Five Years Later

Five years ago at the end of January, I was pushing my mother in her wheelchair toward the elevator of her residence.  

"The Christmas decorations are gone!" she cried with alarm.

"Oh yes," I said, noticing that indeed the small tree and other cheer had been removed from the lobby.  "They just put them in boxes to save for next year."

"I wish they hadn't put them away," she continued.  

She was genuinely sad, though it didn't seem like such a big deal to me.

In retrospect, it was her last Christmas.  She knew it.  

For her, the Christmas decorations would not emerge again next year.  There would be no next year.

The vanishing of Christmas was yet another step toward total loss:  home, health, shopping, walking, eating, life.  

Now it is the end of January five years later, 2013.  I've packed and stored the Christmas decorations once again, but I always think of her and how sad she was to part with the bright joy of Christmas.

Earlier this month I visited the place where her ashes are scattered.  It lies under two feet of snow.  

Rest in peace, they say.  

Certainly she rests--perhaps she feels the joy of Christmas.  I do not know.

Anyway, Mother, know that I am thinking of you.

Resting in Peace

Here lie my mother's ashes, resting in peace beneath the snow in her beloved Colorado mountains near blue spruce trees.

During her last five years, when she lived near her daughters in California, she was impatient to get to this resting place.

I agree with her choice--a good place to have one's molecules return to earth.

Just Four Years

My mother died four years ago, April 8, 2012.

Today is Easter Sunday, the day that's all about resurrection.

When she lived in assisted living in Santa Monica, my mother loved coming to our house for holiday dinners.

On Easter or Christmas or her birthday, her wheel chair would be pushed up to one end of the table, and she enjoyed the bustle of the dogs and young adults around her.

My day began with going to Sunrise, making sure she was properly dressed, pushing her wheelchair to the car, lifting her into the front seat, folding up the wheelchair and heaving it into the back of the minivan, then driving to church.

After church I would bring her home for the afternoon and early evening, pushing her wheelchair up the ramp I had had built at the side of the steps up to the front door.

When she was tired, it took a while to get her into the car and back to her residence, into her nightgown and into bed.  Then I would drive home and hope that someone else had cleaned up the kitchen.

Many Sundays and holidays she would ask to stay at our house and not go back to the assisted living.  It was hard to say no, cheerfully, firmly.  It was heart-breaking.

In those days it often seemed to be my needs vs. hers, my happiness vs. hers.

Four years later, however, those tough times are just a memory.  I've had time to teach, travel, jog, and reflect.

On holidays, I miss seeing her at the end of the table, cheerfully listening to all the commotion, enjoying the cinnamon rolls or fruit salad.

On a daily basis, however, I don't think about my mother.  To some extent, she has been forgotten.

Death is like musical chairs: at some point you're out of the game, but everyone else continues to play.

We will celebrate a wedding for one of my daughters this June, and her grandmother would love to have been there.  She was such a romantic, believing in living happily ever after and loving babies.

But this year she would have been 93, and suffering four more years with Alzheimer's Disease was certainly not anything she wanted to do.

As a public health nurse in the 1950s, she used to talk about pneumonia being the Angel of release for some elderly persons trapped in ailing bodies.  She is released now, and I am four years closer to my own death.

The pattern of birth, life, and death is full of mystery and hard to accept.

At Easter, however, we are reminded of hope for resurrection.

My mother's death will forever rotate around Palm Sunday and Easter, like one of the moons revolving around Jupiter.  I pray to remember that

ALZ: Out of the Closet

Alzheimer's disease, once a secret families tried to hide, is now out of the closet and onto the public plazas and streets.

With noisy pride, caregivers and families and friends of persons with this disease walked under a sunny sky today on Avenue of the Stars in Century City, raising money and awareness.

Among the 3-4,000 people, I found my friend Marnie Reid from Sunrise of Santa Monica and joined her contingent of about ten. Marnie was one of the kindest, most dedicated and perceptive persons caring for my mother while she was in the Reminiscence Neighborhood at Sunrise.

Families walked, all wearing t-shirts with the name or photo of a loved one who had died of Alzheimer's.

I was walking for my mother--but also for myself.

Walk to end Alzheimer's

About 3,000 people are expected Sunday in Century City (Los Angeles) for this year's Alzheimer's Walk. It begins at 8:30 in Century City Park.

There are other walks all over the country... Sept. 21 was National Alzheimer's Awareness Day.

You can either walk or just make a donation by using the link attached to the title of this post.

See also www.alz.org.

Beauty at Ninety

I visited a friend's mother at Regents Point in Irvine.

Beauty everywhere... in the faces and flowers.

Her mother is 90 years old and in hospice care but still gracious and a pleasure to talk with. She even laughed deeply at one of my jokes!

At one point, mother-like, she asked "Aren't you chilly?" and I realized, yes, I was. I put on a sweater.

At her mother's nintieth birthday party last June, my friend made t-shirts with photos of her at various points in her life. Children and grandchildren each wore a t-shirt of her at the same age each is now... or of him or herself as a child with her.

From the perspective of life at its busiest, this beautiful woman's life is now much diminished, but from another viewpoint, there is still quality of life.

Ronald Reagan & Alzheimer's Disease

In Ron Reagan's memoir, My Father at 100, he notes that Alzheimer's Disease changes in the brain can be found years and even decades before the first symptoms are noted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/health/views/22reagan.html?ref=lawrencekaltman

"The questions, then, of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while in office more or less answers itself," he admits. 

In a review of the younger Reagan's book, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman observes the following mileposts in the president's life:

*  His mother, Nelle, had died of "senility."

*  At age 69 in 1980, he became the oldest man elected to the presidency of the US, serving eight years.

*  In 1989 at age 78 he fell from a horse in Mexico and "his doctors detected probable signs of Alzheimer's in removing a blood clot that formed between his skill and brain."

*  In 1990 he began taking annual mental-status tests, which at first showed no signs of memory loss.

*  These tests first showed evidence of AD in the summer of 1993, when he was 82 years old.

*  In 1994, the former president wrote his open letter to the American public disclosing his illness.

*  He died at age 93 on June 5, 2004.  As is typical of the disease, he had been unable to eat or drink, and his kidneys failed. 

Web seminar on ALZ and LBD

Betwixt and Intermixed - Dementia With Lewy Bodies

Three members of the Lewy Body Dementia Association Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) are participating in an upcoming free webinar on dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), the quintessential overlap disease between Alzheimer (AD) and Parkinson diseases (PD).

This live discussion, hosted by the Alzheimer Research Forum, will take place on Monday, 15 June 2009, from 12 noon to 1 p.m. EST and will feature short slide presentations by Drs. Ian McKeith, Brit Mollenhauer, James Galvin, James Leverenz, and Walter Schulz-Schaeffer, with audio provided via a telephone line. (Drs. McKeith, Galvin and Leverenz are members of LBDA's Scientific Advisory Council.)

Questions for the panel can be submitted in advance and during the live event. An interactive chat session will follow the webinar.

Click here to learn more and register for the event.

A-Betas: the New Trans Fat

I learned a new term last night--amyloid-beta proteins--and it's sure to become a household word like trans fatty acids.

These A-beta proteins are the sticky stuff that make up the famous plaques deposited in brains of persons who show symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

On last night's HBO special "Momentum in Science," doctors described A-Beta deposits as "dirt" or "splinters" in the brain, causing inflammation in which microglia (another new term for me) eat up the A-beta but also kill brain cells.

A researcher showed two very dramatic before-and-after slides of twenty-some neurons with many connections and then (after adding microglia) just a few neurons with almost no connections.

That was enough for me--I'm going to try to reduce the A-beta protein in my brain.

It turns out that insulin resistance and glucose levels are related to how much A-beta is present in one's brain and spinal fluid at any time.

"Insulin levels sky rocket," they said, after eating foods high in saturated fat and simple sugars. "They remain elevated for a long time... and cause increased beta amyloid in the spinal fluid."

So I'm converted: no more egg mcmuffins with orange juice (does juice have simple sugars?) when traveling.

The other segments of "The Alzheimer's Project" are about patients, families, and caregivers--useful if you aren't already involved in dementia care.

But I recommend that everyone watch the two-part series on the science of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). You can see it by streaming from the website hbo.com/alzheimers... if you can spell it. It will also be repeated several times this week, or you can buy the DVD.

Another tidbit: aerobic exercise for 30 minutes dramatically increases insulin resistance for 24 hours. Those nasty splinters aren't deposited.

Looks like my sporadic beach jogging needs to become daily.

Alzheimer's on HBO

The TV gods have decreed that this is your week to learn about Alzheimer's.

HBO is airing a three-part series on the illness accompanied by a two-part supplementary series "Momentum in Science," which includes 15 sections on various aspects of the causes and possible preventive measures for Alzheimer's.

See http://www.hbo.com/alzheimers/index.html. (You can click on the title above "Alzheimer's on HBO" to get to the website.)

Tonight on the west coast, the shows begin at 7:30 pm and 8 pm. They are repeated all week and also available through HBO On Demand and by streaming from the above website.

I missed the last big documentary, Addiction, because we didn't have HBO, so I bought the DVD edition. But now we have not only not killed our television but subscribed to an even greater selection of cable channels, including HBO.

None of last night's first section, "The Memory Loss Tapes," was new to me, as a veteran of four years' visits to the dementia floor of an assisted living residence.

It was moving, nonetheless, especially the woman tormented by the hallucination of a snake on her wheelchair (as my mother saw worms coming out of the fire sprinkler on her ceiling).

She also talks to her "neighbor" in the mirror and wonders why she is so silent and won't ever come to her room to visit.

I was surprised that HBO filmed and aired the actual death of one gentleman, after showing video and photos of his entire life. It was a gentle death, much like my mother's, but surprising on television nonetheless, followed by his funeral complete with open-casket viewing.

If Alzheimer's or another dementia runs in your family, this is an easy way to learn more about it.

Glimpse of Glory

It's Skaertorsdag--Maundy Thursday in Denmark--and it's also one year after my mother died on April 9, 2008.

We drove around rural Jutland near Aalborg looking at churches and their graveyards, trying to find my relatives with the surname Nejsby or Norgaard. The Lutheran churches had services scheduled for Longfredag (Good Friday), but there was no sign of any service on Thursday evening. We had to leave the next day.

We had found one Baptist church the day before, in Vaarst, where my family had been members of a Baptist church in 1870--and no Baptist churches in any other city, so I planned to return there in the evening for a possible Maundy Thursday service.

When we arrived at 6:40 and I studied the list of services, I realized that at 18:30 a service had begun--we heard singing and children's voices. I persuaded John to join me in attending, though he was worried that there might be a foot-washing service.

"Baptists don't do that," I asserted hopefully. "Only Episcopals and Catholics."

As we entered, we realized everyone was in the church hall sharing a meal there. John started to protest that we weren't welcome and turned to leave, but two kind women had seen us and came out into the hall to welcome us and invite us in.

Soon we were seated at a table, part of a U-shaped set of tables where about fifty people were reinacting the Last Supper. A cross-shaped arrangement of one hundred or so votive candles glowed in the center on the floor.

Though we felt embarrassment at being strangers in an intimate group and at being late, soon we were singing a hymn that sounded like "The Church's One Foundation" but with different words.

Then a Taize song was chanted, followed by singing a Danish hymn I didn't recognize.

Then the pastor spoke in Danish.

He read from John 13, where Jesus washes the feet of the disciples, and then read from I Corinthians 11:23-26. I made out the words "the new covenant in my blood" ("den nye pagt ved mit blod").

Then he broke a large loaf of homemade bread and blessed a flask of grape juice. These were passed around, each person breaking off a piece of bread for the person next to him or her and pouring two inches of grape juice into the neighbor's cup.

The silence in candlelight was warm and holy. John and I took part in the ritual, and I was convinced that I shared some of the same genes with these people, as well as the same faith.

The deep communion was like that of the church members in Babbette's Feast, which I had watched a week before flying to Denmark.

When they were gathered around a humble table, "...the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance" (p. 53).
In that scene, a man speaks who had years earlier passed up a chance for love with one of two sisters in the story:
But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude... See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!


Then I noticed it was 7 pm, and with a nine-hour time difference, 10 am in California.

"Just the time my mother died a year ago," I realized with awe.

At the moment marking her death, here I was sharing a holy meal honoring Jesus' last intimate breaking of bread with his disciples before his death--a meal where Jesus is present for us, where heaven and earth join.

In the joyous, familiar faces of these people, I felt the presence of Jesus, my mother, my great-grandmother (born in this village), and all the believers who had lived here in the 1800s and since then.

The usual curtain between earth and heaven, life and afterlife, was drawn aside. We were all very near and joyous.

After the service, the people asked us where we were from.

In halting Danish, I said, "Vi kommer fra California. Jeg soeger den familie Nesby. Min bedste mor bo her." ("I am looking for the Nejsby family. My great-grandmother lived here.")

The man and two women across from me said, "We three are all Nesbys-- there are many Nejsbys here!" He began speaking some English and called over his brother who had traveled in the US.

We shared their dinner of salad, meat, bread and compared our family trees. I told them that she had been a member of this church, and they told me that another family member had been the pastor.
The church had first met in secret at the family's farm because changing to Baptist faith in this Lutheran country had caused them to be rejected by others.

Their great-grandfather and mine had been brothers. They were as amazed at our arrival as we were to discover so many third cousins.

Soon were were in the sanctuary taking photos of us with fifteen or so family members. Then they took us to see the "Nesbygaard," family home and barn over 200 years old.
Then we went with them to Jens Anker Nasby's home where we studied their family history records--including the name of my great-grandmother, when she immigrated, where she lived and died in the US.

We had to leave the next morning to catch a ferry from Aarhus back to Copenhagen, but all evening we shared so much joy--a gift from God on this day marking my mother's death.

One Year Later: Remembering

Tomorrow will be April 9, 2009--one year after my mother's death.

For the last several weeks I've been reliving the events of a year ago:

Last year her birthday was on a Wednesday, and while taking her out to lunch, I noticed that she had trouble eating. Two days later at a P.E.O. meeting at my house, her swallowing problems became more apparent.

By the following Monday, her caregivers were worried that she wasn't eating and urged me to take her to her doctor.

I did so that afternoon and was shocked by how much her weight had fallen: from 110 lbs. to somewhere in the 90s. I had expected the doctor to give her an appetite stimulant or do something helpful, but instead she diagnosed my mother's condition as "end-stage dementia" and told me that I needed to place my mother on hospice.

The doctor had urged me to do this more than a year earlier, but I had said I would wait until some health crisis precipitated it.

Now she asked if we wanted to have my mother fed by intubation or not; my siblings and I said no to that kind of feeding. That meant that she would die naturally by starvation and dehydration (the usual cause of death in end-stage dementia). Hospice doesn't usually allow an IV for hydration, and her assisted-living residence does not allow IVs.

Even as I finally began working with hospice, I still expected my mother to live several more months--no one told me how quickly the end could come.

The next three and a half weeks were a whirlwind of get-acquainted meetings with 5-6 people each from two hospices: the initial person with whom one signs up, the nurse in charge, the nurse's aides (various ones on various days), the physical therapist, the social worker for the spiritual well-being of the family, etc. Because the first hospice's aides took her to meals without her false teeth in, I changed to another hospice.

I soon figured out that the hospice services provided as much morphine as we asked, and an hour or two per day of physical care, but no hours of just sitting with the patient. (Actually, in my two experiences with hospice, they seem overeager to provide morphine, almost saying, "Here you go, use as much as you want; just keep her out of pain.")

Meanwhile, the caregiver who worked with her 4 hrs. per day on five days per week made a trip to visit family in the Philippines.

I decided (with my siblings) that Mom needed someone to sit with her around the clock, especially at night, so I contracted with an agency to do that, meeting the owner and several new caregivers who would do various shifts.

It was a nightmare of worry: meeting with all these people, trying to get my mother to eat and take her medicines, making calls to Bill and Jim and Emily to discuss these issues and advise my brothers to come for last visits.

But my mother was losing the ability to swallow. We gave up on soft foods and turned to pureed foods, then to Ensure only, then to water. And finally she could not swallow water.

A year later I remember two moments in particular out of all this whirlwind.

1) A kind RN, Jewish, who in her initial assessment visit with my mother said, "Oh the poor dear, she's so weak. She's dying. Yes, she will not last more than a few weeks."

She said this maybe 10 days before Mom died. It was so helpful to have someone speak directly like this--it changed my approach. A few days later I stopped trying to get my mother to take her pills.

2) The other moment came on the last Saturday afternoon of my mother's life. My sister had visited her in the morning, and I was going to spend the afternoon with her, looking forward to an intimate time of talking and sharing with her, perhaps reading a psalm or praying with her.

I wanted to drive her somewhere to see the poppies blooming or see the ocean from the Santa Monica pier. We did go to the pier but she was not too interested.

Back at her room, I settled down for a quiet time with my mother, but the evening caregiver came an hour early. I remember being disappointed but not having the courage to tell the caregiver to leave.

Instead I went home, went to dinner with my husband, and came back at 10 pm to spend the night on the floor of the room when the caregiver had to leave. She was asleep when I arrived and did not wake up more than once briefly in the night while her Depends were being changed. I spoke to her briefly then.

I wish I had taken the time to clear out all the caregivers and other concerns in my life and just spend several quiet hours with my mother... but I didn't realize she had only Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday left to live.

In the morning when she woke up, she said, "Anne, are you there?"
"Yes," I said. I got her up, dressed her, tried to get her to drink Ensure or at least water, then took her to church for her last time--a feat in itself.

Then we went to my house, but she was tired, so we returned to her residence. It was all busy time, not face-to-face communication time.

Even on Tuesday evening, her last full day, I taught my class as usual in the morning, returned to Santa Monica, and did not spend more than two hours with her. Even that was with others in the room, discussing care issues: how much morphine she should be getting, how to moisten her mouth, whether she should have a shower or not. I thought she'd live several more days.

I helped her move from her chair to her bed, turned on the CD player with songs like "The Old Rugged Cross," kissed her goodnight, and left her with the caregiver.

The next morning just after 8 am, while I was jogging on the beach, I got the call: "She's having labored breathing."

That started the last whirlwind of actions (call Emily, call brothers, get updates and make decisions with the staff). Emily arrived.

By 10 am, she died.

And then a new flood of decisions and actions had to take place, dealing with the mortuary and the church where her service was to be held. My sister did most of the arrangements with the church; we went to the mortuary together where an inept official made the process much worse than it needed to be.

I don't know why all these events and worries are so vivid a year later.

As it turns out, I am in northern Denmark for the first time in my life, looking up the roots of my Danish grandmother (my father's mother), visiting Copenhagen, Aalborg, Viking museums, old churches with my husband.

But still my thoughts are with my mother one year ago.

Flowers for Her Birthday

Mom was born ninety years ago today.

She is grateful not to have to face a cake with that many candles. She didn't want that many years, or even the last few of the 89 she completed.

A year ago I took her to lunch at Carrow's and noticed that it took her so long to eat. She was having difficulty swallowing but managed to eat about five breaded shrimp.

She ate a spoonful of mashed potatoes and applesauce, a few French fries.

She wanted rhubarb pie--not on the menu.

She drank a huge cold glass of milk, but three weeks later she couldn't swallow milk or water.

She starved to death, actually--they call it "end stage dementia" when the brain and throat muscles of an Alzheimer's or other dementia patient can't work together to swallow.

But at the end it was a peaceful death, painless, with her daughters holding her hands.

Resting Place

I stand knee deep in snow near the spot where Jim and I buried Mom's ashes last June.

The lilac bush I planted there is covered by snow--I hope it's still living. Colorado blue spruce overlook the spot, near where the ashes of her parents are buried close to their cabin at Trout Lake.

Is this why I drove from Los Angeles to Colorado on January 1 and 2? All I knew was that I needed solitude and beauty.

But standing here, I realize I am drawn to this spot. Being here is a way to talk to my mother.

"Are you cold?" I ask her silently. "Would you rather still be with us?"

Of course, I answer for her. I feel her longing for Christmas, the cheer of being with all of us at this time of year.

Instead her ashes rest under this snow.

But she would not have wanted to suffer, I tell myself. Having her Depends changed twice or three times in the night by male caregivers, being showered and lifted in and out of chairs and her bed, being badgered into taking her medications, living in a care facility rather than at my house... she hated it.

I remember how accepting she was of her final parting.

"I won't be here tomorrow," she told a caregiver. She wasn't even interested in her book, Adventures of a Telluride Native, formerly a source of great pride.

Does she have consciousness now? Perhaps not. Perhaps she doesn't mind her ashes being here, alone under this tree.

Or perhaps her consciousness is greatly expanded, wide as the Milky Way, joyful, in God's presence.

I don't know. But I still feel drawn to this spot. There are dried sunflowers in the house from last summer, and I want to lay them on the snow here.

Lost Child

At Christmas there were so many moments of sadness, missing my mother, who died last April.

When I brought boxes of Christmas decorations down from the attic, there were the two shopping bags labelled "Grandma's Christmas things." I wouldn't be taking them to her apartment to create Christmas cheer this year, as I had since 2003.

She loved Christmas and had not wanted me to take these decorations down in mid-January last year, probably knowing she would never see them again. All the cozy cheer of Christmas to be put away forever--that's hard.

Stunned by these thoughts, I had to sit down in a chair and shed a few tears.

There were other moments--finding the Christmas apron I had made for her, putting up the elegant holiday wreath she had bought us.

But the hardest came on Christmas Eve when I hung up the stockings: Dad, Mom, Roz, Ellen, Marie... and found the stocking labeled "Grandma."

There will be no stocking for her this Christmas.

I mourn as if I have lost a child, not a person 89 years old who was actually ready to die.

She was so child-like in her last years and sometimes asked, "Are you my daughter or my mother?"

I cry because one of my children is missing this Christmas.

P.E.O. Lives On

I went to a P.E.O. party today, trying to get home from Northridge in time to get there by 4 pm.

In this crowd, dinner is at 4:30 or 5 pm. At least I was able to get home by 6 pm to watch the presidential debate, fleeing the bridge and other games offered.

It was good to see their faces but also sad to see the decline in health of some of those my mother's age. More canes being used, more deafness in conversations, more members missing because of health issues.

But travel to Chile and "Michy Pitchy" and important books read in book clubs.

The president had a large red circle around her left eye socket, as if she had been whacked with a door knob. She explained that she'd had surgery.

Maggie, one of the weakest, reminded me that I had wheeled my mother in through the patio last year... "You came right through there," she said, still seeing us.

Until that moment I hadn't thought about attending this same B.I.L. dinner a year ago today.

Then I remembered it all: the crisis of my mother's diarrhea in the wheelchair just after we arrived, my embarrassment at the increasing smell, my effort to stay a decent amount of time before leaving, Mom's insistence that she wanted to go home.

"Why did you go this year?" any reasonable person might ask.

Well, I am now a P.E.O. I took those vows of sisterhood. These old ladies are my sisters, dammit.

I'm teaching Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so I'm excused from the meetings at 10 am every other Friday. With this 4 pm party and the Christmas party, I feel that I will have done my duty.

Still trying to be the good little girl.

Mental Health Advocacy

I went to an annual celebration of LA's Mental Health Advocacy Services tonight, a guest of my friend Shirley Luehring Kirby, who is a board member. (See www.mhas-la.org.)

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez was one of the featured speakers, receiving an award for his book The Soloist about his friendship with a talented musician whose life had been derailed by schizophrenia and who was living on the streets of Los Angeles for many years.

The movie version starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx will be released in November.

I was moved by Steve's account of his encounters with Nathaniel Ayers and how they changed him.

In fact, while driving home I suddenly had an insight about my mother that never before occurred to me in the five months since her death from end-stage dementia on April 9.

Usually when I think about her, I feel grateful that I am no longer spending two or more hours per day visiting her and making medical decisions about how and where to care for her.

But tonight I had a sudden onrush of memory: her lying lonely in her bed, sleeping, then being wakened to have her Depends changed and to be turned onto her other side.

A rush of gratitude followed: Thank goodness tonight she's not sad and alone. She will not be in danger if the fire alarm goes off--will not struggle to get out of bed, fall on the floor, and break a bone as she did last December.

I've uttered the platitude that "At least she is no longer suffering," but always before I was thinking about her inability to swallow in her last few weeks, her being confined in a wheelchair, her loneliness and boredom in the daytime living in a memory-care floor of an assisted-living facility.

Tonight the pain of those evenings flooded back:
* me trying to leave at 7 pm or so.
* her saying, "You'll stay and put me to bed, won't you?'
* me saying, "No, Esther will come. I have to leave now."
* or me getting her through the shower, putting on her nightgown and getting her into bed, then trying to say goodnight and escape as she asked me to stay longer.
* her later waking alone in the night with urine in her Depend, waiting for someone to come, then suffering the indignity of having the sodden diaper changed, often by a man.

Tonight I don't have that worry, I realized. She's not lonely or in danger.

I visited the residence three days ago and learned that now there's only one person on her floor at night in charge of 31 residents. Before there were two.

I've been grateful for the release her death gave to me, but hearing the stories at the dinner this evening reminded me that just a few months ago she faced the long night alone every night.

I no longer have to fend off guilt as I kiss her goodnight and return to my warm comfortable home.

"Can't I stay here tonight?" she asked me a few times in the last weeks of her life when she sat at my dinner table eating a snack at 5 pm.

"No, I have to grade papers," I would say, or "prepare for class" or "fix dinner for John."

I did have work to do, but mainly I just needed her to be at her place so I could have the night to myself and not be setting up the bed, undressing her and putting her to bed, tending her during the night, and getting her dressed and fed in the morning.

As it turned out, her death was peaceful. I was relieved that I no longer had the burden of her care and that she had faced it all with such courage.

But this evening, after hearing about the dangers Nathaniel faced at night, Mom's night suffering and my worry about it suddenly took me by surprise.

Thank goodness we are both free now.

Free on the Fourth

This is the first Fourth of July that I have been free of care for my mother, care for children, care for grandparents, care for anyone at all.

I treasure this day to set my own agenda, yet I am sad that I am not in Telluride. For me the only place to be on the Fourth is Telluride, watching the parade, going to the barbecue in the park, perhaps listening to the fireworks reverberate against the 13,000-foot peaks.

I don’t like the fireworks because they are symbols of bombs and grenades, IEDs. They are violence made pretty. Still, I want to be in Telluride and I miss her. This holiday is all about her and her home town, where I've been for nearly all the July 4s of my life. She made sure the family was there when she had young children.

In 2004 and earlier years, I took her to Telluride for the celebrations on July 4. Since 2005, I've dressed her up in red, white, and blue and taken her to lunch here, then to fireworks in the evening.

I’m sad that she doesn’t have this Fourth to Celebrate, but if she were still here, it would be a burden for me. My whole day would revolve around her.

Instead, this year I am free.

Depend on It

Today amidst various errands I pushed a grocery cart through the grocery store nearest to the assisted living residence where my mother lived, gathering $130 worth of various foods, cleaning supplies, cat litter, etc.

But when the Depends caught my eye at the end of aisle two, I suddenly felt tears at my eyes, the tension of a suppressed sob in my chest.

I realized that today's a Wednesday; it's been exactly twelve weeks since my mother died peacefully at 89 years of age.

So this is what it means to lose her, I realize: though I accept her death as necessary, a blessing to both of us, I miss her at odd moments like this.

I see the Depends and don't buy them, remembering how often I piled three packages into my grocery basket and rushed on to the wipes, the V-8 and other weekly purchases.

I realize that she is not two blocks away, waiting for me impatiently. She is gone. It's better that she's gone, but sadness remains.

Our lives come to an end, and the world carries on without us. She wanted to be near the center of my life, but now she is a memory, a sudden swell of feeling as I pass the incontinence products in the grocery store.

View from Above

Flying back from Indianapolis to California today, the plane passed over the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado.

I wanted to look down and see Telluride, Trout Lake, Mesa Verde, but a haze covered the area, and shadow too. The sun must have set down there.

"My mother's ashes are down there," I thought. "I'm flying over the spot where they lie, under the lilac bush."

Last week my brother Bill reported that the red columbines I also planted under the lilac had died. I'm sad that they died... I wanted that spot to look so beautiful, to contain her cherished flowers.

"I wonder if she cares," I then mused, looking down from the airplane window.

And staring out at the billows of cumulus clouds illumined by the setting sun, I realized, "No, she doesn't care. She is so far beyond caring about that little spot on earth where her ashes lie. It's only Bill and I who are tending that spot, wanting the lilac to survive its first cold winter at 10,000 feet, wanting the shooting star columbines to bloom there."

She is so far beyond, but we still care.