their own freezers--what do people need when somebody dies?  Food! It's a win-win!"  It was funnier when we were thinking about it, but I guess my funny bone has arthritis today.

Next week my brother and my husband and I will attend a private inurnment at the funeral home.  I think it will be hard.  It will be fast.  Sit in chair in the outdoor memorial thingy, have the urn delivered to us, one of us will climb on a step ladder to reach the "niche", put the urn in, mumble some words to ourselves, shake hands and thank the funeral home people and then go home.  Maybe we'll eat the lasagna.  Yesterday I went to the "niche" where my Dad waits for my Mom--his ashes wait, if ashes can be imagined as waiting--and put one of my rhododendron flowers in the tiny metal vase affixed to the marble slab--what the heck do you call these things--up on the wall.  I do this every year.  I think I am the only one in the family who knows where it is.  Mom saw it once, but never visited it.  She didn't like cemeteries at all--"morbid" she said.  But when her ashes are in there, the "niche" will have more visitors.

I think there were lots of other things I wanted to write about, but I didn't seize the brain window of opportunity yesterday and I still have "grieving brain amnesia".  There's no cure for it except time.

Caregiving Journal 22

I have the most wonderful friends.  I have had offers of lunch and walks and my oldest friend brought a huge casserole dish filled with chicken enchiladas, salad, salad dressing, bread, gigantic bright sunflowers and her loving self to see us.  Cards are coming now.  One of them expressed everything I've been thinking in such a sweet way:

You'll never forget your mother's face,
the sound of her voice,
the gentleness of her touch...

You'll never forget the stories she told
the traditions she handed down...

You'll never forget the lessons she taught
the things she stood for...

You'll never forget and  you'll always know
that you honor her every day in how you live
and who you are.

It's true--my mother's voice, especially, will ring in my ears forever, with it's clear soprano tone.  She told us stories, on her bed in the house in Tracyton, that she made up, no books, purely out of her imagination.  She taught me Albert Schweizer's "reverence for all life" (except for slugs, I'm afraid) and she taught me to "get up, get dressed, brush your teeth and you'll feel better".  She taught me to look at clouds and all the different greens in the landscape.  She taught me to be curious, to ask questions, to find the answers.  She taught me that writing was something that our family did and crossword puzzles, too and that books were the best gifts of all, aside from maybe a jewel now and then.  She taught me the love of pretty, colorful clothing.  She taught me to always try to look nice when I stepped out of the house.  She taught me to love movies.  She taught me to love cocoa and cinnamon toast on a Sunday night.  She taught me that life is something to celebrate.  She taught me to wear pretty socks and rings.  She taught me joei de vivre.  She taught me more and more and more than that.

Yesterday, an old friend from work came by, bearing a bowl of pink, purple, white and yellow plants and a card signed by my friends from work.  I retired almost 4 years ago from the ESD but they still went to the effort of remembering me and my mother.  After I thanked Wendy for the plant bowl and the card she led me outside to her truck because she "had something else" for me.  She reached in and pulled out a 5 foot tall lilac bush.  I didn't cry then because it wasn't a crying day, but now the tears are rolling down my face because it is so touching that one or two of them have been reading my blog and they understood the meaning that a lilac bush would have for me.  Every time I look at it I will remember my mother and the fragrant lilacs that were blooming outside her window and the three bouquets that my daughter and I picked that were sitting on her dressers in the days before she left us.  I will also think of my friends at my old work place and how giving they are, even if I don't visit them often enough.

Thank you, friends.

Caregiving Journal 21

Yesterday I saw Mom's purse sitting next to her chair and I cried.  I saw her tiny white tennis shoes with the rhinestones on them and the neon pink laces in her bedroom and I cried.  When I gave the "most recent" picture of her to the funeral home man, I cried.  When they asked me if I would like them to make her look nice, in other words, close her eyes and her mouth, straighten her, comb her hair, I cried.  The day before, I didn't shed a tear.  It will be like this.

The day before, my dearest, oldest friend Kay came to see me.  She brought dinner big enough for 3 days, salad, dressing, bread and she brought her loving, comforting self.  She wanted to hold me while I cried but there were no tears on that day.  I was feeling the freedom of the end of care taking, the sun was shining, my good friend was here.  She held me anyway, for a long time and told me all the ways she loved me--she loved me as much as the moon loves the sky, she loved me as much as a baby loves its Mama, she loved me as much as a car loves its tires, she loved me as much as the sea loves blue and on and on, all the while stroking my cheek.  We talked like in the old days, on the couch, under a blanket or feet tangling together, of our men and our fears and our lies and our truths.  We talked about Mom and Kay told me what she remembered about the first time she met her and what her impressions were and how they changed over the years of knowing her.  I told her what the last hour of Mom's life was like and about the silly/crazy conversations we had before she died.  It was a lovely time with my friend, just like in the old days when we saw each other many times a week and talked and drank tea in her tiny home in Manette with the red flowered curtains and the yellow enamel pitcher on the table always filled with flowers.

Yesterday was not so much fun.  It was the funeral home day and though they took very good care of me and my Dad had made sure that everything would be paid for, it was still very emotional.  I liked both men who served me.  One was a little tentative and nervous.  He was new to Miller-Woodlawn.  The other one, Bob, was sweet and talkative and I learned a great deal about his family and his past in the 90 minutes I was there.  He is the salesman and usually would be helping to select a coffin, but none of that was necessary with me.  The cremation, the urn, the niche, were all paid for years ago.  He took me into the room where "keepsake" items could be bought and I selected something for my brother--a palm-sized silver heart that he can take with him wherever he ends up.  It will be inscribed Mom, like a tattoo, but it will contain about a teaspoon of her ashes.  I will also get a teaspoon of ashes that I will keep or sprinkle;  I'll decide on that sometime later.  I've been trying to think of where Mom would like some of her ashes to be and I haven't come up with anything.  Her favorite place was her chair in the living room.  I'm not even going to keep that chair, let alone put her ashes in it.  If it was my ashes, you could scatter them on just about any beach in the county--I love them all.  Or better, on the beach of Peso Lavadi on Paros in Greece.  Or in Scotland. Or in my garden.  I have so many favorite places.  I have some of my brother's ashes sprinkled around the hydrangea I took from his memorial service.  I wrote a piece about how it blooms with only one flower each year.

There's a scattering ashes story that a friend of mine tells that I can't write about here because it's too personal to her, but I think about it every time I contemplate ashes and what might be done with them.  You will wonder why it always makes me laugh.

After the funeral home I stopped to get my brother a quad latte and me an Americano, and two Dutch Chocolate Brownies from the Red Apple grocery store.  I wanted to check in and to tell him what I'd been doing.  I wanted to find out if he wanted to take part in the inurnment. He does, and he had received a call from the good-looking social worker, Anthony, who was putting housing paperwork in the mail to him.  Things are going forward. I asked Stanley if he believed he would hear from Mom--did he believe in that kind of after life communication and he said he did.  I keep remembering the sweet Dr. Vasquez and what he said about spirits and that he believed they communicated after death.  My mother will be in my dreams and I so look forward to seeing her again.  But what am I going to do with her purse and her shoes?

Caregiving Journal 20

I am taking care of myself now.  My eyes, my nose, my throat are all acting funny.  They are dripping copiously.  It's not just tears, it's mucous.  Yesterday I took an allergy pill, then I drank a large glass of wine at dinner, and  I took a slurp of cough medicine at bedtime.  The cough medicine has decongestant in it and it seemed to work better than anything for stopping the dripping.  This morning I am dry but a little balmy.

I planted marigolds from Costco in my gardens yesterday, creating some beautiful little scenes, using some colorful, square dishes with Mexican designs for plant saucers.  I'd bought these dishes at Kohl's a long time ago and the first time I washed them in the dishwasher they started to chip.  I used them longer than I should have and then finally put them in my green house.  Now they are gracing my garden.

It was a pretty day, sunny and fairly warm.  A good day for doing things to rejuvenate myself.  Digging in the dirt, cleaning up the strawberries, encouraging my tiny potato plants, transferring baby tomato plants into big pots, fertilizing.  I got several calls: from my son, from my best friend, from my daughter in Norfolk.  I made up a word while talking with my son--Shrap--a combination of a word that starts with "sh" and a word that starts with "cr".  I used it in place of all the things that have to be done now, referring to Mom's house, her effects, my brother's situation, the business end of dying.

Two important things got done yesterday--Office of Personnel Management notification and Social Security notification.  I didn't want to do anything more than that.  Today I will call Miller-Woodlawn and make an appointment to take care of the cremation.  I am lucky.  Mom and Dad both had cremation insurance and there is a remains spot already there, with my Dad's ashes installed in 2001.  When we inurned Dad, THEY wanted to know if Mom wanted her name on the plaque too, with the end date not inscribed.  She said NO!  But now the inscription will be put on the stone.  I wonder if they will allow me to take 1/4 of a cup of ashes to keep or spread.  I will insist on it.

On Sunday two men came to take Mom's body to the funeral home.  One was a regular looking fellow, still in the Navy, doing this work to augment his salary.  The other young guy was skinny in his black suit, with longish black hair--pale, gaunt.  He didn't say much, leaving it up to the Navy guy to explain how it all would work.  He sat with his hands folded in his lap, looking funereal.  My brother said his hand was cold when he shook it.  I whispered to Stanley that he looked like a vampire.  It would be the perfect place for a vampire to work, wouldn't it? I don't want to go there right now, but I can imagine a story about him and why he would like to work at a funeral home.

Kay will come to visit me today and to hug me and help me talk about all that has happened.  She was in New York and New Jersey with her fiance, Alan, when we brought Mom home from Northwoods Lodge.  She called me from New York to find out how I was doing, how Mom was doing.  She said Times Square made her want to turn out all the lights.  She is going to bring food and her love.

I am wearing the two rings that were on Mom's finger the past few years, a pink and yellow gold ring with a grape-leaf pattern and a gold band with five small squares of amethyst set into it.  She wore them on her wedding ring finger but they are too small to fit anything but my pinkie.  I have had to wrap pink yard around the bands to hold them on my finger.  After I go through Mom's jewelry, which I am looking forward to, I will take a few pieces and have a pin or necklace or ring made out of them.  The rest of the good stuff or retro stuff, I will show my daughters and daughter-in-law and see if they want it.  There is jewelry decades old, probably not a single piece worth anything except that it was chosen by my dear fashionable Mom and worn with panache.

My brother is doing okay.  He called yesterday to see how I was doing.  He told me he'd walked to the coffee shop just a block away and bought two 20 oz. quad lattes.  That seemed like a nice thing to do for himself, even if I can't imagine drinking that much coffee and that much caffeine.  He seems to be grieving normally but he admitted to one Stanley-esque activity.  I had bought Mom a bottle of liquid Tylenol because she couldn't swallow pills toward the end of her life and I had given her only two doses before she died.  I gave it to my brother to use for headaches or other aches and pains.  Yesterday he admitted to drinking the whole bottle.  I guess he has quite a capacity for abusing his body because it didn't do anything to or for him.  I suppose he thought he would get some kind of buzz from it.  My husband cried out, "Oh great!  That's all we need--a double funeral!"

It's the oddest feeling to have a loved person in your life for as long as you've lived and then in an instant to have them gone.  I remember the feeling when my father died.  Here one minute, gone the next.  I saw men who looked like him, in stores, on the street.  It was the same with my brother--I saw him everywhere.  Will I see Mom?  The day she died, an hour or so later, I was putting some garbage in the can and there was a loudly chirping bird on the very top of a tree, just past the yard fence.  I called my brother out to hear it and asked him, "Is it Mom?"  The bird continued calling for a short time and then flew away.

Caregiving Journal 19

My Mom died at 12:40 pm yesterday, Sunday, May 22.  It wasn't peaceful at first.  She had pneumonia and she was gasping for air, but she died in her own bed, in her own home with her daughter and her son and her granddaughter and her great-grandson there with her.  I had slept with her all night, listening to her ragged breathing, placing my hand on her every few minutes, holding her hand, kissing her and whispering to her that I was there and realizing that she was still breathing strongly.  By the time dawn came I felt that in a little while I could go home, and be with my husband and daughter and Alex for awhile before coming back.  My brother was sleeping on the couch and was finally getting some real rest.  I sat with Mom for 2 more hours, reading pieces she'd written for her writer's group, about "surprises", "dreams", "Autumn".  She continued to seem to be breathing with ease and sleeping deeply.  The fever of the night before had broken.  At 7:00 I decided to go home for awhile.

I had an hour before anyone got up--quiet--thinking time.  I made a big pot of coffee and read an article in a magazine, enjoying the moments of peace.  When the gang got up Alex and I made pancakes and we all made plans for the morning--Carolyn had to take Mom's car back, she had to pack, I wanted to be with Mom until I took Carolyn and Alex to Silverdale to catch the Airporter to fly back to San Diego.  Alex had to memorize a poem for school and after pancakes we found a couple of short poems about nature on the Internet and he started to learn them.  While his Mom was getting ready he played one last game on Grandma's iPad (mine, in case you are confused about Grandmas), Michael packed all the gear into the cars and I was back at Mom's by 12:15.

When I got there she was in distress.  She couldn't make any sound so Stanley, who was still asleep on the couch when I got there, didn't realize anything was wrong.  She was hot, the temperature had spiked, her mouth was open and she was either gasping or trying to say something.  I immediately got the liquid Tylenol and slowly, slowly, so as not to choke her, dripped it into her mouth with a syringe.  Just the day before we had been given the syringe and the stick sponges they use in the hospital when someone is thirsty but they have trouble swallowing.  I soaked one with water and pressed it around Mom's mouth in between the small squirts of Tylenol--hoping she'd be able to swallow.  While I was frantically doing this Carolyn and Alex arrived and Stanley woke up.  Carolyn got on the bed and began talking to Mom, telling her we were there, asking her if she could hear us.  I gave Mom the two "Hospice rescue meds", the morphine and the tranquilizer, stroked her head, held her hand.  Carolyn held her other hand.  Stanley was at the foot of the bed and Alex was next to his Mom.  I was on Mom's left side, Carolyn on her right.  She calmed noticeably.  Her mouth stopped trying to speak or gasp.  But we noticed that her chest wasn't rising and falling as often and we began to see the "apnea", the absence of breathing, followed by a small gasp and the resumption of breath.  Carolyn and I made eye contact and I put my hand on Mom's chest.  I said, "This is what I did all night long--checking Mom's breathing, counting the strong breaths and then the weak ones."  Carolyn asked me if Mom was breathing as strongly as last night.  She wasn't.  It couldn't have been more than 20 minutes from the time I got there and the moment we realized she was leaving us.  I believe she waited for someone and when she knew we were all there, she relaxed and let go.  As her breathing became more and more a whisper her skin turned to alabaster, the wrinkles in her face smoothed, she became ethereal.  I broke down.  Alex said, "Her eyes are still open", hoping, I think, that she was still alive.  At the last breath, when no more breaths followed, we looked at each other and knew.  Stanley sobbed, "Oh, Mama, my best friend."  I stroked her head saying "My poor little Mama, I can't believe you're gone, I can't believe you're gone."  Carolyn cried and cried and took care of me, too.

Alex was the extraordinary one.  As we accepted that Mom has passed from the world (as we know it) we began to do things for her.  I put perfume on her hands and neck.  I combed her hair and put her favorite blue shawl around her shoulders.  I put her rings on my finger.  Alex brought the Easter Bunny that Mom named Pinkie when I gave it to her at Northwoods, another bunny with an "I Love to Read" t-shirt on it and a bunny made of kitchen towels that Mom had won at a baby shower for granddaughter-in-law, Irene, several years ago.  He lined them up along her right side.  He ripped a page out of his drawing notebook that had a rose he'd drawn, drawing it the way Stanley had shown him, colored in in red, and he put it on his great-grandma's chest.  And then he put his notebook under it.  He was going to give her his art notebook.  We wouldn't let him do that though, telling him Mom wouldn't want him to stop drawing.  She was proud of him for that.  Crying...I have to pause for a moment.

We started laughing and telling stories--I wish we'd had wine, but we drank strong coffee that Stanley had made for us instead.  We were glad that Mom had met Anthony, the beautifully handsome Hospice social worker, just 2 days before she died.  We were happy that on Thursday, when Carolyn and Alex arrived, she was talking and laughing and telling jokes and that she told Alex she loved him and that he was a beautiful and talented boy.  I was so thankful that the last caregiver she had on Friday had been the girl who hummed and sang as she went about her duties.  It was a gift.  It was wonderful that all of Mom's flowers were blooming during the last week and that she had three bouquets in her room that Carolyn and I had picked for her.  Her room had been filled with the smell of lilacs and she could see her lilac trees outside her bedroom window.

I am also glad that she had been able to experience the fullness of life at Northwoods, that she had enjoyed and openly appreciated all the people who cared for her there, that she played Bingo and won prizes and that I took her to the Mother's Day Tea and she wore a hat one more time and ate a huge chocolate covered strawberry.  She found men to admire there and to dream about and she told all of them they were "good-looking".  Kay's fiance', Alan, sat on her bed and kissed her.  She ate cream pie and the aides made special cocoa for her.  She felt as if she was being treated like a queen and she deserved to be because she was so loving in return.

I must stop writing--the tears are flowing so hard I can't see the screen.  I have more to say, but it can't be today.  Thank you all for your support.  I will need you again in the weeks to come as the business part of death begins, but for now it's time to rest.

Caregiving Journal 18

I felt like I was in the midst of a marathon yesterday.  The day started at 5:00 a.m., quickly out of the gate in order to have some quiet time in the morning before daughter, grandson and husband got up.  I had some time to gear up for the day, to drink some coffee, eat some yogurt, do some stretching and think.  Everyone else got up at 6:30 and the day had begun.

My daughter and grandson came with me to borrow Mom's car, touched base with Mom and then left my brother and I who were meeting with the Hospice people at 10:00.  We met with Mary and Anthony.  When I first got sight of Anthony standing in the doorway I knew Mom was going to take a shine to him.  His smile was perfectly white and the rest of his face was lovely, too.  And I was right.  Mom was first introduced to Mary and then I pointed out Anthony.  "Oh!" she said, obviously impressed.  Immediately she was off and running about  how good looking he was.  If his skin hadn't been such a deep shade of coffee brown I'm sure we could have seen him blush.  We ushered Anthony out of the room before his head swelled to the size of a casaba melon and began our meeting.

I think my brother and I were amazed and gratified with all that Hospice has to offer.  The representatives they sent yesterday explained eloquently that Hospice is taking care of the patient as well as the caregivers, that they are available to help in any way possible.  I mentioned the phone call I'd gotten from the doctor's office about bringing Mom in for another appointment and Mary said Hospice would take care of any communication between patient and doctor, allowing the patient, Mom, to stay put and not have to go through going to the doctor again.  All of her "levels" are low because she is dying.  No amount of adding this or that drug is going to change it now.  In fact, we eliminated three drugs yesterday, which means the effort to get pills into her, which has been extremely difficult, is over.  She will continue the drug for pneumonia and bladder infection because that will take away discomfort, but the others are not necessary anymore.

On Monday a hospital bed will be delivered.  I am concerned about how this is going to be accomplished--putting that bed in, getting the other one out.  Me, my brother, my husband will be doing the moving and heavy lifting of old furniture.....all of my friends are 67 or still working and Stanley doesn't have friends. and doesn't know his neighbors.  It was awful to realize that there are few strong people we can call on when there is a need.  I know my husband, when I actually tell him about this, is going to say we can do it with physics and a hand truck.  And I know if I can get him to help plan what should be moved and where, that he will do a good job.  I am beginning to feel his stress now, as he has me with him fewer and fewer hours in the day.  He was hoping for an hour of my help with a project yesterday, but I was unable to be here.  He wasn't angry or petulant, but all of this is taking its toll on him, too.  He is being supportive and telling me to do what ever I need to do, but still.....

Hospice was with us for 2 hours as we went over all that needed to be explained and decided.  Then our caregiver arrived, a different person this time.  She went to work giving Mom a bed bath and massaging lotion into her arms and legs and while she did all this she sang.  She is a person who already has lived a full life at only 20.  She is an old soul, having been in foster care for the first 12 years of her life and then adopted into a large family.  When she was on the deck shaking a rug, she was singing.  It was joyous to hear.  Later she was running out of things to do because I'd already washed the dishes and swept the kitchen, so I asked her if she'd clean Mom's fingernails.  Little did I expect that Mom would get her hands and nails soaked and cleaned along with using the file to clean under her nails.  It was a mini-manicure and so soothing for Mom.  And while she did it, she sang.

It is so beautiful to watch the caregivers gracefully going about their duties.  One day a young woman who was caring for Mom expressed an envy of people with artistic talent like my Mom and my brother have, and I stopped her and told her what an incredible talent she has for empathy and compassion.  All of these people we have seen since April 4th, except for one blinding exception, have had that most wonderful of gifts. ( The "blinding exception" is no longer working with us, and we learned how to cope with it anyway.)  I know my Mom is one of the easier patients they have.  She is cooperative, doesn't complain, doesn't demand anything, but I know they have it harder with some and yet they still maintain their optimism and joy in caregiving.  I am feeling so blessed that I found out about all of these "angels" who are there to help.

When my daughter was out in Mom's car, cleaning it, washing it, gassing it up, putting air in the tires, she also went to Shari's and bought a cherry pie for Mom.  The reason?  Because Mom had called out in her sleep the afternoon before:  "Cherry Pie!"  And every time Mom and I had pie at Shari's her choice was always cherry.  When she came back with it we fixed up a tiny bowl of mashed up cherry pie with whipped cream on top so that Mom could have a few bites of one of her favorite tastes.  The taste brought back memories of having lunch at Shari's with her best and oldest friend, Gerry.  She said, "You know, I bet Gerry doesn't know I'm sick.  Maybe you should tell her".  And rather than telling Mom again that Gerry had died two years ago, I told her I'd be sure to tell Gerry she wasn't feeling well.
Later in the day Carolyn put an old circa-Forties picture of my Dad on Mom's dresser next to the bouquets we'd been making of lilacs and pink dogwood.  He was shirtless, his dark hair wavy, his smile cocky as he lounged on a porch step at the age of 23.  The young caregiver was talking about some movie star she admired and Mom pointed out the picture and said, "You see that handsome man there?  That was my husband!"  She was obviously very proud of the hunky man she'd chosen.

Mary from Hospice said to me, "Your Mom has a strong life spark", and that is so true.  We see it every day and I am so happy that I get to see it, that I don't live somewhere far away, that I am right here to be with her.

Caregiving Journal 17

Don't have much time this morning.  Hospice people coming to talk to us at 10.  My daughter and grandson arrived yesterday afternoon and we had a great time visiting Mom.  She was so excited to see her beloved granddaughter, Carolyn, and to see her great-grandson, Alex.  We looked at pictures, we looked at Alex's drawings, we sang songs--had a lovely time.  My daughter cried several times from the surprise of seeing her Grandma so frail, but she didn't do it in front of her.  Mom ate for me twice--a big accomplishment in 2 hours.  She was joking and very funny and I think Carolyn feels better about things now.

Today we will see if Hospice will provide us with a hospital bed so that my brother and I can reposition Mom and get her out of bed easier.  A bed that goes up and down and can be raised at the head and foot would be lovely.  We have learned, from all the T's, how to stack pillows and put others under her side to give her a new position, but it's very difficult, even with such a tiny person.  I think a bed that lowers nearer the floor will make things less scarier for her, too.

Lately, this past week, I can't remember which day it is and which T I'm meeting with.  Is it Tuesday and we meet with the OT or is it Thursday and we meet with the PT?  And I've given my first "no" to a nurse calling to tell me that "the doctor needs to see Lucretia next week".  I said no, I'm not making her get herself to the doctor anymore.  She is too weak and frail.  It's not going to happen.  I was told yesterday by the PT (or the OT???) that Hospice will take care of that kind of thing, too.  They will provide the doctor with the information he or she needs that they would have gotten if the (stubborn and protective) daughter had agreed to bring her in.

It is nice to have my daughter here because we talk about all kinds of things and I can forget a little bit about my Mom and just have fun.  It's also a bit of work to have someone else in the house.  I asked her to come, so it's something that will just be necessary in order to have her here, but I'm not being a hostess and she gets it.  She has made her own and my grandson's food and so on and she'll borrow my Mom's car while she's here, so I don't have to get her anywhere.  All I had to do was pick them up at the Bremerton Ferry yesterday and bring them to Mom's house and then here.  So the dynamic of my life will be different until Sunday.

Maybe it was just the excitement of seeing Carolyn and Alex yesterday, but it seemed like Mom was a little better, but at this point, "better" is a very subjective term.

Caregiving Journal 16

Yesterday was.....hard to describe, hard to live.....emotional in nearly every way possible.  Frustration, tears, laughter, more tears, despair, fear, gratefulness, deep love.

Hospice is coming.  When I asked the doctor for Hospice it didn't hit me what I was saying or what it will say to Mom to have them helping her.  Only last night did I realize that asking Hospice to come is saying, "You aren't going to get better and we are here to help you accept that and to ease your way."  I've known that Mom wasn't going to get better but she hasn't said it yet.  Even yesterday, after a tough day, she said to me, "I'm going to get better, I promise".  In her heart she must know that she is failing, but she won't admit it to us.  Maybe she doesn't want us to be sad or worry.  She asked me while she was in the hospital if I worried about her and I told her I did and that my brother did, too.  She replied, "I don't worry".  She never has been a worrier.  If there was any time to worry, it would be now, but she isn't worried.  She is afraid of falling and under that fear there might be a fear of something else, but she hasn't said.  I think today I will ask her if there is anything she is afraid of.

Yesterday morning Mom's oxygen levels were low, according to the home health nurse.  She called Mom's doctor.  The office said, bring her in at 3:30.  I got a call at 2:30.  I'd been home for 1 hour, after spending all morning with Mom and the nurse and my brother.  The worry was pneumonia.  I didn't want to take my Mom to the doctor, but this is the reality of modern medicine.  I longed for the days when the doctor would come to you, carrying his bag, leaning over you in the bed with his stethoscope in his ears, touching your body to feel what might be wrong, asking questions, considering answers, writing out a prescription.  Yes, doctors didn't know as much as they do now, but the personal touch was medicine, the doctor who knew you was comforting and sometimes that was better than pills.

It was difficult to get Mom to my car.  She is so weak, she can walk with the walker but she is afraid she will fall and panics a little.  The stairs from house to sidewalk were frightening for her but we got her down them.  The seat in my car was high (I have a small SUV now) and I had to nearly lift her, but the strength of adrenaline kicked in for me and as my brother looked on helplessly, I got her in, along with her catheter bag, which has become a part of her body now.  I would suppose my brother could have carried her, she is so light, but he is so unsteady on his feet that he would have zigged when he should have zagged and ended up falling with her in his arms, so it was better this way.

At least at the doctor's office there was a wheelchair available.  My brother happened to pick one that was like a bad shopping cart.  One brake didn't work and the "flippers", as I call them, those things you put your feet on, squeaked like a pig in distress every time we had to get them out of the way. We didn't have to wait long, the young nurse of the substitute doctor, Dr. Vasquez, (Dr. Fabio Vasquez) was gentle with Mom, checking her oxygen and her blood pressure.  We joked with her about the doctor's name and how much teasing he's probably had over it.  She said he didn't have the romance novel hair, but that he did have the lovely Latin accent.

It turned out that Dr. Vasquez was a sensitive man.  Mom noticed his eyebrows going up and down as he looked at Mom's chart and I described the litany of the last several weeks.  She said, "The doctor looks perplexed."  I replied that it could merely be that Latins have expressive eyebrows and we all laughed.  If there was a man that Mom should have found good looking, it was him, but he did not meet her tall, dark and handsome criteria--to me he was beautiful inside, his eyes conveying deep concern. He listened to Mom's heart and breathing, his eyes telling me that what he was hearing wasn't good.  But he didn't convey any of this worry to Mom.  He sent us down for blood tests and a chest x-ray.  The blood test was easy, a little squeak from Mom when the needle went it.  And then the ordeal of getting the chest x-ray.  Have you ever wondered what it would be like to stand in front of the x-ray panels, hold your breath for a beat and then have to do it again, when you can barely sit upright in a wheelchair, when it is nearly impossible to get your pajama top off and put on a smock, when your daughter and the tech want you to stand and your legs will barely hold you, when you are deathly afraid of falling?  But Mom did it, twice.  I vowed at that moment, never to put her through going to the doctor again.  She had reached her limit and I had reached the point that I would be able to be strong in my refusal to bring her in again.  No, my brain screamed.  No, my heart begged.  Never again.

Back upstairs to see what the doctor found on the x-ray.  There was pneumonia.  He would prescribe an antibiotic, but it would likely cause diarrhea.  Quietly he said to me, "Anything we give your Mom now will cause something else to happen, she is so frail".  He asked for the drugstore, took notes on his medical computer and then I asked to see him in private.  He took me far away from the examination room, to the far side of the nurse's station, away from any ears.  He knew what I was going to ask.  My question might not have been exactly what he had anticipated.  It was, "Is Mom a candidate for Hospice care now?"  Not quite the same as asking if she was dying,  because I knew already that she was.  He looked at me with his soulful eyes and said, "Yes.  I will leave a note to get it started tomorrow.  I would start it now, myself, but I am new here and do not know exactly what the procedure is."  And then he talked to me about Mom's spirit, all our spirits.  He spoke about what he believed:  "I believe our spirit inhabits a body, here on earth, and that when the body stops working, the spirit leaves and comes back in another body.  This is what is happening to your mother.  Her body can no longer house her spirit.  Her spirit will leave soon.  And I believe there is communication between the spirits that leave and those who are still here.  I have seen it over and over.  Make sure you say your goodbyes and tell her how much you love her."  By this time I was in tears and I put my hand on his and thanked him for his words and for answering so truthfully.  I think there was some kind of cosmic reason that this doctor was the one who saw Mom yesterday, even though I don't believe in cosmic stuff, or fate or any of that.  He was the right person at the right time.

I had to pull myself together to get Mom back home, into her bed, with her soft blankets pulled up around her neck.  I took my brother into the kitchen and told him what the doctor had said and about Hospice coming.  I cried again but he didn't, to my surprise.  Earlier in the day I had yelled at him in frustration for not being stronger about giving Mom her medications, about seeing to it that she ate.  I told him to "step up".  But now, only a few hours later, all that was behind me.  Acceptance is what Hospice is about, is what life is about.  As a dear friend always reminds me, his philosophy is: fix it if you can, walk away from it, or accept it.  There's no fixing now, there's certainly no walking away, there is only acceptance.  As I prepared to go home, I went in to say goodbye to Mom and beside her was Diana, the Cat.  She has been sleeping right next to Mom, next to her head, every night.  She knows, too.  She is my brother's cat, but right now her place is beside Mom.