Life and half-life

Art by Mom
Sister S photo

Sisters S and K are here this weekend, and it is great. They got Mom in the pool yesterday and have kept her busy. I'm knee-deep in organizing her tax documents, which always takes longer than it should.

I mentioned a post or two ago our friend Jack, the uncle of the supreme court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Just a few days later, Jack died suddenly in his apartment. He was 85. A very accomplished man, gracious, kind and in remarkably good health. I always looked forward to talking to him.  Jack's wife is there with Alzheimer's, and while she's been told that Jack died, it's hard to know if she gets it. The idea that she would outlast him defies sense.

I think that, to go that way, fully alive, then done, is so much better than these long slow declines into half-life that are everywhere present at Mom's place. But I guess you don't get to choose.

Here's Jack's obit: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?pid=184185842

We're going to his funeral this afternoon.

The harbor mouth

Dog Swim

The annual Dog Swim at Mom's Place

The pool is drained and cleaned after this event

Julie went to the Dog Swim with Mom this afternoon. Mom's reaction: "I didn't want anything to do with it."

Fair enough.

I took her to church this morning. Her new glasses have helped her keep track, and she stayed with the service pretty well. We had coffee and a sweet roll in the Bistro afterwards, and chatted with our friend Jack, who is uncle of the new Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Small world.

On the way up to her room, Mom said, "I hope Nels is with us."

"It's just you and me, Mom," I said.

"Where is he?"

"He's not here."

"I hope he's still a part of my life."

"He's always in your memory," I said.

Ice fishing in the harbor

The sting

Watching the St. Olaf Choir

Found Mom last night at Singalong. I asked her, in a whisper, how she was.

"Lonesome for you," she said.

It stung a little bit. I'd been away four days, unable to face it. Another little black mark in the book of regrets the Fates will confront me with when she's gone.

There are days I wish it was over, but when she's cogent like that, it reminds me she's in there somewhere, paying attention.

In her room I gave her a new pair of drugstore glasses to replace the whacked-out pair she had, then  walked her through a lovely, intricate Valentines card from C and Sister L that she'd received, and then we found on my iPad the film of them in Seattle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx8JrR0zCDg

A little St. Olaf Choir on YouTube and that was enough. No emergency toilet needs; no clinging when I left. A simple night. An hour and a half.

Good help

The new winter

I got a call Thursday from the social worker at Mom's place. He said Mom's new private aide, who comes on weekday mornings, was taking a lot of smoking breaks, socializing with the other aides and leaving Mom unattended. So I called the agency and spoke with the owner. He was surprised, apologized and said he'd see to it. But I haven't heard back.

It's hard to get good help.

Mom and I talked with Brenda, a longtime aide. She's been there 18 years, the last four full-time with a man named Jim who started out in independent living, but in recent years has been wheeled in a big reclining chair everywhere by Brenda -- the two of them always together, sitting in the lounge with the TV on, her feeding him in the Bistro. Jim seemed nearly comatose, always sleeping with a pleasant expression. It seemed a living death. Mom always tried to say hi to him and sometimes he would open an eye and give a small smile.

Brenda said he'd died recently, at 84. She told us the whole story -- how they couldn't get him up one day, and Brenda watched him take his last breath, with his family gathering. Telling us about it, she broke down and cried. She said the family took her to the funeral service and the interment, and to the family dinner at a German restaurant afterwards.

Brenda must be in her 60s, with a square build. She walks slowly, with an uneven, painful-looking  stride, and it's easy to see she'll need care someday. But she could never afford the kind of care she gave Jim.

Mom and I went to singalong that night. A peppy woman named Mary leads it at the piano in the lounge area every Thursday and Friday.  Nearly everybody in Stratford attends it -- 15, 20 people all crowded together -- and she calls us her "Choir on Fire." We sing old standards and religious favorites  -- Shenandoah, Yankee Doodle, America the Beautiful, Que Sera Sera, This Land is Your Land, When the Saints, Angels Watching Over Me, This Little Light of Mine, Coming Around the Mountain, Jesus Loves Me.

Thursday it went on an hour and a half. Mom was unusually with-it, singing right along in her quiet voice -- but also looking ahead in her copy of the lyrics to see how how many more were left. She was good this time -- sometimes she'll call out "That's enough now!"

A bent-over man, I think his name is Don, came late, a Scottish man, and Mary had us sing (google says) The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond in his honor -- "you take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland before ye." Don sang quietly by heart, slumped on the back couch, and wept.

Thank God for Mary. It's like we're all swimming alone through affliction and confusion, and yet still manage to swim together for a couple nights a week.

Calling for backup

So I bought these glasses.
Wish I looked a little happier about it.
And wish the picture was in focus.
And, really, I should have shaved.  

To church today. Mom and I both stayed awake, a rarity. She was alert and seemed in good spirits -- much improved from dinnertime yesterday, when she was worried about logistics, once again. She wanted money to tip the servers -- strictly forbidden -- and was agitated. We went to her room and I read her a devotion, but she was too impatient to listen to another one.

She wanted to lay down and we started to move her into bed, then she said she had to go to the bathroom, then went to the bathroom, before we reached the toilet, and I had to call for backup.

But today, better. She was wearing her Green Bay Packer shirt -- there's a playoff game this afternoon, though she won't watch, she never watches -- and nice clean jeans. We got a pastry and coffee in the Bistro, and up her in room I read her a couple of Christmas letters.

I was about to leave, but she said she had to go to the bathroom, then went to the bathroom, again before reaching the toilet, and once again I called for backup.

I'm hoping this isn't the start of a new standard.

*

Beautiful weather here today -- cool and clear, a bright sun shining. I walked home along the lakefront and dozens of ice fishermen were out, grinding into the ice with their huge corkscrews and standing in their snowsuits holding their poles. I've never seen one catch a fish; I think they do it just to get out of the house.

Lazy Sunday

On the lakefront

A beautiful day here. Too warm and sunny for a winter coat.

I skipped church with Mom today and went with Ezra to the family church. A nice, compact sermon on the subject of the calendar, how it came to be the way it is, reaching back several millennia. It's history that works best for me. Facts, as I said before.

We went up and saw Mom then, who had gone to chapel with a nurse. A lot of the old ladies in wheelchairs are just brought down and lined up and participate without fuss, but Mom, with her propensity to stand and fall, apparently needs an attendant.

She had quizzed me a little yesterday when I said I couldn't take her to chapel. Dealing with any normal person, you might just say you can't make it. But Mom, for all her confusion, can still defend her perceived rights. I had to say I was going to "a meeting with Ezra," since if I said church, she would ask to come, and my days of taking her out of the building are over.

The three of us shared a couple of pancakes in the Bistro. She seemed worried as she often does about who was there and who was missing, and she never stops offering her food to others, a kind of over-politeness that maybe she has always had. When we brought her up to lunch, she asked where her mother was and told us to be sure to bring her along.

Overdressed in the park.

Old soldiers don't die, they just become statues.
Douglas MacArthur on the lakefront

Smiling, sorta

Happy New Year, everybody. We gathered the whole fam damly for once. Sans Blaise, who had to stay home and work.

We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with Mom. She got the seafood platter swimming in fluids -- it must have a real name -- and she ate very well -- shrimp, scallops, salmon -- and then tucked into the cherry-topped fudgey chocolate cake and ate half of a huge piece, and it was great to see her eat with real hunger. She stayed with conversation pretty well -- she gets up for visitors -- and we all had a good time. Sunday, then, she and I went to chapel and opened some of her gifts and cards, and got a call from a Sister.

She'd been begging me to bring Dad's funeral program, so about a week ago I brought it and we went through it line by line. Read the biography; the hymns (I spoke about one line of each); the liturgy; the readings (including the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want"); and the sermon, by John Rollefson, titled "Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak," which I thought was apt enough.

Aside from conversation one-on-one, there is nothing that engages her like the well-worn groove of worship of any kind. Add to that the subject of Dad, and she was rapt. She's fixated lately on those who have died -- her parents, her husband, two of her brothers -- and they keep coming up, rotating through her mind. Sometimes they are dead, but mostly they are still alive. She calls me Nels about half the time, or "Daddy," or her father. She says things like "Where's Orla?" or "Where's my mother? When will she come?" And when I say, "Your mother died, Mom," she is shocked every time.

The Sisters, Julie and I have at various times discussed this. Is it better to inform her, or to let her think what she will? It's hard for me to let her believe something that's wrong, but maybe she believes it anyway, no matter what she's told. But then sometimes I think I say what's true for myself, not at all for her. Facts are facts -- this is what I believe. Though why I should need to insist on this, I'm not entirely sure.