Mom's Heart

I went to GA and visited Mom over Memorial Day weekend, and it was, as usual, a very good visit.  Any time I get to hang out with Mom and look at old photos and get Mom hugs is always very good.


Mom had a health scare a couple of days before I went.  She was on her way to the dining room and felt sick so she stopped in the hallway and sat on her walker seat.  A nurse saw her and brought her back to her apartment, where she lost consciousness for a couple of minutes.  I spoke to a nurse during my visit who used the word "unresponsive" when describing what happened, and that is a terrifying word.  They think it may have been Mom's heart, but Mom doesn't want to go to the hospital for tests, and honestly I don't think I can blame her.  Since then she's felt fine, and she seemed normal to me while I was there.


She was a little reluctant to leave to go out to a restaurant for lunch, so we didn't.  I didn't want to push her, but she never goes out to eat, and I feel like maybe it's good for her to, even if it's only rarely.  She does go out twice a month to have her hair washed and set, but she gets too tired to combine that outing with lunch.


My Mom is so sweet.  I know which of the retirement home employees are good and which ones are, shall I say, less good, by the way they are with Mom.  The ones who have made an effort to speak to her, which can be difficult because of her hearing problems, just love her.  Your mother is the sweetest person, they tell me, the receptionist and the activities director and the manager.  One of the cooks has a whole thing where she and Mom blow kisses to each other.  One of the nurses gives Mom little crosses to carry with her and hugs Mom every day in the dining room, telling her how blessed she is. Mom grasps her hands and looks into her eyes and tells her that she is blessed, too.


The majority of them are like that, and they know Mom's likes and dislikes, and they are clearly fond of her and try to make her happy.  They check on her at random times in her apartment and watch to make sure she eats enough.  (I'm not sure they know that when Mom doesn't like what's for dinner or lunch she'll come back to her apartment and eat an apple, or a sliced up banana with peanut butter on it, or an ice cream sandwich.  My sister keeps her stocked.)


There are a few that seem competent but also seem young and inexperienced, and probably also low-paid, and definitely have less patience for trying to get to know someone who can barely understand them when they speak.  They are okay, just not going out of their way to be nice, and of course since it's my own dear mother I want to smack everyone who doesn't love her. 


It's hard to watch people who are essentially strangers take care of my mother, who is so vulnerable.  I try to look at her sweetness and kind nature as her superpower that does seem to come through (for anyone paying attention) despite her physical weaknesses.  Any retirement home employee would have to be a truly evil person to be mean to her.

Treasure

Last week I went to GA to visit Mom.  She's still doing pretty good health-wise.  Every time I go visit she has a little more trouble walking around and she has a little more trouble hearing.  It's gotten to the point where I have to repeat myself several times every time I call her on the phone, so it feels more important to go visit more often.  I can't easily just talk to her on our daily phone calls, if she has no context to guess what I'm saying and it's unexpected, sometimes she never does understand me and it's just painful and frustrating for both of us. 

We had a nice visit.  We went to IHOP and Mom got her usual: the senior special with one pancake (strawberries on top but hold the whipped cream), one egg over medium, and one piece of bacon extra crispy.  She always eats it all, too, which is unusual for her.  She doesn't go out very often anymore.  My brother and his wife and my sister met us for lunch there.

The way Mom looked at my brother really touched me.  She looked up at him like seeing him made her purely joyful, and she clasped one hand in both of hers and just smiled at him.  Now that I think of it, I guess she looked at me like that too, when I arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday.  (We'll assume she looked at my sister similarly even though I didn't notice the moment.)

My sister is primarily in charge of Mom's finances, paying her bills online and keeping track of her checking account.  I don't have access to the checking account, but I'm in charge of her mutual fund, which is what remains of her (and Dad's) life savings.  Based on my math she has enough money for about another year of rent payments at the assisted living home, and then I have no idea what will happen.  I need for someone to tell me exactly how things will go and how long she'll live and what her health will be like and then I can make all the right plans and decisions.  I'm trying very hard not to be consumed with dread about it.  I just love her so much and I want so badly to make her happy and make sure every single thing is taken care of for her.

I feel so far away.

Mom actually has money coming to her from the VA, but the forms my brother and sister filed last January still haven't been processed.  If that comes through it'll help, especially if there is retroactive money from when it should have started a year ago.  The VA is notoriously behind, though. 

I'm from a very rural county in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, and recently someone started a Facebook page to share old photos from there.  I'm amazed and fascinated by the photos people are sharing.  I've seen beautiful landscapes from as early as the 1800s, photos of old homes and barns and schools and churches.  Some are not areas or people I'm familiar with, but even still they are interesting to see.

But then a woman posted some photos that just floored me.  She is apparently a descendent of a schoolteacher (and amateur photographer) at the small wooden schoolhouse near my father's family's house.  It was very unusual to even own a camera, and this guy seems to have taken photos of area families and children.  He even saved the negatives, so he clearly took it very seriously.

These pictures are from before my father was born in 1915, I'm going to guess they're from around 1912 or 1913.  I have never seen photos of these relatives as children until now.



This is my aunt Mamie Sue, the oldest of the children.  She was the opposite of my mother; she was not sweet, comforting, or nurturing.  In my memory she was pretty severe, one of those women who would describe themselves as not willing to put up with any foolishness.  She was not unkind, at least to me, and I liked her but I was always a bit afraid of her, too.

This is Ralph and Kathleen.  I have never seen a photo of Ralph, although I'm sure some others must have been taken.  Are these the only ones that still exist?  He was killed at 18 in a coal mine.  My mother never met him, he was already gone when she met my Dad.  I can't get over this photo.  What a cute little face he has.  These photos must have been a big deal to the family, photos were so very rare.  I imagine their mother despairing over her lack of control over his hair.  Mom told me that she made all their clothes, I'm sure they are all dressed in their finest for the occasion.

Baby Kathleen is the only one who still survives, and she turned 100 last year.  Everyone calls her Hun, I have to say I am one of the few who know her given name.  Hun (short for honey, not like Attila) is to this day a very outgoing, friendly, social, flirty woman. 

Greg, going up to her at my father's funeral:  Mrs Hun, I'm Greg, Ellen's husband.

Aunt Hun (grabbing his hand): Oh, Greg!  Of course I remember you! 

And they walked off without me.

She has made arrangements at the family cemetery to have her fictional birth year engraved on her headstone.  (Why honey, she said on her 50th wedding anniversary when they tried to throw a party, you can't tell anyone I've been married for 50 years, there are people who think I'm barely 50 years old right now!)  They tried to make a big deal over her 100th birthday, but she wasn't having that either.  The local news even came by and filmed her surrounded by family on her big front porch, and she laughed and flirted with the reporter and refused to admit her age.

Aunt Mamie Sue looks a little less cranky in this one.  The other girl is my Aunt Cleo, who never married and was an independent career woman, living alone and supporting herself.  She went to nursing college and spent her life working in VA hospitals.  She had retired and lived next door to us when I grew up, and I was closest to her than any of Dad's other siblings.  She was very smart and looking back on it with an adult perspective I can appreciate how much she liked me.  Before he passed away Dad gave me her watch, which was a very pretty and sturdy pocket watch that she used for decades the hospital.

Look at Ralph, sitting like a prince in the little chair, his feet not quite touching the floor.  I love their black leggings and their scuffy shoes and their fancy clothes.  What must their lives have been like, living on the farm, only rarely going into town, no television or computer or car.

I miss Dad a lot, I think about him frequently, and it is purely painful that I can't show him these pictures and ask him to tell me details about their lives and about his childhood.

Gifts

It's always a challenge to find Christmas gifts for Mom.  Not only does she not want anything she tries to get rid of the stuff she does have by giving it to me whenever I visit.  Plus she always pleads with me not to spend any money on her. But I really want her to have wrapped packages to open, so I'm always determined to find something.

Every year I get her a Robert Tuckwiller calendar (he paints lovely landscapes of the area of Virginia where we are from).  So that's an easy one.

This year I got her a pretty Marjolein Bastin bluebird refrigerator magnet from Hallmark.  She had a bunch of photos and magnets and things on her refrigerator when she lived in Gainesville, but now her frig is a small one and somehow nothing ever got put on it. She seemed really happy with the little decoration.

A bestselling book from a few years ago (Wish You Well by David Baldacci) has been made into a movie that was filmed in Giles County, where I'm from.  Part of it was actually filmed on the tiny little road where I grew up, right down the street from our house, in the old abandoned one-room building that was my father's school.  (Don't picture the school in the Waltons, that's too modern - picture the one in Little House on the Prairie.)  My cousin's young daughter (whom I've never actually met) is an extra as one of the schoolchildren.  The movie is completed but hasn't been released yet.

I found a copy of the book that meets Mom's requirements: it's a trade paperback but it's not too heavy, and even thought it's not actually Large Print it's easy to read.  Inside the book I put a pretty pink and lavender bookmark, and Mom's started reading it already.

I also bought her a small box of chocolates that had whole hazelnuts inside.  She just loves hazelnuts.

So she had several pretty packages to open and she seemed genuinely delighted with each of the gifts.  We opened presents in her apartment on Christmas Eve and then went to my sister's house for a lovely lunch on Christmas Day (roast chicken, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce, carrots and homemade pecan pie that consisted primarily of butter, Karo syrup and brown sugar).  We all ate too much, and Mom took home a leftover piece of pie.

It was a lovely holiday visit.  I am aware that I get too caught up in trying to make sure everything is perfect for Mom, and often having Greg there makes it even worse because instead of letting him help me I just add to the pressure by feeling like I have to make sure everything is perfect for him, too.  Being aware of my tendency to get too stressy makes it a little easier to cut it out when I see it starting, so I think I did a pretty good job this time of just relaxing and enjoying the time with Mom.

It's been too long since I've visited her, and I want to go again within the next couple of months.