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.

Too much motherlove

Huh. Jolly.

Arrived at Mom's place last night at the end of Singalong, in time to hear her say, "That's enough now. Let's stop."

She has some intolerant tendencies.

I took her to her room.

I had told her I would come over, but not said exactly when, and she seemed perturbed that it was so late, and I didn't help matters by saying I wouldn't stay long. "Oh, no, Jon. It's late. You can't leave. You stay with me now tonight." It was, maybe, 7:15 p.m., and it did seem like midnight.

I suggested we read devotions, but she had no patience for it. The terms of the visit were suddenly the entire subject matter of the visit. She asked me if I'd eaten, and I said I had, though I hadn't, and her thoughts toggled between me staying the night and her coming home with me and the matter of me eating and who had a car and who would drive.

I helped her in the bathroom, and then we discussed whether she wanted to lay down, but she was agitated and seemed not in the mood for that, so I took her out to the penalty box -- against her wishes. She said she didn't want to talk to them, and she got her feet to the floor and pushed back. What do you want? I asked. What do you want?

She couldn't say, but she wanted me to stay.

When we reached the corner, I left her for a couple minutes to get my jacket out of her room, and what I got back she'd formulated her final gambit: "How about you stay a couple hours longer and we both go together."

I said I had to go, and gave her a peck on the forehead. She watched me as I went to the elevator, her eyes furious.

*

What I feel, lately, is sad. The fluctuating emotions of visit after visit -- how I feel, how she feels -- are all part of an enveloping sadness that just has no end. Anger, joy, frustration, even moments of laughter -- it all goes in there.

Meanwhile, downstairs ...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner

We had a mass visit of the sisters last weekend, and it was great. Lots of face time for Mom, including a couple of swims. She tries harder, stays in the game longer when visitors come to town.

I went over Wednesday for a short-ish visit to let her know we'd have dinner in the fancy restaurant Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. A woman turned as we passed and said, "Your mother is wonderful. She was a great beauty." I wasn't sure how she knew this, since she'd only known her the last two years. On the other hand, in the land of the geriatrics, where most of us are headed, maybe you acquire the ability to read the young person inside the old one before you.

So we went to the fancy restaurant. She is impatient with slow service -- that is to say, normal service -- so I came armed with a folder full of things to look over -- Dad's obit, clippings from the old Albert Lea newspaper about her father at the church, her recitals, her father's retirement, etc., and one about a visit home to Albert Lea with Sister K in 1987.

"The O's are members of Zion Lutheran Church where M is active on the Christian Service Board and in a circle. ... she keeps busy almost full-time working with host families and foreign students at the University of Michigan, is on the Shelter for the Homeless Board and Social Service Neighborhood Center Board, as well as being a member of the Church Women United Friendship Circle" -- what she called her "black and white club."

Yeah, she was busy.

She listened to everything, looked at the pictures, and yet hardly moved. And when her dinner came -- salmon, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots -- she only picked at it and sat frozen. She whispered something, and I went around the table to hear her better.

"I can't eat all this and I don't know what to do."

"Just eat what you can, Mom."

But she was overwhelmed. It wasn't just the food; it was the crowded dining room full of well-dressed people, big families, lots of kids. "I can't face it," she said. So we had a little pie and then we left.

Upstairs I tried one more time. I showed her a YouTube video of the St. Olaf Choir singing "What Wondrous Love." She liked that -- and then she had to lay down.

Julie had gone to do Thanksgiving with her mother, and she and I met after our parent-service at a resort in Elkhorn Lake for a night of decompression.

I'm thankful for it all.

No solace

What it really looks like

We're still in mourning here. I wanted a better sermon today, so I went to my regular church, arranging with aides for Mom to get to chapel, and when Julie and I got to her at lunchtime, she hadn't been to chapel, which frustrates her and pisses me off. So much depends on the aide you get -- when you can find one -- and it's a real crapshoot.

We took her to the Bistro for lunch, and Julie had to dissect the omelet we got her, and still she would hold it in her mouth and gum at it, digesting it with saliva. Finally she had to go to the bathroom, but first fussed and fussed about wanting to save the ruins of her leftovers, so we found a container and scraped it all into it, and then, as we left, I threw it out.

She asks questions that trail off into inaudible nonsense, and even if she gets it out, it is a question about arrangements, like who's driving and where we'll be staying. When I get ready to go, she insists she'll come home with me, and asks what it is I have to do -- which is really to ask what could be more important than staying there with her?

Last night she said her mother would want to go to church with her, and was shocked when I told her her mother had died 35 years ago. "My mother is dead? Nobody told me! I didn't know! I didn't know!"

It is sad, pathetic, and exhausting. Today I really wanted to quit. I think, though, she might live another decade, with just enough presence of mind to keep me coming back.

Brave New World

                                                       Wednesday morning in America