Saturday, June 26, 2004
Working Things Out In One's Mind
Yesterday after having napped a bit Mom roared out of her bedroom with her mind full of thoughts about loved ones passed. "I woke up with an idea," she said, "we need to get ahold of MS's, see what they're up to now."
"You mean MS and DU, [Female Cousin] and [Male Cousin]." It's always a good policy to check in case another memory of the same name is cropping up from the Long Buried file.
"Yes. We haven't seen them in awhile."
"No, we haven't. And, I think we can get ahold of [Male Cousin's family], I believe they retired at their last number. Through him we can probably get yet another of [Female Cousin's] new numbers. MS died, though, Mom, I think it was in 1998. DU died unexpectedly in 1999, I think it was."
"Well, I didn't know!"
I'm always careful about correcting her regarding dead relatives and doing it sensitively and completely. This has always seemed the best way to handle these situations. "Yes," I assure her, "you did, and you attended both their funerals." I continued relating the exact circumstances under which each died, including her younger sister's long medical decline and her brother-in-law's revitalization just prior to his death, including his plans to remarry and the house he and his intended had in escrow to buy together...
..."Sounds like DU," she interjected with a touch of disgust in her voice, much to my surprise...
...when, suddenly, the brother-in-law keeled over in his bedroom one afternoon in December of 1999 of a massive heart attack and never came to.
And then the inevitable question, "Well, I don't understand it. Why don't I remember these things?!?"
When she asks this I always have a quick decision to make about how I'm going to respond. I never lie or "make nice" but sometimes more of the truth is appropriate, sometimes less. Last night her level of alertness dictated my decision to "do" all the truth.
"Well, Mom," I began, acting comedically exasperated on her behalf, "the reason you don't remember some things is because you're old. That's the fundamental part of the truth."
My deliberately comic tone allowed her to recover from the smack of this particular truth with a lively smirk, as though she was saying, "Well, tell me something I don't know."
"Look," I suggested, devising yet another non-threatening way to display this truth for her. "Why don't we start at some point in the past and see how much you do remember?"
Delivered with real interest, "Good idea."
"I'm sure you remember Grandpa, your dad, dying."
"Oh, of course girl!"
Spirits remain high. Good, good, good. "And Grandma, your mom. You remember that she died."
"Yes," delivered as if to say, "C'mon, give me something harder!"
You remember Grandma's decline. How [your sister's family] moved her in, built her an apartment, took care of her for several years until she took to curling into a fetal position and it was better to have her in a nursing home. And how you and I visited her almost every day until she died."
"Yes."
"And you remember [your brother] dying? And [his wife]?"
"Yes. Poor [brother]."
Wow. She remembers a lot. "Okay. You remember us buying this house."
"Yes. I almost didn't buy it."
"I know. And we almost got sued."
She laughed. "Oh, yes! I remember!" Flashbacks of her deciding, two days before escrow closed, to decline to buy this house because it didn't "have enough closet space". Although I knew this would anger the seller and Mom was suffering a particularly acute and bizarre case of buyer's remorse and, as well, I was handling all the negotiations, I could have overruled her pursuit of her balking and the sale would have gone through without threats and bad blood. I'd already decided, though, when I realized I would be handling this buy, not Mom, that I would honor her wishes as much as I could. It seemed reasonable for me to honor a mistaken wish so we could both learn what would happen. We did. Everyone groaned, loudly, the seller loudest of all, amplified by an attorney's demand that Mom proceed, "as expected" with buying the house. Her financial advisor suggested that her only way out of this was that she would have to have herself declared mentally incompetent, which she understood and didn't want. As we sat in our realtor's office facing off his incredible disappoint and near rage at my mother's "idiotic" decision and my insistence on following her wishes to their logical conclusion, I remembered putting my arm around my mother, catching her gaze and saying, "It's you and me, Mom, through good times and bad. We're sticking by each other, even if we get into trouble." Our realtor sighed with exasperation. The sale went through. I knew, at this moment, while we were discussing her memory, she was remembering all this, too. Good. That takes us up to 1997.
"Do you remember MS's decline?"
A little. Operations. MS in the hospital, her advancing confusion being signaled from her thinking she was in a hotel, and a bad one at that. Mom didn't remember MS's visits up here pre-nursing home. She didn't remember that DU was becoming overwhelmed with MS's care and made the decision to put her in a nursing home, "a very good one". Mom did not remember all our many visits to MS, there, nor continuing to visit DU. I related the detail of MS's quick, unexpected, merciful death: Keeling over of heart failure in the hall the nursing home as she strolled with her husband.
I continued with DU's life post-MS, his death, both funerals, and the scattering of their family since then. All this was news to her.
Curiously, she remembered A Beloved Cousin finally succumbing to Juvenile Onset Diabetes at an advanced age, closer to 90 than 80. That happened September of 2002, just as our trials with anemia began.
Then we talked about why her memory fails her, short-term, near short-term and long term. She wanted to know why this doesn't happen to all old people and why it's happening to her.
I didn't have an adequate answer for her. I suggested a few things which I knew she would consider dispassionately and forget later: Her COPD certainly robs her of brain power; being ill a lot doesn't help; being in pain doesn't help; feeling less than strong physically doesn't help. I assured her that her brain power varies from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, and at this stage is closely connected with her physical being.
"Anyway," I assured her, "that's why I'm here. I do your remembering for you. It keeps my memory sharp."
She looked at me from an angle, equally sharp as my claims about my own memory. "And what happens when your memory starts to go, child?!?" She's only half teasing.
"Well, I've already experienced some blips and we're doing okay, don't you think?"
She grinned. "Yes. We're doing just fine."
"You're lucky you have me." I say this to her a lot in order to keep her alert enough to value me. This is important to both of us.
She looked at me directly, indicating that this isn't just an auto-responder notice: "You bet I am. I think I'll keep you."
She does not like becoming aware of being old and its disadvantages and trials. At the same time, she doesn't like being kidded, doesn't like the gentle lie.
She and I both know that she is much, much less vulnerable being with me, right now at least, than she would be in a nursing home. She knows that the memory of strangers would allow her to reach back and touch her foundations when necessary. Strangers would be more likely to correct her, ask her who the President of the United States is and mark something on a chart about memory decline. They would not be able to knowledgeably play along as college roommate or mother or whomever I am to my mother at any particular time. Thus, adjustments in relationships will shimmer with the opportunity to become insinuatingly abusive. Mom would be locked into a less expectant, less supported way of being at the hands of strangers.
One thing I've learned about old age, Ancient One status: The will can be very strong but the shell is frustratingly weak. "It hurts to be old." Sometimes, it hurts mentally, too. I think, allowing that pain to occasionally be borne, allowing the mourning for lost faculties as well as the celebration of regenerating faculties, allowing all this helps the Ancient One maintain more than a semblance of alertness. This kind of mental caretaking can rarely be done by strangers, even intimate strangers, because the observer of the story-told-to-a-stranger by an Ancient One must become active, must often become the provider of and an actor in the story. Even the most compassionate stranger is "...in a strange land," when coping with the creative memory of Ancient Ones. Relatives often are strangers but in a land familiar to the Ancient One. This often helps the Ancient One decrease the pain of faulty memory and bear what can be borne by celebrating the equally mysterious and episodic "...Remembrance of Things Past".
It's 1027. Just about time to scout The Mom out for a wake-up call. Her exercise today will feature a trip to the grocery in search of one, maybe two items. I am expecting Mom to walker the entire trip from parking lot through store to parking lot. This won't happen until after breakfast and doing her hair so it will probably be later this afternoon. I'm letting her sleep in a little, today.
Later.
"You mean MS and DU, [Female Cousin] and [Male Cousin]." It's always a good policy to check in case another memory of the same name is cropping up from the Long Buried file.
"Yes. We haven't seen them in awhile."
"No, we haven't. And, I think we can get ahold of [Male Cousin's family], I believe they retired at their last number. Through him we can probably get yet another of [Female Cousin's] new numbers. MS died, though, Mom, I think it was in 1998. DU died unexpectedly in 1999, I think it was."
"Well, I didn't know!"
I'm always careful about correcting her regarding dead relatives and doing it sensitively and completely. This has always seemed the best way to handle these situations. "Yes," I assure her, "you did, and you attended both their funerals." I continued relating the exact circumstances under which each died, including her younger sister's long medical decline and her brother-in-law's revitalization just prior to his death, including his plans to remarry and the house he and his intended had in escrow to buy together...
..."Sounds like DU," she interjected with a touch of disgust in her voice, much to my surprise...
...when, suddenly, the brother-in-law keeled over in his bedroom one afternoon in December of 1999 of a massive heart attack and never came to.
And then the inevitable question, "Well, I don't understand it. Why don't I remember these things?!?"
When she asks this I always have a quick decision to make about how I'm going to respond. I never lie or "make nice" but sometimes more of the truth is appropriate, sometimes less. Last night her level of alertness dictated my decision to "do" all the truth.
"Well, Mom," I began, acting comedically exasperated on her behalf, "the reason you don't remember some things is because you're old. That's the fundamental part of the truth."
My deliberately comic tone allowed her to recover from the smack of this particular truth with a lively smirk, as though she was saying, "Well, tell me something I don't know."
"Look," I suggested, devising yet another non-threatening way to display this truth for her. "Why don't we start at some point in the past and see how much you do remember?"
Delivered with real interest, "Good idea."
"I'm sure you remember Grandpa, your dad, dying."
"Oh, of course girl!"
Spirits remain high. Good, good, good. "And Grandma, your mom. You remember that she died."
"Yes," delivered as if to say, "C'mon, give me something harder!"
You remember Grandma's decline. How [your sister's family] moved her in, built her an apartment, took care of her for several years until she took to curling into a fetal position and it was better to have her in a nursing home. And how you and I visited her almost every day until she died."
"Yes."
"And you remember [your brother] dying? And [his wife]?"
"Yes. Poor [brother]."
Wow. She remembers a lot. "Okay. You remember us buying this house."
"Yes. I almost didn't buy it."
"I know. And we almost got sued."
She laughed. "Oh, yes! I remember!" Flashbacks of her deciding, two days before escrow closed, to decline to buy this house because it didn't "have enough closet space". Although I knew this would anger the seller and Mom was suffering a particularly acute and bizarre case of buyer's remorse and, as well, I was handling all the negotiations, I could have overruled her pursuit of her balking and the sale would have gone through without threats and bad blood. I'd already decided, though, when I realized I would be handling this buy, not Mom, that I would honor her wishes as much as I could. It seemed reasonable for me to honor a mistaken wish so we could both learn what would happen. We did. Everyone groaned, loudly, the seller loudest of all, amplified by an attorney's demand that Mom proceed, "as expected" with buying the house. Her financial advisor suggested that her only way out of this was that she would have to have herself declared mentally incompetent, which she understood and didn't want. As we sat in our realtor's office facing off his incredible disappoint and near rage at my mother's "idiotic" decision and my insistence on following her wishes to their logical conclusion, I remembered putting my arm around my mother, catching her gaze and saying, "It's you and me, Mom, through good times and bad. We're sticking by each other, even if we get into trouble." Our realtor sighed with exasperation. The sale went through. I knew, at this moment, while we were discussing her memory, she was remembering all this, too. Good. That takes us up to 1997.
"Do you remember MS's decline?"
A little. Operations. MS in the hospital, her advancing confusion being signaled from her thinking she was in a hotel, and a bad one at that. Mom didn't remember MS's visits up here pre-nursing home. She didn't remember that DU was becoming overwhelmed with MS's care and made the decision to put her in a nursing home, "a very good one". Mom did not remember all our many visits to MS, there, nor continuing to visit DU. I related the detail of MS's quick, unexpected, merciful death: Keeling over of heart failure in the hall the nursing home as she strolled with her husband.
I continued with DU's life post-MS, his death, both funerals, and the scattering of their family since then. All this was news to her.
Curiously, she remembered A Beloved Cousin finally succumbing to Juvenile Onset Diabetes at an advanced age, closer to 90 than 80. That happened September of 2002, just as our trials with anemia began.
Then we talked about why her memory fails her, short-term, near short-term and long term. She wanted to know why this doesn't happen to all old people and why it's happening to her.
I didn't have an adequate answer for her. I suggested a few things which I knew she would consider dispassionately and forget later: Her COPD certainly robs her of brain power; being ill a lot doesn't help; being in pain doesn't help; feeling less than strong physically doesn't help. I assured her that her brain power varies from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, and at this stage is closely connected with her physical being.
"Anyway," I assured her, "that's why I'm here. I do your remembering for you. It keeps my memory sharp."
She looked at me from an angle, equally sharp as my claims about my own memory. "And what happens when your memory starts to go, child?!?" She's only half teasing.
"Well, I've already experienced some blips and we're doing okay, don't you think?"
She grinned. "Yes. We're doing just fine."
"You're lucky you have me." I say this to her a lot in order to keep her alert enough to value me. This is important to both of us.
She looked at me directly, indicating that this isn't just an auto-responder notice: "You bet I am. I think I'll keep you."
She does not like becoming aware of being old and its disadvantages and trials. At the same time, she doesn't like being kidded, doesn't like the gentle lie.
She and I both know that she is much, much less vulnerable being with me, right now at least, than she would be in a nursing home. She knows that the memory of strangers would allow her to reach back and touch her foundations when necessary. Strangers would be more likely to correct her, ask her who the President of the United States is and mark something on a chart about memory decline. They would not be able to knowledgeably play along as college roommate or mother or whomever I am to my mother at any particular time. Thus, adjustments in relationships will shimmer with the opportunity to become insinuatingly abusive. Mom would be locked into a less expectant, less supported way of being at the hands of strangers.
One thing I've learned about old age, Ancient One status: The will can be very strong but the shell is frustratingly weak. "It hurts to be old." Sometimes, it hurts mentally, too. I think, allowing that pain to occasionally be borne, allowing the mourning for lost faculties as well as the celebration of regenerating faculties, allowing all this helps the Ancient One maintain more than a semblance of alertness. This kind of mental caretaking can rarely be done by strangers, even intimate strangers, because the observer of the story-told-to-a-stranger by an Ancient One must become active, must often become the provider of and an actor in the story. Even the most compassionate stranger is "...in a strange land," when coping with the creative memory of Ancient Ones. Relatives often are strangers but in a land familiar to the Ancient One. This often helps the Ancient One decrease the pain of faulty memory and bear what can be borne by celebrating the equally mysterious and episodic "...Remembrance of Things Past".
It's 1027. Just about time to scout The Mom out for a wake-up call. Her exercise today will feature a trip to the grocery in search of one, maybe two items. I am expecting Mom to walker the entire trip from parking lot through store to parking lot. This won't happen until after breakfast and doing her hair so it will probably be later this afternoon. I'm letting her sleep in a little, today.
Later.
