Merry Christmas, All!

Today is Christmas Eve and I’ve finally finished getting  ready for my trip to Spokane to see John. I’m so excited! I’ve fretted over monster storms, flight cancellations, illness, missed connections and I think I’m ready to give myself up to trusting that all will go well, and I will arrive safe and sound to enjoy a grand holiday with my husband.

I’ved baked and tasted my Christmas cake; I’ve watched Dickens’ A Christmas Carol twice and am well into the Christmas spirit of the holiday. My mother and I will share a Christmas Eve dinner of shrimp and rice with stir fried veggies. I will make her watch some more sappy Christmas movies, all which have the same theme, but one that never fails to choke me up. I will go to bed whenever and wake up at 3 am to get ready to get the Red Car to the airport at 4 am.

I’ve traveled many times on Christmas day, and always have found it a day of much stillness. It’s as if the world has taken a moment and is in between breaths. I look forward to it. Merry Christmas all.

Heal Thyself, Hygenist!

I seem to do much whining and complaining about my life with Gladys; but, I figure I’m entitled. Gladys’ dental hygenist isn’t. I become very protective of Gladys when strangers have the audacity to criticize her.

When I walked into the room where the hygenist was finishing up on my mother’s teeth, the hygenist said in a who’s-in-charge-of-this-errant-child tone of voice, “She (meaning Gladys) is not spending enough time brushing her teeth. There is too much plaque build-up.”  Obviously, the woman had never spent anytime waiting on my mother’s bed for her to finish brushing so they could leave for an appointment.

Immediately, I sprang to my mother’s defense saying, ” My mother spends a good deal of time brushing her teeth. She uses an electric toothbrush and is very conscious of keeping her teeth clean.”  She replied, “Well, she’s not doing it properly then.” Good, God! What put this woman in such a pissy mood? I replied, “Well, why don’t you tell me exactly the problem so we can get her brushing properly.” Seems Gladys wasn’t getting her gumline and this is where the build-up was. We left the dentist office after paying a $218 bill and getting no respect.

The dental hygenist was not a young kid right out of dental hygenist school. She was a woman in her fifties who does my mother’s teeth every 6 months. First of all, she talked to me as if my mother wasn’t there, but that I can forgive, because Gladys probably didn’t hear anything she said in the hour she was getting her teeth done. Secondly, the hygenist did not consider for one moment the difficulty Gladys might be having brushing her teeth now.

The very act of holding the toothbrush to her teeth in front of the mirror for any length of time is extremely tiring for Gladys. Her hands are arthritic and don’t work well anymore. Her eyesight is poor and perhaps she can’t see her gumline  so she simply aims for any part of her teeth. The dental hygenist needs a course on working with very old patients. My mother is probably the oldest patient she has, and needs understanding not admonishment.

Gladys! Arghhh!

So, I’m trying to get Gladys out of the house, and out of the driveway by 2:30 pm to get her to a dental appointment for 3 pm. She started getting  ready at 1 pm. I’m gnashing my teeth and not doing a very good job of hiding my impatience as I button up her sweater. Gladys is sitting on her bed at 2:30 pm. She mistakes the source of my impatience and thinks it’s because I have to do up her buttons. She says to me, “It’s only going to get worse, Celia.” She thinks that her increasing dependence on me to do things that she can no longer physically do, is causing me to be grumpy. She is so wrong.

My impatience is with her vanity, and her nitpickiness at the age of 95 and a half.  We spent precious minutes while she decided which winter coat was going to look better, which scarf was going to go with said winter coat, which pair of black leather gloves best suited coat and scarf. We wasted more time while she looked for a comb so that, when her head came off the dentist’s chair, she would be able to comb the flat spot that the headrest would create. Who worries about that??  Who doesn’t just run their fingers through their hair? At the very end of my patience, after I had put the blue sweater under her blouse collar, she decided that this time, she wanted the sweater over top of the collar. Arghhh!!!

The Gift of the Monkey’s Paw

In response to my last blog, my son, Ryan, commented that I probably wouldn’t know what I had learned from my experience with Gladys until it was all over. Well, he’s wrong. I have definitely learned something that I knew before only as a saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”  Like many other school children, I read the short story, The Monkey’s Paw, and I understood its meaning. I understood its meaning in an intellectual way, not in a gut way. Now, I understand it in a gut way.

There is nothing to be accomplished by boring you my wish; what’s important is that you take my advice to heart.  Be very careful what you wish for, because you never know under what conditions it will be granted.

Oh, and one more thing I’ve learned most secret wishes are just the coward’s way of not dealing in the present. There’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas.

Joy, Where art Thou?

This stretch with Gladys has to mean something. I don’t want to come to the end of our time together not having learned something more about myself and life.  I don’t want to be putting in time, or treading water, or feeling neutral, but most of all I don’t want to be the only reason my mother stayed alive.

Gladys and I talk a lot about my going away to Spokane to see John. She is going to miss me, she says. I expect that. She thinks it’s going to be hard on her. I don’t. Unlike millions of other elderly people, she will be in her own home with a son who loves her very much. She’ll be fine. She says she will probably sleep the time away because there will be no reason to get up.  That is deeply sad. I’ve never had to have a reason to get up in the morning other than to be thankful that I have another chance at another day.

When my mother talks like that, the terrible thought comes to me that maybe I should have left her in the home so that she could be rid of a life that brings no joy on its own. A life that can’t generate some kind of  joy on it’s own, can’t find pleasure in health, comfort, family, books, sunrises and snowfalls  might as well be over. I do not want to be the only thing keeping my mother alive. If there is no joy for her in being alive and well, then, sooner or later, I won’t even be enough to sustain her.

So, I’ve learned from Gladys that my life away from John has to mean something, as his life away from me has to mean something. We can’t put our lives on hold and wait for someone else to bring meaning or joy to it. We have to take joy where we can, and sometimes that means in the darkest of days.

Someone New

I was doing my Jillian Michael’s workout at the gym, almost finished, dragging myself panting to my feet when a woman approached me and asked me if I would be her workout buddy. I was totally surprised. Who does that at a gym? Not me! Anyway, this perfectly sweet person was impressed with my ab workout and wanted me to help her to get in shape .  So, after telling her that it was a) a hard program b) I wouldn’t put up with her cancelling on me c) she’d better not be some kind of weird person, we arranged to meet the next day to start.

Having Suzanne as a workout buddy is a good thing. I now have every day contact with someone around my age  other than a relative. She’s not chatty, and gives out personal information at the speed of a slow leak.  This is fine with me; most of the time we can hardly breathe let alone tell each other our life story. I do know that she has five children, two left at home. One of her daughters is a massage therapist. Suzanne is going to need one.

I know that the medication she is on, for what, I don’t know, plays havoc with her short term memory. She can’t remember the sequence of  3 or 4 exercises  that we do per circuit, nor can she remember how to do an exercise. It’s a little like working out with Gladys.  I’m not complaining. She is fun to be with, serious about working out and I think, except for her 5 kids, alone in the world.

 Together she and I look like the odd couple. I’m dressed  head to toe in LuLuLemon, wearing $150 exercise shoes, looking very fit, and Suzanne has on cheap plastic runners, what appears to be thrift shop shorts and top, and looking like a little egg with stick legs.  I say all this only to give you a picture of how we must appear  to others as we do our Jillian Michael’s workout side by side. Good for us!

Change of Pace

I think unless something really interesting, bizarre, or disturbing rattles the serenity of our life, I will be writing my blog once a week.

Gladys has made an attempt to be more sociable with me. She keeps her hearing aids turned on in my presence now so that I’m not just talking to the big screen TV. Mind you, she’s only good for a few hours, and that’s fine. She told me that to keep her hearing aids on and to have the volume on the TV to what I need, is too much for her. She feels she’s got Armegeddon going on in her head.

She keeps bringing up what a pity it is John is so far away, how hard it must be on me, and what am I going to do if she lives 5 years. I’m tired of hearing this mainly because there is no answer. I told her I live month by month. John has a fabulous job in Washington State, I deal with missing him by not thinking about it a lot and talking to him on the phone as much as I can. As for Gladys living 5 years, she may and she may not. I told her we’d negotiate her contract in two years.

I expect given my mother’s lack of activity, and the condition of her lungs, that 5 years is a stretch. But I have decided that when she needs nursing care,  is bedridden, doesn’t know me anymore that a nursing home may be the best option. All this conjecturing is pointless as far as I’m concerned. I’m fully aware of how future plans have a life of their own and can morph into something one hasn’t dreamed of as a possibility. So, it’s month by month for me.

You Don’t Say, Gladys

So Gladys and I went to see  her  financial advisor at the bank. The woman and I have had our difficulties in the past, because I’m not set up to handle mom’s money and I get snarly with Brenda, the bank lady, when moving money from one acct to another becomes an ordeal. We went with the intention of doing whatever it took so that I could start signing cheques and transferring  money.

Gladys and I were going to get joint bank accts,and I was going to be put on her two GIC accts. I’m still reeling from what transpired there. Gladys couldn’t understand what Brenda was telling her. Brenda was talking too quickly. Eventually everything had to be written down for Gladys. When it came to signing me on to the GICs Gladys stunned both of us by rejecting the idea because she wanted to be able to change her will and leave her money to some needy person, or some charitable group.

I struggled not to show the emotion I was feeling on my face. I was thunderstruck. Brenda was thunderstruck. What was Gladys talking about? Did she really mean it? Was she confused? I had to believe that she had lost her mind, because the alternative was too painful more me to take. Things only went from bad to worse. Brenda could not make her understand what had to be done with the GICs. We went home not accomplishing what we had set out to do, and me feeling completely betrayed.

Today, I confronted Gladys and told her what had happened yesterday at the bank, and she couldn’t remember saying any of it. She knew she had a hard time understanding Brenda, but that was all she recalled. She couldn’t believe that she would have said such a thing about changing her will. I left it at that and we haven’t spoken about it since. But it is nice to know that Gladys is losing her mind rather than her thinking so little of me. God! This is hard!

Gladys and the New Technology

My brother Michael, and his wife Kay, gave Gladys and me an early Christmas present. A 42 inch flat screen  high definition TV that swivels. I adore it. Gladys is not impressed. First of all, she has no understanding nor appreciation of the technology  involved, secondly there was nothing wrong with the old TV, and lastly she can see no difference between the two.

I, on the other hand, love the high definition. I can see where the makeup has caked on the faces of the news announcers. I can see the blemishes and nose hairs of people being televised who probably wish that their physical faults weren’t being highly defined.

When I pointed out to Gladys that the TV was a gift and Michael didn’t expect us to pay for it, she waved me away with her hand. She wanted to be asked. Maybe there was something else she wanted more. I couldn’t imagine what that would be. A getaway weekend to Las Vegas??

Gladys has taken to her bed more and more. She is getting more and more tired. She’s eating well, but still she wants to sleep most of the time. Maybe she is getting ready for winter, and like the bear is preparing for hibernation. I hope so. Her cough worries me. It’s getting more persistent. I think of that slow growing bacteria in her lungs and wonder if it’s taken on some speed. 

I’m not ready to lose Gladys yet. She better just be like the bear resting for the winter, and emerging again in the Spring.

 

My Love is Far Far Away

It’s been 8 months since I arrived back here to look after Gladys. It was manageable when John was in Michigan, except for having to think of him living in “the bunker”; however, now that he is far, far away, my heart yearns to be with him. There is nothing to be done about it. I’m not returning Gladys to the old age home, and John is not going to give up the wonderful opportunity he has been given in Spokane. By the way, Spokane means “children of the sun”.

Seeing that there is nothing to do but suck it up, I should stop talking about how much I miss him, but he’s furnishing another apartment, and I’m not there. In the past ,we have had so much fun picking up odds and ends to furnish our homes, and now he’s doing it without me. But, it’ll be grand to see what he’s accomplished when I arrive there in December.

All of this being apart, and Remembrance day being only a few days ago, led me to thinking of how awful it must have been for soldiers and wives separated by war. There was no specific date for the end of the war, and it was years of separation for some. At least I don’t have to worry about John being killed in battle, and never returning.

I know this is a temporary situation, but I really, really miss him.