Small bites of happiness

Against all odds, my mother is still here, among the living.

She struggled through her touch and go night, and then swung more up than down throughout the few days since.

I have stayed at her side or close by, fearing a call saying "Hurry now, she's turned for the worst." But it has not come.

She is ill still; weak, and broken-boned. The heart still gallops, controlled by medicine's drip, drip, drip into her arm. Her blood is still hosting hostile invaders, though fewer, we believe, than in the depth of her illness.

And yet, she had returned from the brink. No longer at the precipice of "multi-organ failure" her liver and kidneys are back in the job; her lungs and heart, though diminished, have not thrown in the towel.

She gains strength slowly, minute by minute. I watch the clock tick by with her heartbeats, the monitor screen my Rosetta Stone, translating her complex body into simple numbers I can witness the rise and fall of.

With these I can infer trajectories; legitimize hope. When her O2 sats at 99, *I* breathe easier.

Everything in such a delicate equilibrium, we are all tiptoeing around her, afraid to do too much and send the scales wildly tilting again.

And yet things must be done: IVs changed, oxygen delivered, blood pressure measured, pain medicine given. Most painful of all: her position shifted, so as not to develop bedsores. With every move her unset bones dig into her flesh from the inside, scream warnings of pain the drugs can only dull, not eliminate.

Also? She must eat. Because if her body is going to repair itself, to heal? It must have fuel and the ingredients to do so with.

Yet finding foods she is inclined to swallow is a daunting task. Sedated, reclining, nauseated from medications, she would rather skip the whole affair.

So I am once again mothering my mother. Offering tiny tasty morsels on the tip of a spoon, coaxing and cajoling her to take "one more bite"of something "yummy" harkens back to the days of my boys' infancy.

We are most successful with the comfortest of foods: soft, sweet, easy to slide down her tired throat: soups, yogurts, puddings.

Yesterday, perusing the hospital's dining menu I noticed an item I had previously overlooked and inspiration struck: baked sweet potato, one of Mom's all-time favorite foods!

It came soft and well done... perfect for my plans. I cut it open, smelling the earthy sweetness rising up from the deep orange flesh, slipped it all out of its papery skin, then went to work.

I emptied the margarine pats deep into the mound and watched them swiftly melt. I took up the fork and mashed and smashed, tamed lumps of potato flesh into a smooth purée. To thin it out to a consistency that would slide right down, I slowly spooned about half the accompanying tomato bisque soup into the potato, blending and rendering it halfway between a thick soup and a mash.

And? It was perfect.

People? She ate THE WHOLE THING. And with gusto.

And in those few moments when I was scooping spoonful after spoonful of nutritious goodness into my mother, and I could see that eating this was something that was actually giving her pleasure, I was happier than I can ever remember being.

A very small, very brief bite of happiness, to be sure. But blinding in its intensity, and staving off the encroaching darkness, if just for a little while.

A matched set of broken hips

I got the phone call at 4 AM, either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, depending on how you count time.

The BEST news a 4 AM phone call can deliver is a drunken wrong number. NO Candice is NOT here and (to my knowledge) she did NOT steal your man.

But this wasn't that.

This was the other thing. 

The "your mom fell and is in a world of pain so we've called an ambulance and are sending her to the ER" thing.

And so it goes... again.

I did not see my children on Saturday, leaving long before they were up for the day and retuning home long after they were asleep; Ethan in my own bed, missing me.

By the time I arrived at the ER my mother had been to x-ray and returned with the tech's unofficial "broken hip" reading, that soon became official. Her right side, this time. So now she has a matched pair.

There will be days ahead of back and forth on trains and in cars. There will be packed bags and sleepovers on Long Island friends' and relatives' sofas.

There may be an operation, or there may not.

This will be swift or long and drawn out.

There is no way my mother is getting away clean, without pain and suffering.

And that sound you hear?

Like crystal, cracked; musical and violent all at once?

It's the sound of my heart breaking.

Again.

Thanksgiving Blues

Jim & Pat's beautiful table at Thanksgiving

It's another year of Thanksgiving finding me full of mixed emotions, aware that looking backwards and feeling sad is so much easier than looking forwards and feeling hopeful.

This was the first Thanksgiving since my parents moved back north that I did not spend with my Mother. We will be seeing her today when my family does their day-late Thanksgiving celebration on Long Island. But Thanksgiving proper was spent with my husband's family in the city, a small quiet dinner with just two families (and our nephew's lovely girlfriend).

They live up high in the sky, on the top floor of their tall apartment building, and from a south facing wall of windows there is a clear cityscape view with the Chrysler Building standing out, central to it all.

The Chrysler Building is deeply significant to my mother, her favorite building in the whole world. She loves art Deco and it is a supreme example of that architectural style.  Whenever we came to events at Jim & Pat's (and we have for many many occasions since I've joined my husband's family) my parents were always invited, and my mother always seated opposite this window where her view of the Chrysler Building would be unobstructed. And she never ceased to wonder, marvel at the view.

One thing my mother has never been accused of is being unappreciative, ungrateful. She would thank Jim and Pat profusely every time she came over, would spend much time looking out over the city she loved, watching the skyscape shift from day to night, giddy in her good fortune at being invited for such a view.

And last night, every time I looked out the window and watched the Chrysler Building shining back at me, the unbidden thought kept welling up: "Mom should be sitting here, seeing this. And she likely never again will."

Two years ago, the first Thanksgiving without my father and Dan's mother was flat out hard. Last year, still, there such a sense of missing people, of present ghosts.

Three years ago, Thanksgiving day was the last time my father ever entered my home, and it was clear, that day, he was fading fast.

And now my mother is slip sliding away too; though slowly, so very slowly.

This may be her last Thanksgiving. It may not. We spin the big wheel and see where the fates take us. Either way, we're along for a bumpy ride.

I hate striding into the holiday season hand in hand with this melancholia. I long for simple good cheer. But that's not how life sits with me right now.

So I strive to feel grateful for the little things, those shiny moments, amidst the gloaming.

Shortly we will pile into our ancient but still serviceable car, drive out to Long Island to pick up my mother and take her to family, to the heart and hearth of her brother's nearby home.

It won't be the Chrysler Building, but it will more than do.

90 is the new 90

My mother turned 90 yesterday, and she is finally starting to look close to her age. It's something of a shock to both her and us, who have assumed her youthfulness would go on forever.

This year has been harsh on her. Tough on all of us.

Last year at 89?

Mom & me on her 89th birthday last year

Still going strong. We drove out to Coney Island to visit with friends, made a full day of it, took Grandma out to dinner at a diner near her NYC home when we got back to Manhattan.

But this year?

Wheelchair bound now, post broken-hip fall; sleeping much of the time (her heart not pumping efficiently enough to give her a full day's energy). Living in a nursing home. Still bruised from her latest fall.

Danny and the boys and I came out from the city by train (the car is still in the shop) and my Uncle Walter - my mother's 85 year-old "baby brother" - picked us up and drove us to the nursing home which is just a mile from his house.

We gathered in one of the small lounges, just off the dining room, where there was a table, sofa, chairs.
 

Uncle Walter & Mom

Three generations

Walter brought flowers. We brought a cake (chocolate - is there any other kind?) and candles - nine, one for each decade.

 

We visited for a while, ate cake, interspersed hugs and kisses with stories. Mom napped in her chair, on and off throughout the proceedings.

Birthday kisses from Jake

I gave her a bracelet, a simple string of blue-grey pearls on an elastic cord. Something easy to wear, not too valuable, as things of value are not possible to keep in a nursing home (the sad truth).

I had no idea they would be the exact same shade as the shirt she was wearing today, a bit of serendipity, something cheerful to cut into the sadness that was running a deep vein throughout the afternoon.

Walt told winding stories of their childhood together. Tales of their parents, and the candy store they ran together; of his father's earlier work as a waiter, filling in some details I had not heard before.

(The children were bored. They played video games. Hopefully, someday they will have interest in  the currently unimaginable past.)

I hadn't realized Grandpa Joe had worked in high-class joints like the Waldorf, and been instrumental in founding the waiters union, NYC Local 1.

They talked about their grandfather, their father's father, remembered only as Zayde (Yiddish for grandfather), first name obliterated by time. Walt remembered how harsh and bristly his beard was, like razor blades, and how his father had inherited that same rough stuff.

"You have a beard like none other I have ever seen!" declared his barber when Grandpa Joe went in for his twice monthly fancy shaves, "It's tough as nails!"

Walt doesn't have this. Did it die out with my grandfather's generation, or is a steel wool beard in store for my boys when, in a few years, they sprout facial hair?

(This is why I feel it so important to gather these stories now, while those who lived them first hand are still among us and remembering. That world has long faded away, and yet my children walk into the future carrying the genes of their ancestors with their every step. these are their stories too, even if they don't know it yet.)

We took leave of Mom as dinner was being served, handed out the remains of the cake to the folks at her table.  She looked so sad, sitting there in her wheelchair, dozing off, waiting to be served.

I had to work hard to walk away without spilling over into sobs, remembering my father's bountiful 90th birthday celebration just five years ago, with abundant food, family and friends gathered 'round; not this paltry, anemic thing we had just done, too slight to be called a party.

Mom with birthday flowers and cake

Mom, I know this is not how you wanted it to be, but you made it to 90.

And 90 is still 90, a big deal. Nine decades.

And I know you don't think so, are distressed by how much you now look like "an old woman" but you are still so beautiful, so beautiful to us all.

Happy Birthday Mom! We love you!

My Mother, today (with Jacob)

Mom & Jake

I know the other day I promised a short post and then rambled on and on. But this time I really mean it!

Neither wordless nor quite yet Wednesday, though, so think of it as Pithy Tuesday or some such. (Nods to Elissa Freeman, she knows why.)

Today Jake and I went out to see my mother, while my upstairs neighbors rescued Ethan from a day of video-game-and-TV-watching boredom.

He has such a terror of spending a day alone (not ALONE alone, mind you, but alone as in NOT played with, being pretty much ignored by busy working parents) and is rather vocal in his displeasure with such arrangements. Especially when they involve proximity to his autistic twin brother.

Ethan does not believe me that no one has ever died of such a thing as boredom, and claims he will be the first. I have tried the "bored children get chores" gambit, but there is no yard work here in our tiny urban apartment, and all other housekeeping tasks would require MORE of my time and energy to teach and supervise him in than to do them myself.

So he empties the dishwasher and then it's pretty much back to entertaining himself with expensive electronics. (The horror, the horror...)

But today, my neighbor (whose praises I cannot sing enough) knowing all too well herself the eldercare-and-kids sandwich squash, took Ethan on for the afternoon.

Leaving Jake free to train out to Long Island with me, to spend some quality time with my mother. (Taking the train because the morning had been spent bringing the sadly falling apart old car to our lovely mechanic* to get a new tire, among other things.)

And we did. just. that.

And I didn't cry because Jake was there and I didn't want to scare him, but I held my mother while she cried about how reduced and sad her life is now, about how much she misses my father. Each and every day.

"He was my best friend," she tells me yet again, tears welling up in the good eye, and the bad.

A pair, they were. Bonded in love and friendship. Fifty one years.

I hated to leave her, when it came certainly time to say goodbye. "This is what I look forward to now," she said, apologetically, gesturing to the bingo game they were starting to set up in the dining room.

"Your mother is a good player, she wins!" piped up one of the other residents, declaring my mother a youngster, she a sprightly 96.

Yes she is.

Yes she does.

90 on Sunday.

We'll be back.


*If you're a New Yorker with a car, I love, and am happy to recommend our mechanic. Talk to Ralphie of NY Prestige Auto Repair, and tell him Varda with the ancient green Camry sent you. He'll treat you right. (No guarantees, of course, but that been my experience so far.)

I am linking this up with my friend Heather's Just Write

Fallen

Mom, 4 AM, Saturday, August 18th

I am doing time in a hospital ER again.

It's 3 AM again (actually nearly 5 by now).

There was a phone call at 2.

2 AM phone calls are NEVER good news.

That it came today, when we were back home in the city, returned just this past evening from our Berkshires vacation was a blessing. But also, of course, a curse.

So here I am, again, on 2 hours of sleep again, with my poor hurting mother.

What happened was: she fell. Again.

Mom fell in the bathroom of the nursing home where she now lives. The aide who had brought her in there was being kind, giving her some requested "privacy" for a moment, so had stepped back, was hovering just outside the (open) door.

But Mom forgot that she was supposed to ask and wait for help when she was done and attempted to get up by herself. You can see what a good idea THAT was.

She fell, hard; clonked her head but good on the sink. Additional assorted body parts also made contact with surfaces harder that they should have. And she was sent off to the local ER to rule out fractures, brain bleeding & other such fun stuff.

When I arrived at the ER, I took this picture. Believe it or not the eye looks much worse now, a veritable goose-size egg rising under the purple, bleeding surface of her lid and brow.

And yet, my mother, being my wonderful mother, still has a sense of humor about it.

She kept asking "Why can't I open my right eye?" (Yes, her short-term memory issues are so bad she kept forgetting what had happened to bring her into the hospital. Albeit the percocet may have contributed to the fog.) So I showed her the picture.

Her response: "But you should see the other guy!"

And also she managed to look on the bright side: "Doesn't my hair look great?" Love that mother of mine. (Wonder no more where I got my gallows humor from. And my father was even worse.)

So.

Here we go again.

On the up side... astonishingly, unbelievably, no bones were broken. Her ribs, elbow, hip are bruised. Skull: intact, with no brain bleeds.

Just one massive, ugly shiner-to-beat-all-shiners.

Oh, and also maybe it's a good thing that something landed her in the hospital, because as they were doing all those x-rays to see if she'd broken anything, they found some fluid in her chest. At first they thought it was maybe in her lungs, and that she was brewing a pneumonia, but then concluded it was around them, in the pleural area, and she was instead in the wee early phase of an incipient heart failure.

Which they are now fixing.

So yes, obviously she was admitted into the hospital.

Good thing I wasn't going to that family wedding this weekend, after all.

The living and the dying

Eva & Mom, 10 days ago

"Varda, I think I'm dying" my Mother says when we visit her, pulling me close so as not to scare the children. But "No," I reassure her, "you are not dying."

Not yet. Frail as she has become in these past two months, she is robust, sparkling, clearly still full of the stuff of life. Clearly because we have come from my cousin's childhood house, where my Aunt Eva is deep into the business of dying. And the difference is stark, unmistakable.

At this point in my life I, unfortunately, know full well what a dying person looks like. This is good when it comes time to reassure my mother it is not her, that her mortal coil is not easily shook off. That right now she's just having a devil of a time recovering from her fall and broken hip. (Old people heal slow, that's just the facts.)

But it's not so good when I sit with my Aunt Eva, possibly for the last time. I know what I am seeing. There is a far off look to her eyes, a done-with-this-ness to her body, every movement bought precious from a deep dearth of energy.

She is mostly sleeping, and her sleep is mostly peaceful. Her family have come together to give her a good death. Home. Surrounded by the ones she loves best. Her comfort everyone's foremost priority, no pushing, no prodding. Letting this happen as naturally as possible except for the pain part; minimizing that.

A good death that comes at the end of a long good life. It's what we all want.

And Eva has had a good life - education, meaningful career, family, financial security, community. Not perfect, not charmed, but good.

Yet it was almost one cut short, nearly no life at all. As a young teen she one of the very last Jews to escape Germany, on possibly the very last boat out, allowed into this country only because her father's friends had conspired to find a job for him that could be filled by none other - the Metropolitan Museum of Art was suddenly in desperate need of an expert on unicorn imagery in medieval tapestries, and he happened to be the world's foremost authority, imagine that!

Our trip out to Long Island yesterday was good and hard in equal parts. I wanted to be there for Annette, I needed to say goodbye to Eva, though what I said to her, literally, was: "I love you, I love your daughters and grandchildren, we will always be family."

Leaving her side, my back turned, I mouthed my silent "goodbye" closed my eyes for a moment to settle my heart back into place, then headed out into the stifling heat of the yard where the children were gathered, waiting to launch.

We had come with yet another mission, furthering the next generation's cousinly bonding, as so took Katrina out with us for a local jaunt: hours of fun in the Manorhaven pool, a quick visit to my Mom and then late dinner in the town diner.
 

Ethan and Trina looking tough after a good swim

Ethan visiting Mom

As we left I peeked back into the room where Eva lay. Her husband, my Uncle Walter, was sitting close by her side, holding her hand, gingerly stroking it gently as possible, the one touch she can now stand.

He was gazing upon her face as if to drink it in for all time to come.  There was nothing in that room but love and tenderness, and leavetaking.

It's how we all want to go, if given a choice.

A good death that comes at the end of a long, good life.

Surrounded by love.

In relative comfort, in spite of a failing body.

With sufficient children and grandchildren to know your genetic legacy will live on, beyond you.

Leaving behind many who will remember you; in whose lives you have made a difference; who hear your voice in their heads, giving advice (whether they take it or not).

I am expecting a call soon.

Today. Tomorrow. Whenever. (Probably within the week.)

We've had a good run, my family, this generation all making it into their 80s and 90s. But every lucky streak must eventually come to an end.

Sometime, probably not this week, but likely within the year, it truly will be my mother's time.

For a while it looked like she and Eva were running neck and neck for the next to leave us, but my mother has flopped up upon the banks of life, while Eva is swimming hard toward that other shore.

My mom is a tough old bird, after all.

Some life left in her.

Enough to appreciate flowers; a beautiful sunset; a hot fudge sundae, and the nieces (and grand-nieces) that bring it to her, before they drive the short mile back home to their dying mother.

I hold them all in my heart.

Our visit to Mom: Trina, Jake & Ethan

The briefest of updates

Mom continues to be up and down, and in spite of making actual progress with her walking, is now swooning and willfully collapsing while loudly declaring she is going to throw up / have a heart attack / die on the spot.

She fluctuates between being afraid she is dying to wanting to die to being cheerful and rather chipper. Rumor has it she even flirted with a handsome young doctor the other day. (I would assume her teeth were in that morning.) 

Short mom anecdote: taking a 2 minute wheelchair break in the middle of walker-lurching down the hall today, Mom looked up at the two lovely, young, earnest therapists who are accompanying her and asks "Why do I feel so fucking awful?"

"Sylvia" one of them cautioned, "Remember what we said about the cursing?"

Mom: "That it might upset some of the other residents?" They nod, pleased.  Mom takes a perfect thoughtful pause. Then adds: "Fuck 'em."

Tomorrow they transfer her to the sub-acute rehab facility where hopefully an equally earnest and helpful staff will continue to harangue and cajole her into reasonable shape to go home within another few weeks.

Because I don't known how much more of this shit I can take.

Also in honor of Wordless Wednesday (even though I am clearly being wordy) a picture of flowers:

These are from the grounds of place where Ethan goes to summer (day) camp in the city. Taken because I spent some time yesterday running around like a headless chicken and picking up and dropping off overdue paperwork with schools and camps and doctor's offices all over the Upper West Side.

I really have no excuse for the need for this. In sprite of having been a successful and highly organized producer for many years, I apparently now possess the executive functioning skills of your average fruit bat.

Whether this is actual ADD or just my aging peri-menopausal brain remains to be seen.

To quote my eloquent mother: Fuck it!

Up and Down

Beautiful flowers in Mom's room (thanks Bruce, Bern, Rachel & Simon)

I only have time for the quickest of updates tonight; barely a post, more of a postette, postella, postellini. Because I am completely knackered. (For my readers who are not anglo-australo-philes that means totally worn out, tired, broken.)

In fact, I'm pretty much going to recap my Facebook status updates because that about says it all:

When I arrived:

"Mom is having another really hard day. One minute she is admiring the smile of the nurse who has come to take her blood and the next she is sobbing and screaming at me to just let her die, it hurts to much to live and she just wants to be done.

After this, and before going home to children who will be all over me because I've been gone all day? I think I need a drink."

Then, later:

Mom was in better space & spirits by the time I left. I still do not understand how no one figured out her severe discomfort was caused by gas and that she needed a very simple anti-gas medicine (simethicone) to feel like a human being. I should NOT have to have been the one to suggest it!

And in the middle? (Warning, what follows is a bit of a rant. Cursing involved. Because it was one of THOSE days.)

A lot of begging my mother to eat and drink, followed by her taking one mouthful of yogurt, one sip of seltzer, and then holding up her hand, cursing at me when I try to force more.

A lot of running to the nurse. They are growing to dread me at the hospital rehab nursing station, and that's a good thing. Because I MAKE them fucking take proper CARE of my mother, which they are somehow loathe to do.

I tell the nurse my mother in in excruciating pain and she blinks at me blankly "Really, she didn't say anything to me."

REALLY? REALLY? Are you fucking kidding me?

She didn't "say" anything because she is so out of it. The pain has reduced her to the state of an animal, holding her abdomen and moaning about how she is terrified she is dying.

But if you ask her point blank, she will say she's not in pain, that she's just uncomfortable. Because she's so polite and all. Also, at this moment, mentally compromised enough to NOT be a reliable reporter - as I have told the staff a BAJILLION times.

At one point, she turned to me and asked, "They are giving me so many medicines already isn't there SOMETHING they can give me that will take me out of this misery?" And I thought "Damn straight there should be something!" and ran off to the nurse to make sure they'd been giving her simethicone for what was, so clearly obviously to me, severe gas pain.

Nope.

No one noticed, and she didn't request it. I actually may have gotten a little mouthy at that point and said something about how when my babies were gassy and screaming in pain it didn't take a medical degree for me to figure out they needed simethicone drops. And how I didn't feel the need to wait for them to "ask" either.

And a dose of simethicone and a couple of trips to the bathroom and bedpans later (no gory details I promise, even though I got to live them, you won't have to) and she was back in her mind, able to converse, aware of the world outside her body.

So I arrived to a mother who would not eat a bite of her lunch and who responded to my entreaties by pounding on the bed and yelling "Yes, yes, I want to die, I am ready to die, just get this OVER with, I can't take any more!"

And I left a mother who was actually eating dinner, slowly making her way through the fruit salad and asparagus, the first solid things she had taken in, in days.  And a mother who was holding my hand and thanking me for being there.

And it was so hard to leave her, not knowing how she would fare in the night. But my children across town needed me too.

And I don't know who I am going to find in the morning, the pain animal or my rational mother. Hoping for my sweet mother, but willing to do whatever it takes to get her back, in any case.

Better

The view in ICU

Mom is doing better today. Much better.

(How much do I love writing that?)

She is off both the ventilator and the vasopressor drugs (that were supporting her blood pressure).

She's not out of the woods yet, but neither is she stuck in the weeds. There is a path and she's on it, even if it meanders and seems to double back at times.

There are still minefields ahead. Her equilibrium is so very delicate, thrown off by the slightest breeze. So we are going slow as they remove the supports that have been propping her up since the post-operative crash.

And yet there is danger in this, too.

The sooner she is on her feet, the better, as she is most assuredly in the "use it or lose it" years. And at the moment, still immobilized by equipment lines, strapped into a bed, she is not using much of anything.

Unless you count her middle finger, glowing bright red under the oxygen monitor's light, which she is waving under the noses of the staff who are bothering her, poking and prodding, hassling and tugging at her; tightening straps she wants loosened and set free from. And yes, I believe she knows what she is doing as she lifts that finger to them.

She can't really speak much yet, her esophagus torn up pretty badly from the ventilator tube's sojourn there. But her eyes and gestures say plenty.

When the nurse had handed me the suction tube and showed me how to stick it into the hole in the oxygen face mask, told me to encourage her to cough and suck up whatever comes out?  She forgot to warn me that what might be coughed up could resemble a lung.

Seriously, a giant gob of bright red clotty blood came spewing out and even I, who have staunched my father's bleeding wound with my bare hands, blanched and willed myself not to faint as I suctioned it all away and then gingerly hung up the now bloody tube, wondering if I would have the courage to pick it up again.

(My apologies to the squeamish among you for that.)

Thank goodness they finally ditched the mask, set her up with the old nasal cannula (after she rasped "take this fucking thing off me" enough times). And her oxygen - as far as I knew when they kicked me out for the night - was still satting at 98%. Excellent.

My mother, while sweet and tender, is also a tough old bird. I don't want to tempt the fates and say this, so please knock on some wood or spit over your left shoulder three times while you read it, but I think... she may just pull through.

It's not going to be easy. Rehab is going to be a long haul, and we HAVE to get her on her feet again. And she is not exactly compliant with exercise regimens, though she will tell you she is. Because if she does something once, she considers herself DONE with it. Even if she has been told to do it three times a day for a month.

I have seen her lie to doctors and physical therapists. She wants to be SEEN as compliant without really complying.

(OK, I might just be describing myself here, too. And my son Ethan, as well, come to think of it. Methinks a pattern is emerging. I may just have detected a lovely family trait.)

So, there is clearly much more cursing ahead.

But that's OK.

It's AHEAD.

And so I'll take that ahead, whatever way it comes.

I am linking this up with Just Write, just because.