Mom gets her feisty on

Mom was fresh from a shower when I got to her place this morning, her hair coiffed and combed. She tells me she got a group call from her friends at the college reunion last night, and says they told her she was much discussed. She was happy with this.

On the way out to church, we walk with little, bent-over A, and she and Mom recount the breakfast table conversation, which was, Would you be younger if you could? Apparently, there were some who said they would not. But A was adamant. "Yeah, I'd like to go back -- we'd be young again!"

I wonder, probably unkindly, if A ever had a middle age. Never married, no kids, taking care of her mom for decades -- well, hey, speaking just for myself, at this rate I'll want a chunk of my 50s back.

Mom also says she talked to the nurse, and her daughter S, and they have encouraged her to, as she says, "Remember to blame the disease -- and that might help because I think I am going crazy." I actually do think she feels frustration, even a little anger, with herself when she can't do things -- well, who wouldn't? -- when really her Parkinson's symptoms account for almost every aspect of her condition.

So we head to church and the first thing she says when we get inside is, "Is that my quarterback?"

I look over and, yeah, it's her quarterback. It's just minutes before the service, and he's talking to his wife, who's in her choir robe, and Mom says, "Oh, I wanna meet her. I've never met her." She takes a step toward them, and I actually stand in front of her. "No, Mom. They're tired of us talking to them."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because we talk to them too much, and you have talked to her, and she even wrote you a a note about Ann Arbor."

She admits she got a note, but denies that she's ever really met the wife. And she sits down, and doesn't look at me for almost the entire service.

OK, now I've done it, I think.

We get through the social hour without Mom noticing that they're in there, although I note that Julie holds a lengthy conversation with the wife, fortunately behind a pillar and out of Mom's view. Julie is, of course, unaware of our little set-to in the pew.

Then, at the Bistro, Julie discusses how she learned from the quarterback's wife that a certain choir member has a serious health issue, etc, etc, and while I shrink into a little ball, Mom says she'd like to meet that wife, and she has a right to meet her if she wants to.

"Mom, you only want to meet her because he's a quarterback," I say.

"No! They lived in Ann Arbor. And so we have this in common, and if you talk more, you might find other things."  This is, apparently, My Mother's Conversation Method, which is patented.

Still, privately, I am kind of miffed. In a church of say, 250 active members, you might hold brief conversations with people you know maybe as often as once a week. For me, this is at most three people. Then there is an outer circle of people you might talk to four times a year. And then a wider circle of people you might talk to once every six months, or even just once a year. This is where the quarterback and his wife lie in my world. And I find it false, and socially embarrassing, to have my mom, on the slimmest pretense possible, to be forcing herself on these people who have, really, very little interest in her.

Finally, brunch is over and we spend a little time in the room.

As I leave, I say, "You're doing really good, Mom."

"Even fought for my right to talk to the football player," she says. "Didn't win, but."

Probably I should just relax about this.

The spy ship

Had dinner at Mom's Wednesday. She seemed diminished, frozen, and was quiet. The dining room was nearly full for a change, and we sat and watched a big ship outside the harbor. It seemed to be anchored, slowly turning on its chain. C said it had been there all day. "It's a spy ship," she said. "They want our secrets." Little, bent-over A, who lived with her mom in the place for decades, until the mom's death, and now was declining herself, seemed to believe it. "It's a spy ship, it's a spy ship," she said to me conspiratorially.

C and D were very excited over a new computer they had bought and were struggling to set up. They had gotten voice recognition software -- Dragon -- that as yet wasn't recognizing their voices, and they were getting help from Brennan, the intern everybody loves. They are, really, almost like college roommates, still enthused about things and moving forward -- so completely distant from my mom. Even if she had the wherewithal, it wouldn't be family, and it wouldn't matter to her.

She leaned over and said: "I always think pretty soon it will be Friday and I can go home with you to Ann Arbor, but then I remember you're home already, you live here." And when we got to her room, she made a gesture of disgust, as if, same old, same old.

I saw, on her window ledge, the hibiscus that she had reported stolen from the lounge. "Look at that," I said. "How did you get it back?" She threw a hand and said it was too complicated to explain. She asked about people we'd seen on our vacation. I told her about a woman we know who'd gone to Shanghai to set up a kind of sister-school partnership with a university there.

"Schools do that now, don't they," she said. "I think it's good, it's good for peace."

It was a beautiful day, and she said she had gone out onto the plaza below her room and had loved feeling the air. She had sat on a big swing chair there, and a man had come and sat down with her,  "not too close," she said. They talked and realized that both their spouses had died of Alzheimer's. He just wanted to talk, she said. "He was a nice man."

She has fallen lately, and won't use the walker she has, and with her little unsteady steps, one fall on the concrete plaza would put her in skilled nursing -- 24-hour care -- and I think she would give up entirely.

When I left I went down to the plaza to take a picture of the spy ship, and after a few minutes, C called down to me. "Jon! Jon!" She was in my mom's room, and brought my mom to the window. I said hi, and waved, and Mom waved back.  I yelled up that I was going to leave, and she blew me a kiss.

I always feel so crummy when I go.

The swing chair

Mom and C in the window

What was

Bike snacks

The last night of our trip, in Appleton, Julie, me, and our friends KE and KG shared mom stories over drinks. Their peculiar personalities, their peculiar health problems. Both the Ks are going through the same things we are. Declining moms. It's a pandemic!

We got home yesterday afternoon, and mom called at 6:30 last night wondering what "your schedule is," i.e., when am I coming over. I said I'd be there tomorrow (today). I got there about noon, and found her fresh from the pool. "I feel brand new!" she said. And she looked it -- scrubbed and shiny. We chatted a few minutes and then went to to the big activity room for the Memorial Day "picnic," which had been moved inside because of the  threatening weather. We got brats, chips, potato salad, cole slaw, broccoli salad -- the works.

Mom ate messily, but with relish. We were joined at our table by a couple who live in the tower apartments. They were urbane, and we chatted about Wauwatosa, where the woman had grown up. The couple said Mom was lucky to have a son living so close, who visits often. They exchanged histories with Mom (and me) on how they'd come to live at the place, and how they liked it. The couple, a year in, loved it. Mom, a year and a half in, said it was "OK."

"I'm lonely," Mom said.

She'd had my Sister L with her for most of her waking hours for four days, my brother-in-law for at least a couple days/visits, and her good friend from back home Sj, had made two visits in three days, including yesterday afternoon, bearing ice cream. And here I was, sitting right with her at the time.

It is hard not to be cynical, to call this a willful cry for pity. And it is true that people at the place say they're worried about her because she seems lonely. But it's not that she seems lonely. She says she's lonely. She seems mostly fine. She goes swimming, she talks, she eats, she joins the group games. She recently went on a group tour to the museum. She does things; she enters in.

So, let me try to be charitable. What she misses, I think, is her former life. Her husband, her kids at her feet. The days when she was the center of a small, vibrant universe. These are serious things to miss, for sure. But, after a while, most people accept and move on. Don't they? Do they? They never forget, they may never stop mourning, but they don't hold those around them hostage to what was. Do they?

But she has Parkinson's, where logic holds no sway.

*
She made me lay down on the bed with her today. She asked me about our trip, What did we do? Over and over again. And what did Julie do? Over and over again. And, how was Julie's mother? "She sees no one, and she wants to see no one."

"I wish I was happy with no one around," she said.

I guess I do, too.

I let slip that Son E was in town.

"He better come and see me," she said.

He did.

Aboard the Badger

Bliss

Highway 22, Arcadia

Well, we did a million little maintenance things at FF this week, and left it looking no different than it looked before. TV still doesn't work, crack in the ceiling is still there, you still have to rattle the handle after flushing the toilet. These things might be improved in the next month in our absence, but we shall see. Saw our friend Bruce a couple times for dinner -- full of gusto, him -- and we left early this morning and made the 9 a.m. ferry in Ludington. We got a "state room" -- about the size of a  jail cell -- so we could sleep, and met up with Julie's mom at her house in Appleton.

She took us to the cemetery where her extended family is buried, and it was sobering. We had questions -- who was related to who, and how -- and she was patient for a few minutes, but we were kind of flies in her ointment and she started to answer tersely and we backed off. The facts, really, weren't the point. She teared up, finally, and it was time for all of us to go.

The three of us had a light dinner and we left her at her house, wondering if we should stay. She sees no one all day, most days -- but she's difficult to read, and it's hard to know how to help.

We got a room at the Copper Leaf downtown, squeezing one more night out of the vacation, and we'll re-enter tomorrow.

Reports from Mom Land are upbeat. Mucho gracias to Sister L, Friend Sj, B-in-L C, for filling in and doing it better than I certainly could have.

I'll stop and see her Monday.

Highway 22

Brother B

Ready to go

We stopped in at Mom's on our way out of town for a week up north. She was coming from the fitness room with D with a big grin on her face. D chatting chatting chatting. Another good morning.

We went down to the Bistro for coffee and came upon Brother B inching along in his wheelchair. It's funny how you see things, but don't see them. I finally asked, "Can I give you a push somewhere?" He mumbled "yes, yes," so I got behind and pushed. He pointed to the door to the first floor wing,  pressed the automatic door and we went in. Mom tagged along.

Brother B had been upstairs in my mom's unit but was one of those who had suddenly disappeared. He seemed much worse off than when I'd first met him, when we'd talked about the boats on the harbor, watching for the big ferry as it came and went. I had asked him about the monastery, what it was like there, and how he'd become a monk. He said he'd had a wife and kids, worked as a nurse, and then, somewhere in his 40s, had felt called to a monastic life. I had to wonder what his wife and kids felt about that, but some things you just don't ask.

His right hand was shaking uncontrollably, his watch or ring rattling like a drum roll against the metal arm of the chair. I tried to go slowly enough so Mom could keep up, and we went to the end of what had to be one of the longest hallways in the whole building, turned right, and went to the end of another hallway just as long. His room was the one at the end, about as far from the entry a resident could be.

He was still shaking and quite distraught, and gave me a piece of paper that said "Mother Hilary," with a phone number. So I called the number and gave him the phone. In his hand, it shook against his ear and jaw. He got an answering machine, and didn't know what to do. Finally he said into the phone, "I had a bad night last night. I'd like to talk to Mother Hilary...."  He paused, frustrated. "I had a bad night, that's all I can say." He hung up.

I said, "Do you want to move to the bed, or the chair?" His eyes were watering, he was almost crying. He said, "No, no thank you." Mom offered him a blanket or a pillow -- Mom, in need herself, offering to help -- but he declined, and thanked us, as if we should go. So we went.

*

After we left my mom's, Julie and I drove through the UP, stopping at the Dreamland restaurant in Gulliver for a great home-cooked meal, then on to St. Ignace where we stayed overnight. Across the bridge in the morning to FF, where we've been working and playing in about equal measure.

Cycle and recycle

The Ozaukee Interurban Trail

Hard to figure out the cycles of my mom. She was dressed up tonight, nice white blouse over a green top, a little makeup on, big silver earrings. She seemed stiff and frozen in her way, but her mind was pretty good.

I noticed that the table that had been covered with flowers and plants on Sunday, Mother's Day, now just held one arrangement. Through stops and starts, she said she'd brought the big hibiscus I'd given her out to the common lounge and set it on a side table so others could enjoy it, too, but somehow it had disappeared. She thought it had been stolen. She was quite upset. I talked to BTY, the worker, and she said they'd gone room to room, and it was nowhere, and that the administrator, JG, had even written a note about it. BTY just shrugged. "We don't know what happened."

I was kind of miffed about this. Not at the loss of the plant, but that someone would take it. Mom leaves her door unlocked around the clock -- half the time it's yawning open. She should close it -- I close it when I come -- but if there's a geriatric crime spree and she had to lock it and unlock it, it would add a quantum leap of complexity to her life: not being able to work the lock, a key she'd be losing, locking herself out by accident. A nightmare.

We went out to eat at Beans & Barley. She got a strawberry smoothie -- but didn't like it and only drank a little. (I had more!) She got tunafish on toast, and I got the fishcake sandwich. The order took about, oh, 15, maybe 20 minutes to arrive, and about halfway into that, she said, "Boy, they're really slow here," and made periodic followup complaints. Imagine a long car ride. I don't know if time passes more slowly for her, or what it is. Probably I'm boring company -- but this has happened even with the walking party of D, her erstwhile best friend.

But all in all, a civil outing.

I had dreaded coming because of the strange horrors at the end of Sunday's visit, and her followup calls. After "Where are you, where am I supposed to be," she'd called again, completely bereft, like she was drowning. The carpet, the table and chairs, the room, the very air unrecognizable.

She called later that same night. "It's better now," she said. "I was real, real quiet. I didn't talk to anybody the rest of the day." She said she did a puzzle with another person or two, but even then didn't talk -- as though not talking was a way of holding onto a reserve of sanity. "I think I can handle it," she said.

Then Monday, with a more confident voice, "I'm better now." She said she had talked to the nurse, and to a social worker, and went for a swim. She missed a pill, "and they were furious at me." Now the residents were involved in a game -- usually it's a sort of high-minded trivia -- with Brennan, the college kid who volunteers, who everybody loves.

But tonight, Wednesday night, all that confusion, just gone.

*

Julie and I head to Michigan for a week on Saturday. Sister L will come for a few days next week, and I'll have a week and a half without Mom. She'll have a tough weekend, I think, but I can't meet every need, every day, every minute.

Just how bad I am

The Oak Leaf Trail

I woke up this morning chafing at this Mom Enterprise. The irritation and time it costs me, the precious little payback, the way I'm not getting anything done remotely related to my "goals," such as they are. I am, obviously, selfish, and always have been. But I need to cut back. She could do without the Wednesday visits, I think. With her memory so spotty, when I show up on Wednesday she sometimes seems surprised to see me; to her a weekday is a weekday is a weekday. Saturday and Sunday, she knows, I think, as there's so little to do, unless I provide it -- which is to say, church.

We did that today, went to church. She was not in tip-top form. She mistook the elevator door for the women's room, and was generally scattered. She used to kind of dress up for church, but today she was in a T-shirt, a purple shirt over it, and one of her innumerable pairs of three-quarter length pants, which are really awful. I am not going to fuss about her clothes -- I'm not going to start dressing her -- but among the casual elegance of the church people, she looked a little bag-ladyish. We sat in the pew and sang and listened and I found her place in the program at every juncture, and then, when it's finally over, she spies the quarterback.

"I'm going to go talk to him," she said.

"Mom, don't bother him. You have nothing to say to each other."

But she pushed right by me and bulled her way over to present herself.

He is a serious man, imperious, with little sense of humor, and not much of what you'd call the milk of human kindness. He intimidates me, for god's sake. He once tried to call Julie at work, reached a colleague of Julie's, and threw a fit when she couldn't come directly to the phone. "Why, I am [Name] [Name]!"

But he greeted Mom kindly, asked how she was doing. She answered somehow, and at this point I arrived at her elbow. I steered the conversation to his recent trip to Cuba, on a church mission, and he was interested in talking about this -- the strange distribution of wealth, the crushing poverty -- "you wouldn't want to live there" -- and how it's different from other Caribbean islands, "although I've only been to a few."''

A few.

We talk for maybe 3 or 4 minutes, and I step back and try to steer Mom away, and she pulls her arm free, steps even closer to him and says, "What about your wife?"

He looks a little startled, says, "She went, too. In fact, I gotta find her now." He starts to move off, and finally I get Mom detached.

And then coffee hour. She is like flypaper, moving through the crowd, plucking at shoulders as they pass, introducing herself, saying, "This is my son Jon" and "I'm M___ O___" and asking their names. Every week I get a kind of acid flashback to Zion when I was a kid -- church was bad enough, but then there was her gabbing gabbing gabbing at the coffee hour, really completely insensitive to the fact that her four children were HUNGRY and CRABBY and had BEEN THERE TOO LONG.

Gad.

I'm sure I'll regret this outburst.

But I feel better now.

Julie and I are going away next week, and it's just about time.

Maybe, in the future, I'll take Mom to the service in the chapel at her place.

I did, by the way, bring her a Mother's Day plant and a card.

My wife, of course, bought the plant.

*

Later:

Mom called.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"I'm home."

"Where am I then?"

"You're in your room, aren't you?"

"Where am I supposed to be?" she said. "I feel kind of lost. I don't understand where I'm supposed to be."

My heart breaks.

Roof work

$8,000 plus.

I hope they're well paid

The hope here is that repairing the roof will allow us to repair cracks and flaking paint in the interior without them immediately reappearing. The larger view is that making this house more habitable will make it more pleasant to live here and we will want to stay (me), or make it marketable so we can move (Julie). How will this work out? You have one guess.

I saw Mom Wednesday and had coffee with her while she ate dinner. I didn't want to eat until later, when Julie and I were to meet our friends J and B for dinner at Bavaria -- but to Mom this seemed an affront and threw her into a funk. She is a food pusher in any case -- a "plate sharer," as my lovely daughter puts it -- and offering her food to others has become a kind of aggressive charity that is just plain bad manners. Wednesday, I hoped taking a bite of her veggie burger would suffice, but it did not, we went back and forth until she finally pushed the whole plate across the table at me, and pointed and wagged her finger over it, and then right at my mouth. I told her firmly I didn't want it and pushed the plate back toward her, and she said she didn't want it and pushed it halfway back. Finally, at a stalemate, we left the table and the nearly full plate of food behind us.

We spent a little time in her room, but the food incident had left a -- OK, I'll say it -- bad taste in our mouths. I didn't linger.

I went back this morning hoping for a better outcome. I got there before 8 -- before her breakfast -- and we went to Simple and had identical omelets -- cheese, onion and bacon -- and lots of coffee. She was great. Forgetful, as always, but actually could process conversation. She pointed delightedly at a furious little red-headed boy, maybe 3, who was just not going to be happy, and later we noted that he had crayons and was coloring intensely. We talked about our names -- JNO, how I'd changed the middle name from Steven -- and hers, MH_ _, the H after her aunt.

When we got back, we perused Facebook for family pictures, got an email from Sister S laying out Mom's summer schedule, and ceremoniously plotted the dates on Mom's calendar. I showed her pictures of the roof project, and of the fire department showing up at work the other day, after we complained of a burning smell (a heating unit that malfunctioned).

We wrote a couple checks.

And then she just froze.

I said, "Are you tired?"

She said she was.

"You know, I'm failing," she said.

I said she was doing OK, she'd had a great morning.

I said I'd be back tomorrow for church. Every day is mother's day, but tomorrow is Mother's Day, and I suppose I should get some flowers.

Fire scare

Comme ci comme ca

Wauwatosa, in its wisdom

Found Mom yesterday about 11:30. She'd just finished a swim session, after having worked out on the machines before that. She glowed; her mind was sharp; she said she felt so good. Morning is her time.

We had lunch with the group. C and I talked about "Wolf Hall," and she thanked me as Mom and I left like she hadn't talked in a month. Mom, though, faded rapidly, her exercise catching up with her. Her face expresses her state -- from a near-normal range of expression when she's on top of it to a frozen mask when she tires out, as if she can't even muster the energy to brighten her eyes. It is Parkinson's, of course. As if growing old and feeble without disease isn't cruel enough, the fates must have their fun by raining this horror upon you.

*

Took her to church today. An hour and a half, and she followed pretty well. Though she did ask, in the middle of the first hymn, if I saw the football player and his wife. (They were not in evidence.)  It was an ordination service, with a sermon by a guest preacher on how you can't escape God, especially when you're a pastor; everybody is super-polite to you and you'd like to just run. (I think, in my case, I'd be tempted to throttle somebody. Not sure how redemption would play in that situation.)

Then I took her to the room and we spent a good long time looking for her checkbook. I could see myself having to figure out what we'd paid and what not, and then cancel her checks and get a whole new set -- something I've done before and what a hassle. But, miracle of miracles, she found them in her underwear drawer, where I swear I had already looked. So, as a preventive measure, and, tacitly, to my way of thinking, as a punishment, I took them and said I'd keep them at home. Because, for sure, I won't lose them.