Ah, yes, the mini-miracle...
...Mom went for the oxygen on her own, night before last, in the middle of the night. Then, again, yesterday, decided to use it in the bath, which is an important choice.
    Since having been prescribed oxygen last September she has resented, and fought, its intrusion into her life. First of all, it severely cuts her smoking. Secondly, it is an apparatus that requires some attention. It is possible, not slim-to-none possible, that, as she forgets to smoke, and she is forgetting, that her blood oxygen level will rise on it's own. It has done this. And, although she realizes this only when her blood oxygen level is up, she is much more alert when she's adequately oxygenated.
    Since her doctor got scared on her behalf, maybe a little over a month ago, and Mom witnessed this, I have "forced" her to use the oxygen concentrator every night and during most naps. I have also insisted that she nebulize her breathing medication mix at least once a day, in the morning, when her lungs have been bathed in oxygen. Much of this has been a bother for her, but she is noticing a few benefits, as well.
    One benefit was a stretch of hours, Thursday afternoon and evening, when she was optimally alert, focused and curious. She surprised both of us. It was even more surprising for us to realize that she'd used oxygen very little that day.
    In the merriment of the evening I forgot to 'plug her into' her oxygen before she went to bed. Sometime during the night my mother arose (which is not unusual), scouted out the cannula, put it on and went to bed. She forgot to turn on the machine, so I'll need to remind her how to do that, but, this is why I've labeled it a "mini" miracle.
    She mostly mouth breathes, on the oxygen. With the concentrator, this doesn't matter. The oxygen is puffed down her trachea, anyway. It does matter with the portables, which I think she'll need to get used to using in Prescott.
    Her almost natural seeking out of oxygen on this particular night was especially surprising, as, the previous morning I noticed that sometime during the night she'd arisen, taken off her cannula and draped it over the arm of her rocking chair.
    Yesterday, as well, she was lively. She seemed a little pale to me, but I have to continually remind myself that she hasn't seen much sun for awhile. She will see more of it in Prescott, when we finally return to what used to be our spring-summer-fall home. Last year it was our home for less than a month.
    When my mother is focused her profile looks like the profile of the man on the opposite side of the buffalo head nickle. I noticed this the other night and mentioned it to her. I knew she'd be tickled, and she was. There was a time, several years ago, when she became very interested in reincarnational literature because of her intense attraction to all things Native American, particularly having to do with the Sioux Nation.
    Last night we went out to eat. She had a martini, a rare occurrence, and clouded over for the rest of the evening. I think she turned in at 2030 or so after dozing while I rubbed her feet and lower legs. She slipped the cannula over her face without protest and autmatically adjusted the tubing. I note, this morning, that she did arise some time in the night, but she still has the cannula on, I checked, it isn't askew, and I hid her cigarettes well, so I know she didn't risk blowing herself up. Her hair, alone, sports enough hair spray to qualify as TNT.
    The most 'miraculous' aspect of the above 'event' is that it happened on the tail end of a period in which I had guilted myself out for no longer imagining that she had 5 years in her. Now, although I think 5 is a stretch, maybe we'll see two or three more years together.
    Yesterday afternoon, as my mother and I were wheeling out of the neighborhood toward her hair appointment, we were passed by yet another daughter living with her mother. The daughter is an Amazon of a woman. Her mother is tiny in comparison. They were swinging around a corner, both laughing about something. I noticed that her mother was not seat belted, just as mine isn't. I know exactly her problem with that. Her mother, I'm sure, will be intransigient on seat belts until she is no longer capable of instransigience, if that should ever happen.
    About a week ago, after another lively evening which included some catch-up reading aloud, on the spur of the moment as I was talking my mother and the cats into her bed, I mentioned to her that if and when she felt she no longer wanted to sleep alone in a bedroom we'd move things around in both houses so that we'd share the master bedroom. I have no idea why I mentioned this. My mother has been a staunch her-own-room supporter from the day after my father died. This subject came up about a year ago and she was definitely not ready then. When I mentioned it some nights ago, though, she looked at me thoughtfully and told me that she'd been thinking about this, lately (much to my surprise), and that she'd let me know when she wanted to do this. I'll keep my eye open, now, for her desire to do this. I asked her, that night, if she wanted "some company", I think is how I put it, and she said, "No," but thanked me, again. So, I'm glad we have that settled. I have been so lucky that she and I have weathered some of the more troublesome hurdles, the driving hurdle, for instance, and the money management hurdle, and the negotiating hurdle, as easily as we have. It looks like that part of our relationship is solid.
- posted by gail rae @ 17:20  0 comments   email...this post

 
I've added an...
...Information & Resources page. It has only one link, so far; I might add another, today. My intention is to steer clear of standard links, those most of you reading this already know, and provide information about the unusual ones that have provided me with specific information when it has been necessary.
- posted by gail rae @ 12:53  0 comments   email...this post

 
I've just added a...
...search engine. I'm not sure how well it'll work. I just tried it and, although it gets the page location of a keyword correct, it doesn't seem to locate the word in the page, but, instead, spews forth a bunch of code for setup of the answer. It may not work, but, in the meantime, if you're looking for something in particular, let me know what you think if you run into problems.
    I have a few other things to report, almost minor miracles, but it's a busy day and I've got things to do. And, I think I'll work a little on this site specific search engine to see if I can find out what's going on.
    Back later.
- posted by gail rae @ 14:31  0 comments   email...this post

 
I'm rambling, tonight...
...I'm sure I'll be going to bed, soon.
    I just wanted to record, as a reminder to myself more than anything else, that today was a my-own-personal day versus a personal-caretaker-of-elderly-mother day. It was tricky and I may have indulged in a little manipulation to make sure we had some hours of distance between us. I gambled that today was the day when she and I both needed a vacation from one another and I was right. When I left she was seated upright and awake. When I returned, several hours later, she was seated, upright, this time in the living room, the TV on, with evidence of peanuts having been eaten as well as slices of cheese. She didn't look too dehydrated, just her normal ragged look. All three of them, the cats and my mother, looked very well rested. All were ready for company again, ready for me, and I was ready for them.
    The tricky thing about how I spent my-own-personal time is that I spent it in the company of friends I share in common with my mother. If I had given her a couple of days notice she might have worked herself up to the idea of coming with me. I often encourage her to come with me on my visits with these friends. Her knowledge of them, in fact, pre-dates mine. But I knew I would be running into and meeting other people, as well, people to whom I was eager to direct my undivided attention, and if I had invited my mother, hmmm...well, my attention would definitely have been divided.
    However, I know she's been having a slow, crawling week. She's recovering, thanks to an extra iron pill and my dogged efforts to keep her from sleeping 24 hours straight. She has been on oxygen a lot, simply because she's been asleep a lot. And, during these times I nag her, a lot. I can get away with it because she and I are very good friends and share a long and intense history, but she gets tired of being nagged, and I get tired of nagging.
    My friend encouraged me to, "bring Mom, if you want." She is always careful to add that last phrase. Her father, with whom I forged a fine and close friendship, had been living with her for, oh, about 4 years. He had been a 20 year stroke-that-should-have-killed-him survivor, and survived better, during his last years, in his daughters house. He died, recently. Mom, in fact, inherited his wheelchair, about which she is sometimes delighted and sometimes wary. She is, in other words, very familiar with these people with very little reminding, and loved by them all. But, last night, when I broached the subject of my visit today, she expressed somewhat less interest in accompanying me than she did in being left alone for an afternoon.
    As I look back I see that my opportunities to nurture my-own-personal life are becoming, well, stretched thin. There was a time, when we began this adventure, that my mother and I had very separate lives. Our familiarity with and involvement in each other's lives was high, but she, for instance, would take herself to animated movies, about which I am painfully picky, and I would, after work, attend, sometimes on the spur of the moment, a rush hour flick. I'd pause to call her and let her know and she'd take mental note that we'd both be meeting home later around the same time after one or another of her in-area interest meetings, or a visit with her relatives. That was when she was 77. She'll be 86 this August.
    Like I hinted before, sometimes I think that this time next year I'll be alone. Then, sometimes I think, no, maybe not 5 years, anymore, but probably over a year. Maybe even well over a year.
    I'm not sure what it is that tells me this. Sometimes, having these thoughts is a bit like being haunted. This afternoon, when my friend asked me about my mother, knowing that it's been intense for both her and me these last few weeks, I heard myself say, "Well, it isn't 'a good five years', anymore. Maybe one. Maybe." Then I thought about how her color was improved, this morning, and backed-up a bit on my estimate. It's pretty flexible, now. I felt a little guilty, in fact, stating this out loud, this sentence, and hastily and strongly qualified it, as though my saying this would have an effect on my mother's life span.
    And, I needed today, I sucked as much as I could from it, and made plans 'to do this again, soon.'
    And I will.
    Good. Night.
- posted by gail rae @ 23:05  0 comments   email...this post

 
I received an email this morning...
...from a reader. That, in itself is a surprise. I've found only a few places, so far, in which to 'advertise' this journal and I don't think it's been up long enough to be discovered by search engines. I've assumed, if I am getting readers, they are few and accidental.
    This reader took offense at my use of prayer to influence someone's life "for ill" and informed me that, at any rate, prayer doesn't work "for ill" and, besides, it probably doesn't work for people who aren't Christians.
    This email reminded me of the article I read some time ago that has allowed me to know that prayer can work regardless of the nature of the request. The article was an interview with two people who are famous for their study of prayer and its effects. One was Larry Dossey. The other, whose name I don't remember, was a woman who has at least one book out about the power of prayer.
    During the interview the moderator, having been impressed with the evidence of experiments set up to observe whether prayer was effective, asked if prayer only worked when its ends were benign. One or the other of the participants responded by saying that, in fact, they had specifically designed experiments to exclude prayer for anything but benign or healing purposes, not wishing to encourage harmful prayer, so could not answer the question. The other agreed and further surmised that if benign prayer works, there is no reason to believe that what might be considered malignant prayer does not, and cautioned readers to be careful choosing their prayed requests.
    As well, both, at various points in the article, confirmed that prayer works regardless of the god-orientation (or lack thereof) of the participants.
    Although I'd never questioned whether prayer could be successful, regardless of the subject, every time I pray for something or someone I think of these two reports on the power of prayer. This particular event of hatred is the first and only time I have consciously prayed for someone's destruction, and, just as I have had faith that any praying throughout my life for someone's 'good' has 'worked', and have, occasionally, been privileged to witness the results, I have faith that my prayers for the object's of my hatred destruction are also 'working'.
    First of all, my experience is that prayer needn't be interceded by a god in order to 'work'. Although I see no reason not to direct prayer through a god-satellite for distribution, I see no reason why this is necessary. My concept and experience of god is, at any rate, strikingly different than that of the Abrahamic and/or anthropomorphic gods, so to say that I pray to a god actually confuses the issue. My understanding and experience of prayer tells me that the activity of prayer is completely human and 'works', without us yet understanding how or why, at a completely human level.
    Secondly, although my prayer for the "destruction" of someone appears to be, well, certainly not benign, my belief is that, in this particular person's life the kind of destruction for which I am praying will not only help that individual to be less harmful to others (probably not to me; I assume, as I pray, that since this person has left me responsible for cleaning up the damage they did to me, praying for their destruction will not help me, but that remains to be seen) but will help a score, at least, of other people malaffected by that individual's life and actions. So, although I use words like "destruction" and "malignant" to describe the subject of my praying in this matter, my underlying belief is that what I am praying for will be of benefit to everyone involved, including the object of my hatred.
    In case you're wondering, my mother's concept of god is a common, anthropomorphic conception. I know this because she and I talk about god and religion often. She is the descendant of a long line of Methodist ministers, deacons and others attracted to spiritual matters, and encouraged, in her children, an interest in matters of the spirit, including seeking out a knowledge of the historical drama involved in the creation of sacred texts. Despite her common conception of god and the fact that she considers herself a Christian (I asked her this question, once again, as recently as a week ago), she also is not sure that Jesus was "the only begotten Son of God", does not think that believing this, or the act of baptism, are necessary to be "saved", is not quite sure what from what we need to be saved and, although she believes some people are evil enough to be excluded from a benign afterlife, is hard pressed to name anyone, including, for instance, Jack-the-Ripper (her example) who would probably have been or will be condemned.

AN ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: To those of you who may be tempted to contact me, as well as sending me email, there is also a guestbook attached to this site which you may access by clicking the link at the top right of this page. The guestbook includes the option of privacy, if you do not wish your comments to be published.
FURTHER GUESTBOOK ADDENDUM: The Guestbook is, currently, unavailable.
- posted by gail rae @ 09:04  0 comments   email...this post

 
Continuation of Last Post: There are days...Part 2
    "What did you decide to do?"
    "I decided to set up a background program in my conscious mind to focus on praying for the social, physical, emotional, sexual and intellectual destruction of this person."
    She turned away from the television and looked at me. "No wonder you've been so focused today! Well, good. I hope it works."
    To appreciate my mother's response, you need to know the recent history behind her ability to say this to me. When I realized, a bit ago, that I was unable to forgive someone and was finally beginning to learn what it was like to really hate someone, I was not so much perplexed as burdened. I wasn't sure how to deal with this internally and decided to seek my mother's wisdom. My assumption was that she probably, at some time, had been betrayed by someone to the point of finding it difficult to forgive them, had probably lived through believing she never would, then had found the grace to forgive, and, at any rate, knowing my mother, probably not continue to hate her transgressor. What I was seeking from her was a description of the road to forgiveness. And, maybe, some anecdotal wisdom on the folly of hatred, blah, blah, blah, that would sound convincing, coming from experience.
    I initiated a conversation between us about this by telling her that I had recently been so deeply hurt by someone that I had come to realize I was unable to forgive them, and, as well, that I hated them. I asked her, without pretext, if this had ever happened to her.
    "Yes." The immediacy of her response surprised me.
    "How long did it take you to forgive them?"
    Without hesitation, my mother responded, "I have never forgiven them. I don't hate them, anymore, that finally faded, but I have never forgiven them."
    I was astounded. "Do you mind me asking when this took place?"
    "When I was a teenager." Her eyes gleamed and her jaw tightened, as if the transgression had occurred yesterday.
    I was blown away. My mother has one of the gentlest, most accepting natures you can imagine. Yet, even she wasn't immune. I had to ask, "Mom, I have begun to pray for this person's downfall. Did you ever pray that your transgressor would be brought to their knees in abject suffering, acknowledge their debt to you and put things right?"
    She continued looking at me as though she was watching the event of transgression against her play across my face. "Yes." Without me asking, she added, after an emphatic pause, "They never have."
    Having been raised in a mild Christian household, although I have never considered myself a Christian, I internalized, through my upbringing, the Christian's fear of feeling hatred, as well as the psychological mythology that surrounds this fear. Thus, I was prompted to ask, "Mom, do you feel that this one almost lifelong inability of yours to forgive has marred your life, somehow made you less of a person than you could have been?"
    Her glance told me that the question surprised her. "No," she said. "Of course not."
    This surprised me. You and I both know this isn't the party line, but, my experience was also causing me to suspect that the inability to forgive and the experience of true hatred were not as simple, nor to be as quickly dismissed or resisted, as I've been taught.
    The next day I was moved to do a bit of informal research at the beauty parlor during my mother's wash and set. The population on that day ranged from 40 through 89, mostly elderly women but a few younger and a few men. I popped the same questions without the personal background and found, to a person, that everyone had one person in their life whose transgression they'd been unable to forgive. The older the person the more likely they were to be completely accepting of this, but, as it turned out, no one felt that their inability had marred their life, tragically or slightly. Even the 89 year old, a woman who considers herself hysterically blessed (and those who know her tend to agree), a woman who still volunteers for her church, had such a transgressor and admitted to her inability to forgive without apology. Interestingly, those us of who were younger were visibly more uncomfortable admitting this, which was noticed and commented on by the 40 year old woman.
    I was relieved to know that my suspicions had been dramatized in my mother's life and the lives of others and were correct. Knowing this allows me a measure of confidence in this exploration of hatred and the inability to forgive I am now conducting in my life.

    If I were not in a position to know my mother and have her know me in such an intimate way I'm not sure that I would ever have allowed myself to explore my inability to forgive and my ability to hate without flinching. Instead, I would have continued to struggle against them, deny them, and would disallow myself the opportunity to understand one of the most troubling experiences of life.
    It is very nice to have evidence, in the form of my mother in my own home, that all of life is meant to be experienced, and that, one way or another, you're going to experience it, whether or not you embrace it.
- posted by gail rae @ 00:26  0 comments   email...this post

 
There are days...Part I
...when the many aspects of my life are so seamlessly intermeshed that there is no discernible difference between my "personal life" and my "caretaking life". There are days when caretaking becomes critical, thus borrowing energy and time from other aspects of my life, and highlights a usually unnoticed separation between those aspects, which, for simplicity I will label "personal" (even though there is little more personal to me, as her caretaker, than my mother's life), and my caretaking life. Then, there are days like today, when the opposite happens. Something from my "personal life" overtakes me and intrudes upon caretaking, siphoning me away from my mother. Today was such a day.
    I awoke overwhelmed with a wave of consuming hatred for someone. I have been actively hating this person for some months. When my hatred began, it was a surprise to me, and not easily handled, but it was necessary for me to learn how to fit it into my life, since it wasn't going away, by accepting it and finding a place and a schedule for it, so this is what I did. Apparently, I haven't been giving it enough attention lately, because, this morning, it attended to me.
    I already knew I had a busy day ahead, and, as well, didn't wake up as early as I usually do, so I panicked when I realized that my hatred was going to demand attention. With barely an hour and a half to awaken and assemble my mother, typically a three to four hour job, for her routine doctor's appointment scheduled for 0900, I hit the decks running, despite my psyche's need to pay some attention to my campaign of hatred, and, within a half hour, ended up in the bathroom stress vomiting, another surprise. I can't remember the last time I stress vomited. I may never before have done this. When I found a moment between bouts of nausea to collect myself, I approached my mother, in her 'waking up' seat at the dining table, and announced that I was going to have to cancel her doctor's appointment. Neither of us were concerned about this. It is a wellness visit, and, although lethargy continues to be a problem, rescheduling her for Monday is not going to affect the efforts we're already taking to combat it. This change was fine with my mother. She was not happy about enduring a fast turn-out and considers doctor's visits an annoyance anyway, even when she's feeling her worst.
    I didn't speak to her about why I was feeling bad. There were so many other things to do that I just allowed her to take note of the fact that her daughter was nauseated and vomiting but determined to attend to as many of the scheduled events of the day as possible. The subject never came up.
    Resolved to gain control of this turmoil of hatred, I discovered within minutes that the most successful way to direct it seemed to be to consciously pray (used with wide semantic latitude) for the social, physical, emotional, sexual and intellectual destruction of the object of my hatred. Since I already have a fair amount of practice at praying for this with this person in mind, I quickly devised a way to do this on one level of, excuse the affectation, my being, while continuing with everything else I had to do. I immediately discovered that, far from biting into my effectiveness with other activities, doing this seemed to add a charge to my day, and I ended up accomplishing a few more tasks than I had planned. I did appear, not only to others including my mother, but myself, as unusually stony and almost off-puttingly focused, but my mother, and probably others, chalked this up to some passing physical illness that was affecting my digestive tract.
    It wasn't until late this evening, as our day settled down, that my mother said, "I'm sorry you've been feeling bad today. Do you think you've got the stomach flu? You haven't eaten much, today."
    I am always as up front with my mother as I can possibly be. She has been forced into a position of having to tolerate my intrusion into a variety of her life intimacies and it is a matter of respect for her position that I offer her the same openness about myself that is enforced upon her. I believe it helps both of us retain our dignity and helps reduce power struggles. As well, I have always operated under the assumption that the more people know, the better, especially when matters of relationship are involved. It is in this spirit that I responded to my mother, "Remember, Mom, a while back, when I told you that there is someone in my life whose actions against me and betrayal of me I cannot forgive, and who I also hate?"
    She remembered.
    "Well," I confessed, "this morning I woke up so overwhelmed with hatred that it made me sick until I figured out what to do with it."
    Continued...
- posted by gail rae @ 23:19  0 comments   email...this post

 
"That's Donald Stone-
hink," my mother reminded me when I told, this morning, her what I'd broadcast here.
    Sorry, Mom. I always make that mistake. This is also the fellow my mother went out of her way to impress on their first date, when they were in high school, by inserting an entire orange in her mouth, as reported by Mom's now deceased sister, who was there and probably still regales crowds with her reportage on my mother; and confirmed, with bursts of scandalized laughter, by my mother.
    This is an old family anecdote. The first time I heard it I was between the sixth and the seventh grade. Although I was fascinated by boys and had already endured some flagrant crushes, at that age the anecdote didn't seem so much scandalous as absurd, rather like auditioning for the role of Lady Macbeth by hanging a spoon from one's nose or forehead (arguably appropriate for Ophelia, ludicrous for Lady Macbeth). Later, when I was somewhat more, ahem, socially aware, it occurred to me that this unusual skill may explain why Mr. Stone-hink was so eager to imagine my mother as his wife. This was around the time I was also considering that my father may have found my mother's facility with guns and her renown as a crack shot equally suggestively fascinating.
    "Stop that, Gail! That's your mother you're talking about!" Had I ever mentioned either of these speculations to my aunt, she would have said this with an indulgent laugh.
    My mother's response? Indulgent, as well, still scandalized, but she'd consider the source. She's always found me "challenging", her own word, has told me more often than I care to admit that I "make life interesting" for her.
    Could this be the secret to successful caregiving, to keep in mind that it is at it's best when it exists within a relationship in which both members feel the other makes her life "interesting?"
- posted by gail rae @ 14:41  0 comments   email...this post

 
Up, Up and Away
    Last night I was able, without consciously trying, to lure my mother to stay awake longer than she intended. I think my success began with a meal designed to delight. Her appetite, as is common in the old, is unreliable and she must often be tempted to eat. Old favorites don't necessarily work, anymore, because she has forgotten, mostly, what her long time favorites are (except for pancakes...I don't think she'll ever forget that favorite). This is a boon to me. She's never been one to experiment with food, except accidentally, but, now that she's forgotten many of her food habits, I'm free to place concoctions before her that she would have eschewed in years past. Sometimes she even 'remembers' a new dish and raves about the ingenuity of an old one.
    Spurred by the irresistible scent of some peak of the season cherry tomatoes from my niece's garden, I put together a savory bruschetta with fresh arugula and basil, spring onions, garlic, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, green olives, a pinch of kosher salt and freshly grated Parmesan. Her appetite, which had been lagging all day, along with her energy, perked up as the ingredients sizzled in olive oil. Still, at 1920, early even by her standards and before the end of Jeopardy!, one of her favorite television programs, she announced that she thought she'd be turning in soon.
    "Already?" I asked, a little anxious. Yesterday was one of her two "Hair Days". On these days, when she has her hair washed and set at the salon, she is usually more energetic than she was today. "Why don't we read?" I suggested.
    No, she didn't think she was alert enough to concentrate.
    A round of rummy, maybe? A rented movie? Maybe she'd like her fingernails painted? Nothing seemed to be more tantalizing to her than her bed.
    She headed for the bathroom and I assembled the items used in her nightly before-sleep ritual. When she returned to her rocking chair, I began her nightly foot and leg massage. This is always a time of relaxed, free ranging conversation for us, one of my favorite activities with her. As I work on her feet and legs I think about her life, contemplate the gaps in my knowledge of her and wonder out loud about her experiences that have been hidden from me. Last night, I'm not sure why, I suddenly decided to ask her something I'd been curious about for a long time but hadn't asked for a variety of reasons, some having to do with respect for her innate sense of emotional modesty.
    A few nights previous I had observed that my father, her husband, had always seemed to be fascinated with her, throughout his entire time of knowing her. "You know, Mom," I said, remembering both their stories that, from the moment he'd met her as his gunnery instructor in the Navy prior to his being deployed to fight in WWII, he'd been so taken with her that he ordered the rest of his squadron against dating her, "I've always had the impression that Dad fell head over heels in love with you and never, ever fell out. Is that the impression you had?"
    She laughed, delightedly. "Yes," she had said, "I think you're right."
    My mother is a more oblique emotional read than my father was. Last night, while I was working on the soles of her feet, I decided I wanted to know the rest of the story. "How about you, Mom," I ventured, "I think you were the love of Dad's life. Was he the love of yours? You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
    She stared at the ceiling. I knew she was working this one out.
    "Or," I continued, "did you even think of love and life in those terms? When you were really young, before you met Dad, did you think that you would have a 'love of your life'?" My mother was an adventurer, I mused, so she may not have perceived love and life intersecting like this.
    She looked startled. "Oh yes, I did," she began. "I think I was more practical about it than Dad, though." Now, I was startled.
    Knowing that vague questions tend to throw her off track, now, I sharpened my next question. "Was Dad the love of your life?" and quickly added, "It's okay if he wasn't, Mom. It won't shock me to find that out."
    "Hmmm, well, no," she said, from far away, then, upon further thought, said, "well, yes, he was."
    I was intrigued. What, I wondered, caused her to first refute, then confirm my curiosity? I know, from her sister, my aunt, that previous to leaving home, she had at least one suitor who asked her to marry him. She turned him down because, one evening while walking together, he pointed out a porch they were passing with several pairs of children's shoes lined up in descending order of size and made the unintended mistake of musing, affectionately, that one day soon they would be living in home with such a display on the porch. Although she always assumed she'd have children, she had other plans for her immediate future, including college, a career, travel...and shortly after Donald Stoneking's overt sentimentality he became a part of my mother's history. I wondered if, initially, my father had been just as sentimental then realized that the way to capture this woman's heart wasn't through promises of security and coziness.
    She went on to tell me that, initially, although it was clear to her that my father was smitten with her, and she definitely found him attractive, she had no interest in settling down. She found his interest amusing, but she wasn't about to swear her allegiance to someone who might be tempted to "keep her down on the farm". These were her words, and definitely appropriate, considering that, as a daughter, she had spent a fair amount of time on a farm, had even gone to college in the midst of a farming community. When it became apparent to her that he was not interested in leading a physically settled family life and wasn't at all adverse to her working, she recognized him as the love of her life. As it turned out, their marriage was anything but physically settled. Aside from moving every couple of years or so throughout their marriage, whether from area to area or house to house within the same area, they raised their children outside of the U.S. by choice.
    I know that, after their mutual retirement at 55, although they continued to move from place to place at my father's pleasure and to my mother's ambivalent delight (sometimes she was not quite ready to move from an area when my father was), they did not travel nearly as much as my mother would have liked and, apparently, as my father had promised. My mother was philosophical about this and when my father died as a result of deciding, at retirement, that he was going to drink himself to death (which he actually announced, and proceeded to do, although more slowly than he expected), she took advantage of her daughters' far flung lives and picked up her travels where she'd left off before they retired.
    Truthfully, I was surprised that she considered my father the love of her life. Not that their love for each other wasn't obvious, but she has always been the more emotionally practical and grounded of the two. I remember her once telling me that if it had been socially acceptable for women to bear and raise children alone, "...like women do, nowadays..." when she'd had kids she would have had a dozen and done it all herself. I never took this as a slap at my father's presence in her or our lives, but, rather, as an indication that my mother had more of an explorer's spirit than my father and felt hindered by the institution of marriage that she inherited from her era. I imagined that my mother, while not feeling cheated by her choice of husbands, would have preferred another kind of love.
    I'm still not sure I'm wrong, but I don't think she settled. I think life threw her some curious curves, courtesy of my father, especially after their retirement, and, being the stalwart spirit she is, she began to realize that discovering the love of one's life is quite a different experience than imagining that person before meeting them.
    This conversation, and a felicitous appearance of an Inside the Actors Studio segment that we'd both enjoyed the first time around on television, kept her up a few more hours, last night, and enriched me immeasurably. Sometimes I think that the primary perk of taking care of my mother in her elder years is the opportunity I am granted to ask the difficult questions that many children avoid and hear how one's answers to those questions evolve as one considers one's life from the heights of great age.
- posted by gail rae @ 07:12  0 comments   email...this post

 
Ups and Downs
    Tonight I did laundry a little earlier than usual. Typically, to save on our electricity bill and keep from putting the a/c under too much pressure, I wait until after 2200 in the summer. Although my mother is typically a night person, for the last year or so she's been in bed by that time. It's only been recently that she's begun to return to her old habits. Tonight, because it's been a long and tiring day and I was hoping to crawl into bed a bit earlier than usual, I started the laundry at 2030. Mom was still up.
    I brought the first load of drying out and dumped it on the living room floor for folding, as usual. My mother moved out of her rocking chair, as if by rote, and started toward the load of clothes, intending to settle herself on the carpet to help me fold them. This is how we used to do it, when she was sleeping less and later.
    A cautionary video fast forwarded through my mind. "Mom," I said, "I don't think that's a good idea."
    She knew what I meant. "Why not?" she asked. "I do this all the time!"
    "You haven't done it in about a year, Mom, and, truth is, I don't think I can lift you up off the ground, or support you as well as the edges of the bathtub so you can lift yourself up."
    She shot me a look of thorough disgust and said with staunch confidence, "You won't have to help me up."
    "Can you guarantee that, Mom? It's been about a year since you've done that and you're not as strong as you were, then. If you can't get up, and I can't get you up, are you willing to pay for a visit from the paramedics?"
    It's always a little disturbing to see reality hit her. She didn't look crestfallen, but I saw her wince as she made an internal adjustment that she clearly hadn't expected to have to make. "No. I see what you mean."
    "Mom," I suggested, "you can stand, like I'm doing, and help me fold clothes. I'll put them on the couch."
    She surveyed the load of clothes. It was a big load. The first always is. "No," she said, "I wouldn't be comfortable standing that long."
    She's right. She wouldn't. I know this. She's still a little unsteady, although she's getting better, and the one situation that would be worse than trying to help her lift her sitting self off the floor would be if I had to try to lift her horizontal, injured self off the floor, which, of course, I wouldn't do. I'd call the paramedics.
    I know she was disappointed. I like to have her help as often as possible, so she continues to feel that she is a contributing member of the household in the way she is used to contributing. So many of the chores I do around here are clearly out of her league, now, so, when she wants to help, I always try to find a way. I also know that a shrunken, bent woman weighing 148 with most of that weight carried in her belly and not enough muscle strength to help lift herself up is beyond my physical abilities, at the moment.
    After she had settled back in her chair, I had finished the clothes and begun to read a book and she was focused on TV, I considered that there are a few other ways I could have handled the situation so that she could have helped without getting out of her chair. I'll remember them next time. In the meantime, I'm feeling a bit sad that I was too tired to come up with these simple alternatives on the spot. I know that the next time she's up when I'm doing laundry, I'll activate one of these alternatives. I'll also remind her of tonight, apologize for my mental exhaustion and my inability to think of alternatives and everything will work out okay. I wonder, though, if somewhere in the back of her mind my actions with her tonight will silently eat away at her sense of her value in life. I hope not. Normally, throughout her life, she has been sensible and alert about situations such as this. She is an Ancient One, now, though, and I'm never sure, anymore, how she'll perceive incidents like this. Sometimes, I look forward to the possibility that her memory will let go of the details of her daily life. I'm hoping that tonight's laundry will be one of those details it will chose to lose.
    In the meantime, I've vowed to restart a weight training regimen I'd been practicing last year that I stopped when I injured my shoulder and never continued. I'll look into nurses techniques for moving patients, as well, something I'd intended to do when I started weight training. Seems like the time has come to make good on those intentions.
- posted by gail rae @ 01:08  0 comments   email...this post

 
Happy Father's Day
    I doubt that we'll talk about my father, my mother's husband, today. Coincidentally (if there are coincidental events), Mom stayed up quite late last night while I played tapes of the show "Cosmos" I'd checked out of the library. Both the music and the show were two of my father's favorite productions. Throughout the playing of the episodes I thought of my father. My mother remained silent and engrossed. Normally I would have mentioned the subject of my thoughts during 'down' periods when the tapes were rewinding, but last night I sensed that my mother was making the episodes hers, so I refrained. At one point I stopped the second tape and said, "You know, I love watching this show. It makes me feel wonderful to be human!"
    "I was just thinking how wonderful it is to be a part of this...," she paused as she moved her arms to encompass Everything of Which She Is Aware and All of Which She Isn't.
    "Incredible creation?" I said, trying to put words to her thoughts.
    "Well, yes, and more," she said, and continued outlining the circumference of her ineffable thoughts with her fingers.
    I was pleased to hear this. I remember that one of my father's delights in watching the series was that it encouraged him to contemplate how insignificant humans are. I also know that, although my mother did not 'take on' my father's thoughts, she also didn't loudly assert her own, and, I sometimes think, didn't fully appreciate her own thoughts. Now, in the 18 years since my father's death, she seems to be owning her thoughts, feels as though she can disagree without being challenged...
    I love my father. I am, literally, half his, having noticed early in life that I got exactly half of his entrenched pessimism and her entrenched optimism, the contemplation of which always delights me. Much to my surprise, though, I found myself thanking him, last night, for allowing my mother some time alone here beyond his life to, again, be her unfettered self.
    Although her feet and legs have not been swelling, it seemed to me as though her belly and her face were just this side of dangerous bloat last night, so, with her dinner (we split a hearty rib eye, some homemade fries and my 'famous' It'll Make You Pucker cole slaw) I gave her a quarter of a 40 mg furosemide tablet and worried that even this might be too much. This morning, I notice, it seems to have done the trick without causing her to soak her bed from excessive sweating and bladder leakage. Hydration is a tricky business with my mother. She doesn't experience thirst as reliably as she used to and has never been much of a water drinker. Last fall, her physician dehydrated her too quickly and she experienced a blood pressure crash (which appeared to me, at first, to be a stroke) scary enough to land her in the hospital for a night. I am determined, now, not to have that happen again.
    The doctors were and are reluctant to call her episode a blood pressure crash, despite STAT CAT scans, MRIs and a constant monitoring of her vitals for 24 hours, although they were unable to call it anything else. It wasn't until I described her episode to two people who have extensive experience as kidney dialysis techs (one of which is my sister) that they both immediately identified the problem, which is common (and sometimes deadly) during the dialysis of patients in frail health. Although the sudden blank appearance, the bugging eyes, the aimlessly swaying head, the loss of the ability to 'be where one is' and the retention of consciousness despite the lack of awareness are signs of a crash, they are also common to stroke onset. The clinchers were three other symptoms: The episode lasted less than two minutes, she remained seated upright throughout and immediately following the episode she experienced a complete bowel evacuation. She recovered so quickly, in fact, that she took herself to the bathroom before the paramedics arrived and delayed her departure to the hospital until she was done in the bathroom, much to the paramedics' frustration.
    When I think about it, I am surprised that no one, including the paramedics, took any of the above into consideration. Her physician has, with some reluctance, decided to humor my interpretation of her episode, but I suspect he still believes that it was something else which he has labeled a "Trans Ischemic Attack" and an "Altered Level of Consciousness", explaining that these labels are often used when physicians aren't sure what happened. However, since I am quite sure I know what happened, I have been guarding against dehydration (and, now, over-hydration) since, and she's had no further episodes.
    I think one of the most valuable lessons I'm learning as I care for my mother is that physicians should be considered health care resources (and, sometimes, partners), not authoritarians. I've never considered them mini-gods, as large segments of society often have, but I also didn't realize that gently sparring with physicians and questioning their opinions and diagnoses allow them to be a much more valuable resource than I've previously believed.
- posted by gail rae @ 11:24  0 comments   email...this post