Mother Out

Tomorrow my mother will be moving into her own apartment in a retirement center. We went there today to sign paperwork and get her keys. She is thrilled to finally have an address and know where her apartment will be.

She does however, have very mixed feelings about moving in there. I can't blame her. Everyone looks different than she does. Her hair is dark, she walks with a spring in her step, she laughs often. Many individuals use walkers and are rather limited in their activity there. Her first comment when we went there was a loud, "These people are so old!" There are actually more individuals there in the 90-100 category than many places in the US, so part of her observation was correct.

The bottom line is that she is not like many of the very elderly individuals and she feels like she is going off to the end of the earth to live there. The good part is that I live 2 miles away and will be having her with me as often as possible. It is a bittersweet feeling to have the privilege of helping my mother as she ages, but also seeing her age.

Mother always has been a going concern: canning vegetables, baking 6 loaves of bread every week, doing washing, keeping a huge garden, maintaining the house, sewing all of our clothes for many years. After my father died, she lost quite a bit of ground and her energy has decreased significantly. But for her age she is still a going concern.

Mother tells people that she is beginning a new chapter of her life and that she is looking forward to whatever her life will be like. We have offered for her to live with us, but she would be alone all day, every day while we're at work. In her new setting, there are daily activities, field trips, shopping trips, and clubs that meet several times per week. THere are art classes and Bible studies and evensong programs. The dining hall offers social opportunities three times a day and she will no longer have to cook anything.

And yet, in my mind, I hover over her, trying to anticipate anything she will need--trying to help ease the transition to apartment living. It will undoubtedly be difficult at times for her to get used to living in a small apartment after having a big farmhouse on an acre of land. Her foibles that have been apparent over the years are now exaggerated. She is opinionated but good natured; energetic and funloving.

I was not prepared for how life has turned out for her, but I am grateful to have Mother nearby. I pray daily that I will be gracious and supportive--a daughter who truly honors her parents. It has been good to have her live with us for three weeks and part of me is quite sad to see her move out on her own.

Welcome Kaiden!

Here is the newest member of our family: Kaiden Michael. He weighed six pounds and was all of 15 inches long. He surprised his mother by announcing that he was ready to be born while she sat in class (It's not pleasant to have one's water break in the middle of a college class!) Mom drove 80 miles to the hospital and met her mother and Dad. The next afternoon Kaiden was born by C-section because he had the chutzpah to chose to show his posterior to the world first.

I'm a great-aunt! Isn't he beautiful?

Sweet and Sour Holiday Loaf

Here is a terrific vegetarian recipe, thanks to our wonderful family friend, Cheryl.

Mix together 1 can vegeburger (meat analog)

1 onion, finely chopped (cook 3 minutes in the microwave before adding)

1 teaspoon garlic granules

1 teaspoon sage

1 teaspoon chicken seasoning

1 stick of margarine (I use half of this)

6 slices whole wheat bread, cubed

4 eggs

Press into 9 x 13 caserole dish. Cover with topping:

Mix together:

1 cup catsup

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup water

Bake one hour in 350-degree oven. Serves 6-8.

Delicious!

Slip of the Lip

Yesterday I mixed up two figures of speech. I referenced an inexperienced student by saying he was "green behind the ears." My colleague looked at me, horrified. "Oops," I said. "Didn't come out right..."

My mother once informed the neighbor that I had just completed my "Bastard of Arts" degree. It was a slip of the lip, pure and simple. Just like the time she tried to tell my friend her horticultural ideas of incorporating sprays of sedum all around the front of my church. Instead, she announced that she would like to see "avalanches of semen all around the front of the church." Mortification is too tame a word for how she felt, sitting in the third row of church, facing my chortling friend.

I don't know why it happens, but children often suffer from the same issues their parents do. Standing in the ICU one day, trying to explain how respirator tubes cause air impedence, I announced to my female patient's handsome sons that their mother would have to get a tracheostomy because of her impotence. Surprised, they looked at the floor. I paused, hearing my own words echo in my ears. One of the sons looked up at me. "Did you say what you meant to say just then?" I bellowed with laughter. "I don't think so!" They were kind and we all laughed together. I was chagrinned beyond words.

Mother once invited some friends to come by and pick the parsley in her garden. They did come, but it immediately started to sprinkle outside. "Hurry," mother announced. "It only takes five minutes to piss in the parsley." Amidst bellowing laughter, mother looked around, confused. "Is that some kind of Italian custom?" laughed Bill.

Sometimes we may be clear about what we mean to say, but it all comes out wrong. Have you ever tried to compliment someone only to have it come out like a sidewsays insult? Or wish to correct someone's poor grammar but the sentence you suggest is even worse? I do this, quite often. It seems that it doesn't take much to end up in a verbal slip knot.

Have you ever blurted out something like these?

Staying Power

There is nothing like the staying power found in old friends or spouses. They understand who you are, where you come from, why you act the way you do, and are familiar with all your foibles. They still love you. They know of your dreams and believe that you could pull them off if conditions were just right. They see you at your worst, even your most shocking. But because they have known you for so long, they don't throw in the towel, don't think you're losing it. There are many years of knowledge about you against which to measure your current idiosyncracies. And they stay on, if not appreciating your behavior, at least understanding it.

Before I left New York earlier in the month, I went to visit two doctors who are married to one another. He is a physician and she is an academic. Bill is 86 years old and Margaret is close to 88. She has advanced Alzheimer's and doesn't speak any longer. Her eye contact is good, and she reached to hug me when Bill opened the door of their apartment in an independent senior facility. She beamed at me while Bill and I carried on a conversation. I couldn't tell what she could take in for the most part. At one point, he complained that she wouldn't eat much dinner. There sat Margaret, covering her eyes, her hands fluttering across her face in the manner of a five-year-old child playing hide-and-seek. "Margaret," I asked loudly, "Are you in trouble because you don't eat?" She nodded, grinning widely. "Oh dear," I lamented. Again, she moved her hands over her eyes. Her wig was askew and hung rakishly toward one ear.
Bill sat back in his easy chair and waved his hand to get my attention. "She doesn't know a light switch from a doorknob" he whispered. Margaret registered no sign of having understood what he said. She smiled warmly at him. It was clear that she trusted and loved him, even if she couldn't understand what was going on around her.
We all sat in the livingroom as I chatted with Bill. As we wrapped up our conversation, I said how much I had looked forward to visiting with them because they were such important role models to me when I was much younger. I directed that comment toward Margaret. "Especially you," I told her. She cocked her head to one side and made a clucking noise as if to say, "Oh, that's too kind of you." When I left she gave me a bear hug--much more demonstrative than her stiff, reserved, lucid personage would ever have done. Bill shook my hand.

I have thought of these dear people several times over the last two weeks. Margaret was the organist at our church and Bill made sure the bills were paid so we had lights and heat. Margaret's playing was atrocious. Bill's comments from the pulpit were formal and opinionated. But I looked up to them. Margaret was the only woman I knew who had a PhD. I wanted to be like her. This couple never had children, so it was just them. But she always had a shy smile and they were a sure thing--always there, pitching in with whatever responsibilities needed to be taken on.
Now they're facing the sunset years of their lives together. Bill wouldn't think of anyone else taking care of Margaret. He dresses her, fights her wig onto her head and makes her take a bath. She follows him around like a lamb, smiling, agreeable. He knew her for many, many years as an intelligent, strong-willed, creative educator. He would never leave anything about her to another person. He really can't leave the apartment much to get away for shopping or to go out to church or even for a drive. A friend comes in to sit with her while he goes for groceries. He wonders if he will die first because of his heart condition. But she is so frail that he wonders how long she will last. She is all he has and he is all she has--no children, no close relatives. They live for one another, even now.

Staying power. It's what old friends and lovers have for one another and what holds them together.

God's peace to you both, Margaret and Bill. You will never know how you have touched my life.

Unfixability

No one rushes toward unfixable situations. We don't like movies that end without resolution. Bridges of Madison County just about sent me over the edge because I was left hanging--as were the daughters in the movie.
I've noticed that various clinical populations are not first choice of a target group for many clinicians. People with progressive neuromuscular problems like Lou Gehrig's disease or children with cystic fibrosis--these are not top picks for new medical residents to select as an area of specialty. When it comes to therapy, few therapists are rushing to work with people with Alzheimer's Dementia. It is an agonizing, progressive illness that leaves family members in emotional limbo. It can't be fixed, only endured. It is a type of ambiguous loss--chronic, frozen, traumatic, unrecognized loss that cannot be resolved.

There are many life situations in which people may be held against their will. They may be too horrified to mobilize their energies to make a plan that will help them cope. They may be so off-balance and exhausted from trying to predict what will happen next that they have given up trying to influence their situation one way or the other. Or they become depressed from feeling helpless with the unfixability they face continually.

Parents whose children are kidnapped, adults married to alcoholics, people caught in family feuds, those with chronic illnesses--all of these people suffer ambiguous losses. These are complex losses. There are confusing, unresolvable and unrelenting aspects of their situations that prevents them from being able to move on.

I am acutely aware of an ambiguous loss that I have in vain tried to cope with for nearly 20 years. Family members have cut one another off and I stand at the edge of a dark pool of hostility, regret, pain, and misunderstanding. There is nothing I can do about it. I did nothing to make it happen, but I have been deeply affected by it. It is something that I cannot fix. There are no sides to take and yet I am pulled in all directions over the relationships I choose to maintain. An emotional Switzerland of sorts. There is nothing pleasant or easy about any of it.

Oh, there are reasons for it, all right, according to both sides--of which I hear no end of commentary. Everyone wants to be right. Everyone nurses their pain--significant pain, that is nearly palpable. Everyone justifies their attitude, behavior, feelings. Everyone pulls in friends, neighbors, counselors to see their side of things. It goes on and on without any way to escape unless I cut everyone off and go my own way. But then I will have lost even the illusion that I have a family left.

In ambiguous losses such as happened to the wife of Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway, it is hard to keep the emotional door open. Pain begs for closure and relief. The wife decided that Tom was dead and she remarried. It was too hard to hang in limbo and deal with the unknowingness of it all. Her worst fears were realized when Tom showed up, quite alive.

When children are kidnapped, their parents can make a shrine of their empty bedroom. And after a time, they can also make that same room into a study or hobby room--just as though that child never existed. Some parents will forbid their other children to ever mention the kidnapped child's name again. It is too painful. Shut the door on possibility and act as though it is over. Even though it isn't. That's how many people cope with these "leave-me-in-limbo" losses.

There are real temptations to aim at clarity and crisp boundaries in ambiguous losses, even at the expense of failure to deal with the situation. It is so uncomfortable to live with uncertainty, unpredictability, helplessness, and the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies the confusion of ambiguous losses. It is like living at the edge of an open grave and putting your whole energy into keeping from falling into it yourself.

Tonight, one of my relatives is in labor for her first child. The family schism prevents me from joyfully celebrating this with the very family member who would be most excited. Instead, I temper my words, censor my comments and wish inside that I could be free of all this intrigue and unfairness. If I slip up and mention a name or event that I shouldn't, or allude to anything on the "secrets" list, I'll either be denigrated and mistrusted, or grilled and mistrusted. Yet if I hold everything inside, I become the most flat, boring person in the world--the careful, stoic guard of everything privileged from both sides.

In the last year there has been more discomfort related to my family than in the rest of my years put together--watching the grief, pain, regret, anger, and finally death that has occurred. And my heart has taken a beating in all of this. The range of acceptable responses to everyone is becoming more and more narrow by the week. It continues on, trapping me in the tangle of unresolved brokenness.

Some things are unfixable. For now, I long for the Day when everyone will be able to know as they are known, and to see life and truth as it really is.

Eight Random Facts

I've been tagged by Joyful Woman, author of the best blog I've ever read. I'm to write eight random facts about myself, then tag eight others to write their own list of facts. So here are eight things about me that I sometimes find amazing:

1. I have climbed all the major peaks in Southern California: San Jacinto, Mount Baldy, San Gorgonio, San Bernardino, Whitney, Half Dome, etc. Since putting on middle-age poundage I haven't been able to climb, but I very much want to start hiking these again.

2. One of my early ambitions was to own and operate an orphanage in Mexico. It seemed that being a nurse and therapist, I should be well equipped to do this. Although my ideas have changed--both about this as an interest and my ability to run an orphanage--I remain captivated and warmly attracted to children of Hispanic descent. I would adopt several if I had the opportunity and means.

3. I have the perception of myself as being inarticulate, stammering, and incapable--of being a complete blank when asked questions. This makes me second guess myself quite frequently.

4. I have lived in eight states and traveled to twelve countries outside of the United States. I would go back to five of them to live in a heartbeat: Ireland, Switzerland, France, Holland, and Belgium.

5. Baking bread is therapeutic for me. A happy break from work and life's exigencies would be a week of baking.

6. A guiding principle of my life is that I am responsible for doing the right thing--regardless of whether it feels good, pays off, or improves my situation. This is not an easy belief system, but as the moral of a bedtime story reads, "I can sleep on stormy nights" because my conscience is clear. Most of the time.

7. Nothing could induced me to ever go down into the ground inside of a cave. I feel claustrophobic even thinking about it!

8. I collect blue and white pitchers and teapots.

Now, there are eight isolated, random facts about me. I don't have people to tag at this point, so the readers are welcome to list their own eight random facts, since I'd love to hear about you.

Not just for the birds

Found here

I just returned from Upstate New York, having gone back to pack up my mother, sell the house, and drive her across country to live with me in the West. It was all done in 11 days. I am tired but relieved that we are done with it all.

Something I noticed while I was home was the huge number of tree and barn swallows. They were everywhere. Up the road from our friend's home, on the telephone wires winding past the barn, hundreds of swallows sat shoulder to shoulder facing the sun. From time to time, one or another would swoop off the wire and down after gnats or bugs high in the air. Walking past them, I could hear their excited high pitched chirping to each other. Barnyard gossips. Adolescent daredevils and

show-offs. But close together and seemingly unhappy unless they could be in close proximity to another bird relative.

I looked for them every time I drove up that road. I was not disappointed.

I had forgotten all about barn swallows and how much I love them, living in a climate that is hostile to so many living creatures--hot, hot, hot, and very urban. Life here has become the norm and my memories of home and the sweet charm of these feathered busy bodies had faded. Until I drove down Delaney Road. There they were, lined up on the wire. Some were swooping past the car window, their wings making little whirring sounds. I remembered Pete and Sally, our little visitors who made a nest on our back porch one year. The barn across our road had come down and they needed a new place to raise a family. We were delighted to come home one day to hear their high-pitched chatter and see them up in the eaves outside our kitchen

window. There, three little swallows hatched, and three little blue bald heads poked up over the edge of the nest. We watched with delight, for several weeks, while their feathers grew and they took their first fluttery flights across the porch. We had to keep Tiger the cat inside for those days. Finally, they all flew away for the winter season and all was quiet in the snowy weather.

I thought a lot about these little birds over the last two weeks. It was a very sad trip to make. Mother simply can't live in that old house alone any longer. It is not possible for her to chop the wood and carry it in for the woodstove in the kitchen. Her legs are too short and nerves too frazzled to drive the lawnmower. The snow is too deep for her to drive in, leaving her isolated most of the winter. She can't endure being alone without my father, her late companion of 56 years. So we had to sell the family home.

The schedule was frantic--I hit the ground running when I arrived in New York--packing up a number of boxes that day, even after being on a red-eye flight all night. The entire four-bedroom house had to be packed up, in addition to the garage and storage building, plus a basement full of canned fruit and vegetables. The whole time however, there were friends and family filling boxes, dissembling model train tracks, packing the truck, keeping Mother occupied. We stayed with our friends the last two nights and enjoyed their superb cooking, games of Triaminoes, and many laughs. My cousins dissembled model train tracks and cleared an intolerable hobby room. Charlie and Glendon emptied the house and garage of all items that could possibly be sold at a yard sale they are holding for us. Lois prayed the whole time for us from across country. All that was done could never have been accomplished without them. We worked as a team, chattering and laughing as we went.

I felt truly held up and supported from all directions. It reminded me of those hundreds of barn swallows, snuggled together on the telephone wires. Life is truly best when we lean into others who understand us, and face the brightness. It's a lesson I hope never to forget.