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.

Holiday Weekend

In two days I'll drive up to Georgia for a short weekend visit with Mom.  I always get nervous beforehand about the 7+ hour drive and about the possibility of something going wrong, but it's always fine and I'm sure it'll be fine this time too.


This time it'll be just me and Mom, no other relatives going out to lunch with us, so that'll be better.  Mom has such trouble hearing that when we go to a restaurant everyone ends up talking around her and mostly ignoring her, which I hate.  If it's just the two of us, even if we don't speak a lot, it'll at least be to each other.  I'm hoping to take her out to lunch at Red Lobster on Saturday, and then maybe out to breakfast at IHOP on Monday before I leave to drive back.


She's not up to shopping anymore, so while she's taking her afternoon nap I plan to go to a nearby mall and see if I can't find her some new clothes.  If I can do that on Saturday, then Sunday I could return anything that didn't fit.


Unfortunately this retirement home doesn't have a dedicated Guest room like the place where she used to live.  It was a small studio apartment, but it was comfortable with a TV and a mini refrigerator and fresh linens.  It cost $50 but included meals, and it was invaluable to be able to just walk down the hall in my pajamas and slippers to hang out with Mom at night.  This place in the past has let me stay in empty "show" apartments, which was hit or miss with things like fresh linens or TVs, but they let me stay for free.  Now they have a new corporate policy to charge $125 a night, and that doesn't even include a guaranteed TV or linens.  Good grief.  Clearly they don't want people to stay.  So I'll be a mile away at a small hotel that I got at an employee discount rate of $39.  I won't be down the hall from Mom, but I'll at least have wifi.  And I am going to not care about driving a mile in my pj's and slippers.

90

On Friday 9/23 I posted this status update to Facebook:  On Friday, September 30, one week from today, my wonderful mother will celebrate her 90th birthday. She absolutely loves to get mail, and would be delighted to get birthday cards. Anyone interested in pleasing a sweet 90 year old woman, please PM me for her address. :)   

I was surprised to get more than a dozen messages from people who wanted to send her a card.  One person from high school that I haven't seen in decades, one person in another state that I only know from work, so many people who have never met my mother sent her cards.  She ended up getting 32 cards, here's a pic of her display (she got more after I left, so this isn't all 32):

Many of the cards were from our relatives in VA, including my cousin Clara Sue, who is a third grade teacher and had her whole third grade class draw cards for my mother.  How sweet is that?  Here is Clara Sue's birthday wish/memories:

Dad actually grew popcorn in the garden and had an old (very old, I don't even know how old - possibly from the 1800's, maybe the very early 1900's) popcorn popper.  It looked like a metal box on a metal pole, we'd shake it over the fire in the fireplace to pop the corn. Popcorn at my house was an antique country adventure, that's for sure.  He also had walnut trees and would sit on the carport shelling walnuts for hours.  I still miss those black walnuts, nothing that I've found in stores since then has even come close.  Back then Dad smoked a pipe, and I have to admit, as a teenage girl I bitterly resented all my clothes smelling like pipe smoke.  Everyone has fond memories of that smell except for me, I think.  Deidra is Clara's little sister, who was a baby when I was in high school, and my Mom really doted on her.  It's a thoughtful and sweet list of memories.

Here's a pic of the whole group of drawings laid out on Mom's bed:

I especially love the mermaid and the one with "Star Wors" characters holding little light sabers.

She also got a giant flower arrangement from my cousin Tony and his wife.  You can't really tell in this pic, but I swear it had to be nearly 3 feet tall.  And it meant so much to Mom, who remembered how Dad used to grow sunflowers in the garden in VA.

I had quite a wonderful trip.  I always get slightly anxious about making the long drive alone, but then once I'm on the road I'm fine, and everything went perfectly.  We had our traditional breakfast for dinner at IHOP the afternoon I arrived.  The next day we went shopping at Belk and Penny's and bought a couple of new blouses for Mom.  She made it just fine with her cane and with me helping her get around, although it always makes her very tired.

On Friday, her birthday, we went to Longhorn for lunch to celebrate: It was my brother and his wife and their daughter (her husband was at work and couldn't come), my sister and her husband, and me and Mom.  A big enough group to be celebratory, but small enough so that Mom was able to hear what was being said (most of the time).

I had several meals in the dining room with Mom and her friends Mickie and Wilma, and spent time watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Mom has turned on the closed captioning because often has trouble making out what people are saying, but I tried to speak clearly and she rarely had to ask me to repeat anything.

She's been sad about her hearing, and I think this visit cheered her up.  I'm already looking forward to going back at Christmas.  It just makes me feel good to be with my Mom.

Old

My mom got some bad news:  Her hearing loss is being made much worse by a problem within her inner ear, which is distorting the sounds she hears.  The doctor said her ability to understand sounds went from 90% two years ago to 20% now.  There's nothing that can be done about it.  Her hearing has gotten noticeably worse in the past few months, even with her hearing aid, but we were all hoping that a new hearing aid or an adjustment would help.

Every now and then on the phone she has to ask me to repeat myself, but mostly she can still understand me when I speak to her. It's harder for her if there is any background noise, or if the person speaking isn't clear.  Sometimes she holds the phone up to her answering machine to see if I can hear her messages, because she has so much trouble making out what they are saying.  It was tremendously upsetting for her to find out that it wouldn't get any better.

Overall, at almost 90, she is in pretty good shape.  Everyone at the retirement home just loves her, she is the "sweet" one who tries to help out and be kind to people.  Her mind is fine.  She walks perfectly well with the aid of a walker/rollator, which is really only there to keep her steady in case she needs it.  Her vision is good enough to do crossword puzzles and read the newspaper.  She gets tired easily, and her back hurts because of her osteoporosis, but she is in better shape, I would guess, than the average 90 year old.

I'll be driving up to visit her next week on September 28th, and we'll be going to a birthday lunch celebration with other family members on her birthday, Friday September 30th.  I know she misses Dad so much it's hard for her to celebrate anything.  Some days I can tell she just feels tired of living.  I hope her birthday celebration cheers her up, at least a little.

Things That Make Up A Day

Mom has had various troubles with her tv in the past few years.  The old tv set that she and Dad bought back when they lived in Virginia, then moved with them to Florida, then moved with them to Georgia, was glitchy and then finally quit working early last year.  My brother had been thinking about getting a new tv for himself, so he gave his perfectly good old one to Mom, and it worked fine.  It was much bigger than her old one, and she liked that a lot.

The only thing she didn't like about it was the remote, which was without doubt the most torturous thing I've ever seen: it was huge, with buttons to work a DVD player or a DVR or a sound system as well as the actual tv control buttons, but all the many many buttons were unbelievably tiny.  Her poor arthritic hands had the worst time with that awful remote.

So I took her a universal remote, the smallest remote with the biggest buttons I could find.  I even managed to program it by myself, and it worked great.

Until the cable company changed things.  Basic cable is included in Mom's rent, and it was just a cable from the wall to the tv, with no cable box.  Early this year they came around to install cable boxes.  They told her not to use her universal remote any more (though I think she could have, if it had been reprogrammed), and to use the cable remote.  That worked okay most of the time, but the button to turn it on is right next to the AUX button, which would screw things up if she hit it accidentally.

When something seemed to be going wrong, she'd call and I (or Greg) would try to help her through it.  Sometimes she just needed to unplug it and plug it back in, and then it was fine.  A few times the problem was that she'd hit AUX.  One time the actual tv had accentally been changed to a different channel -- it needs to stay on 3 to hook up with the cable box -- and when she put it back on 3 it was okay.  (I'm still amazed that Greg figured that one out over the phone.)

Every time she called saying something was wrong, I'd try not to freak out overmuch (being on the phone in my womb closet would come in handy) but I couldn't help picturing her all alone in her little apartment without even tv to keep her company.  She doesn't watch that much tv except in the evenings, when it's dark outside, and watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy is one part of the day she looks forward to.  But the idea of her sitting all alone in a quiet apartment at night just breaks my heart.

There are just not many things making up a day for mom, and losing even one thing is huge.  My sister takes her out to lunch every other Friday, my brother goes by once a week or so, my niece brings her two young daughters for a visit every now and then, but most days Mom is just there, in the retirement home, by herself.  She goes down to the dining room to have breakfast, lunch and dinner, and spends time at each meal socializing.  She has a newspaper deal with one lady down the hall: Mom gets the local paper, the lady gets the Atlanta paper, and they trade after they finish reading.  Another lady gets a super good crossword puzzle in her newspaper, so every day she makes a copy for Mom and a bunch of other crossword fans.  Mom will walk through the dining room with her walker and stop at several tables to chat with people; talking about things like how the Braves are doing, or who it was the ambulance came for, or whether or not anyone has seen the new resident.  On Thursday mornings she goes to the retirement home's beauty salon to get her hair fixed, and on Sunday afternoons she attends services in their chapel.

When I call her every night at 8pm she'll run down what she did that day, and sometimes she'll say I'm the only phone call she had all day.  "How was your day?"  I'll ask her.

"Just another day," she'll often answer.

When her tv finally broke completely last week, I had to freak out just a little.  She doesn't have much money, and the days of going to Kmart and buying a small cheap tv are over; now all tvs are flat screen high definition and cost hundreds.   It's so hard being so far away, and wanting to help but not being able to.  I knew my brother would take care of it, so I told myself to let it go, and not get worked up about something I can't help with at all.

Sometimes worrying and getting all stressy feels like the only thing I can do.  If I'm not doing that, I'm not doing anything.  I feel like if I lie awake at night and drive myself crazy then at least I am doing something.

My head knows that's stupid, and it's kind of a shame that my head is apparently not necessarily in control.  I did pretty good this time, though, and just kept pushing away worry-brain thoughts.  I had to have faith in my brother to take care of it, and in my mom to be okay, and faith that there would be enough money.

My brother did take care of it, he found a great deal so she didn't need to spend too much.   She ended up only going two days without a tv, and they were kind of crappy days, but she got through it and now everything is all set up and working fine.  So far she hasn't even had any problems with the remote, either.

She's been having more and more trouble hearing, even with her hearing aid, and she has the new tv set up to show closed captions, which she says takes some getting used to, but it's making things easier.

My poor sweet little Mom, I just want things to be easy for her, every day, all the time.  She deserves it.

Golden Years

I took a few days off work last week to drive to north Georgia to visit my Mom.

Mom lives almost at the very end of a long hallway, and next door to her is an empty apartment.  A few years ago, The Barefoot Lady lived there, infamous in our family for using the retirement home's laundry room barefoot (we all agreed that was a little gross).  She was a larger lady, she was boisterous and friendly, and she had a big family that were always coming to visit her.  When her sons figured out that Dad was a cigar smoker, they brought him some actual illegal Cuban cigars.  Or so they said, anyway.  Dad loved sitting on his balcony, overlooking the woods, and smoking them while reading large print western novels (or, after his eyesight faded, listening to western audio books); genuine Cuban or not, they were good cigars, he said.  They were all very kind to Mom after Dad passed away.  Late last year The Barefoot Lady went into the hospital, and never came back.  The apartment has been empty since then.

On the other side of Mom's apartment, at the very end of the hallway by the big window that lets in the afternoon sun, is The Whistler.  He and his wife had been married for many decades when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and they moved into the retirement home soon after.  She began to get confused, and would wander away.  Sometimes he'd have trouble getting her to follow him to the dining room for meals, and sometime's she'd get lost.  He discovered that she responded to his whistling, she liked to hear him whistle little tunes, so he started whistling all the time.  He'd whistle down the hall, and she'd stay right with him, and he'd whistle when searching for her if she was missing, and she'd come looking for the whistle and he'd find her.  After a couple of years her condition worsened, and she moved into a nursing home.  The Whistler stayed in his apartment at the retirement home, and he still whistles when he walks down the hallway.  Mom says she doesn't know if he is starting to get a bit senile himself, or if possibly he just got so used to doing it he doesn't even notice it anymore.

This retirement home does not have any medical facilities, so technically the people who live there are expected to be able to take care of themselves (although some have home health nurses come in to assist them, especially during an illness).  However, with the economic decline there are more and more empty apartments, and more and more new people moving in with serious problems.

My sweet little mother is just exactly the type that people to go when they are looking for help; she's friendly but soft-spoken, observant and sympathetic, and watches out for her fellow residents to see if anyone does need help.  Several times she's had to put her foot down, when people ask her to help them physically do something they can't do, because she can't do it either - she's 89, walks with a walker, and can't hear too well.

Last year a lady positively attached herself to Mom, and there was nothing, short of being genuinely rude, that Mom could do about it.  This lady waited outside Mom's apartment for every meal, so they could walk to the dining room together and sit together.  She was physically fairly okay, she could hear and see and walk, but she had some sort of dementia.  When the time came to order her meal, she'd pull out a little piece of paper she'd written her reminder on: "Peanut butter and jelly sandwich".  And she'd have that for every meal.  Sometimes she'd forget to look at her paper, and Mom would be there to gently remind her.  She was very nice and very cheerful, and smiled a lot, and seemed happy.  Mom said that honestly, in some ways she was quite pleasant to be around.  A lot of the old people who live there are pretty cranky, Mom says.

The lady remembered Mom, and she seemed to remember me, a little bit.  She remembered her whole family, and could recite their names and where they all lived (and she had a big family, many of whom came to visit her quite frequently).  She had played piano in church her whole life, and could no longer remember how to read music, but if someone reminded her of the title of a hymn, she could play it perfectly.  She was utterly mystified by Christmas, though, asking Mom, slightly alarmed, why the big man coming through the dining room was dressed in that strange way, with a big red suit, and why was he giving presents to everyone?

Earlier this year she developed some sort of illness -- Mom spoke to her daughter, but never did really get an answer on what was happening -- and she moved out of the retirement home to live with family.

Some of the people who live there are so active and healthy, you have to wonder why they are there.  They drive cars, and participate in all the activities, and don't seem to need any help with anything.  One such woman is the nice lady who came and sat with Mom, in her apartment, during the morning of Dad's funeral.  Mom showed her pictures of Dad, and told her about when they got married and what their life had been like, and the woman stayed with Mom all morning listening and keeping mom company.

I know it sounds weird to say that I enjoy staying in the guest room there, and having meals in the dining room with Mom's friends, and hanging out with everyone, but I really do.  Obviously I love seeing my mother and being able to spend time with her, but I kind of enjoy the retirement home, too.