The Power of the Soul

January 31, 2011

For two days, Mom just pretty much lay in bed.  In two days, she might have drunk one Ensure.  This morning, though, when I woke up, she was sitting on her potty. 

“Are you thirsty?”

“I don’t know.”

I handed her a glass of water, and she took three big sips.

Jerry helped me get her up, and we wheeled her into the living room.  On the way, we stopped and opened the front door so she could see the blizzard that had hit overnight.  “Snow!” she proclaimed.

We put her in her recliner, where she could watch the snow fall outside the windows.  She had two cups of coffee, then some graham crackers and milk.  She smiled to see Wayne still here when he woke up.  She took her medicine with a few sips of Ensure.  We left her in her recliner until she woke up from her nap, ready for the potty chair again. 

As Jerry says, every day she smiles or makes us laugh. 

February 5, 2011

This week was the toughest week of all.  We knew Mom was about to give up the ghost because she had almost completely quit eating.  Thursday morning she woke up hungry and ate a big bowl of cream of wheat.  We didn’t know it would be her last real meal.

Friday night Chris and Minou came from Colorado with our grandson, Carson.  They were actually bringing him to meet Chris’s grandmother, maybe the only time she will ever see him.  But Jerry was excited for them to come.  He couldn’t wait to put Carson in Mother’s lap and for her to smile when she saw the baby.  He took Carson in to show her, but she barely recognized it was a baby.

Saturday morning she was very weak.  She told me she was sick.  I went to get a trash can for her throw up in, but when I walked back into the room she was vomiting the chocolate Ensure she had drunk before bed last night, all of it spilling down the front of her Betty Boop nightgown.  She got up only one more time that day, just to use the potty.  Her body was dead weight.  She couldn’t stand up or help us at all as Jerry and I moved her from her bed. As she was sitting on her potty chair, I held the baby on her knees for a half a minute.

She felt his little fat arms and said, “Whose baby?”  But she was too weak to really hold him, too blind to see him, too far gone to have any recollection of Chris, Jerry’s son, at all, even though she’d known him for 25 years.

February 6, 2011

She’s gone. 

This morning at 5:30, I woke up, hearing Mother moaning. I walked down the hall, curious. She has never moaned. She was awake but not really conscious.  She kept saying, “Oh, oh, oh!”

I asked her if she hurt but she didn’t answer.  I rubbed the nausea medicine on her wrists in case she felt sick. 

She kept talking in her sleep, but her breath was so low I could barely hear.  She asked me if the doctor was coming.  I told her , “I’ll call Sue in the morning.” 

She said lots of partial sentences, but they sounded like they were snatches of a dream.  I asked her if she was thirsty.  I held up her head as she sipped a couple of spoonfuls of water. 

“Are we going somewhere?” she wanted to know. 

I put my mouth right next to her ear and said softly, “You are.  You’re going to heaven to be with Jesus.  Daddy is waiting for you.”

I held her hand for a long time.  Once, she squeezed it really tight, so I knew she knew I was there.  I laid my head on her bed, her hand in mine for over an hour, tears streaming down my face.  I knew the end was coming soon by the way she was breathing, but I was overwhelmed with sleepiness.  I couldn’t remember when I had been so exhausted!

Sue had told me to give Mom a Xanax when she was anxious, so I put one under her tongue.  I gave her a couple of sips of water.  I offered her a butterscotch candy—Daddy had sucked on them during his last three days—but her mouth was so dry that after a minute she opened it for me to take the candy out. 

I decided I would get a little rest to have strength for the rest of the day.  I was certain this would be her last one.  Usually, once I’m up, it’s very hard for me to go to sleep again, but even with Mother dying down the hall, I fell into a deep sleep immediately.

It was 7:00 when I went to bed and 9:00 when I woke up again.  I never sleep that late! The house was quiet. I hurried out of bed and went to her room to see how she was doing. 

She was lying in bed, quiet, but her eyes were opened.  Like a thousand other times, I bent down close to see if she was breathing.  She wasn’t.  Her hand I had held so long was already getting cold.  I touched her forehead and her cheeks.  Cold, too.  I walked to the bedroom and woke up Jerry.  “Jerry, she’s dead,” was all I said.

He lifted his head from the pillow.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I was sitting on her potty seat when he came into her room, picked up her wrist, felt for a pulse, put his cheek next to her nose and mouth. 

It was then I started crying.  “Mama!  Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama.”  All the emotion just exploded out of me.  I laid my head on her chest, put my arm across her, and cried and cried and cried.  Jerry left the room, leaving me alone to grieve.

I was so mad at myself for going to bed!  How could I have been so clueless?  I had so wanted to be holding her hand when she died!  I had wanted to be there to comfort her, but she had had to cross over on her on.  Why hadn’t I just stayed with her a little bit longer? 

It was about 9:30 when I finally called Sue.  She had to leave church to come to our rescue.  I stayed in the room with her to help her clean Mother. 

I remembered that Mother’s mother, my Grandma Mattie, had been a midwife and had “laid out the dead” when Mother was a child.  As I tried to close Mother’s eyelids, I told Sue how Grandma had always told me when I was a child, “Don’t put that nickel in your mouth.  It might have been on a dead man’s eyes.”  I thought about putting a couple of nickels on Mom’s, I held them for just a few moments until they finally stayed closed.  I wish I had pushed up the corners of her mouth into a little smile, but I never thought of that until much later.

Jerry came in to help us roll her over while Sue washed the backside of her body.  Under the covers, her body was still warm, very warm. 

Standing by her bed, I turned to Jerry and hugged him close.  “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for my mama,” I said, and it was then that he cried.  We held each other, crying, a long time.

Soon, Chloe came in, curious but calm.  She took the death very well.  She even sat in the room with Sue and me and Mother for a while.  I remembered when she and Caroline had asked me if she would die in our house.  When I had told them yes, Caroline had asked me if there would be a ghost in our house. 

“Well, if there is, we know it will be a sweet ghost, don’t we?”

Later, as Sue and I waited for the hearse to come and pick up her body, I told Sue my regrets about her dying without me there. 

Hospice people, I know, are trained to say the right thing, but I’ll be forever grateful to her for saying, “Maybe you had to let go of her hand before she could leave, Janis.”  I thought about that.  As Mom had told me last week, I had wanted her to be able to die, but maybe Sue was right.  Maybe I had been hanging on just a little too tight, for myself, not for her.

The hearse came, and I watched the attendant and Sue take her out on the gurney through the snow and ice on the sidewalk. 

“She’s dancing in heaven with Daddy now,” was all I could think. 

When I called Cord to tell him Mother had died, he said, “I had a feeling it might happen today.  Right before you called, I had a dream.  I was trying to cross a swinging bridge over a cavern, and Grandma was on the other side.” 

When I called Slade, he said his wife had just dreamed that she was in a crowded room, panicking, and saw Grandma in the back of the crowd, calmly waving a hand at her.

I called Greg to tell him.  Later he told me that he had gone back to sleep, that she had come to him in a dream, hugged him, kissed him, told him she loved him and had slowly vanished away.

Days later, at her funeral, the chaplain from the Baptist Village, Chris Finley, said what I had actually thought many times:  “Maybe the stroke was God’s way of answering her prayer.” 

He said that when she found out she had cancer over two years ago, she had had three prayers:  first, to cope; second, to be healed; and third, when it was time, for God to take her home.

The chaplain said, “Now you may think this is strange, but I think Dorothy’s stroke was an answer to her prayer.” 

I had thought that same thing so many times.  She had not wanted to be a burden to anyone.  That had always been her greatest concern, and she had worked so hard to plan her life and her death so that wouldn’t happen.  If she hadn’t had a stroke, she would never have allowed us to bring her home with us. 

Even though it is probably the hardest thing we have ever done, Jerry and I are honored to be the ones to help her finish out her days on earth,  Mother taught us that the real work of loving is a privilege, and that realization makes you love more deeply. 

I had been waiting a year for my orchid to bloom again in the kitchen window.  The day after she died, the first bloom finally opened—fragile, beautiful, delicate.  To me, that orchid is a symbol of Mother’s love and of the power of her soul.  I know I will miss her every day of my life.  But I will see her smile in every flower and feel her breath in every breeze.  Her love will be a part of me forever.  

Ready To Start Dying

January 29, 2011

This has been a tough week for all of us.  Not everything was bad.  When Charlene changed the sheets Monday morning, Mother’s hearing aid came flying out of somewhere, so Mom can hear with both ears again.

Jerry went to Walgreen's and bought some special glue to fix Mother’s dentures.  I cooked a pot of beans, one of her favorites and a dish not too difficult to chew, a good meal to test the repair job on.  Mom chewed up the beans and enjoyed them, but she made a face and when the beans were gone, pulled her dentures out.  They were cracked again.  The glue didn’t hold.

You know she can’t remember anything, so every single time I give her something to eat, she licks her tongue across her gums and tells me, “I don’t have these.  Where are these?”

 “Well, you took your dentures out while you were taking a nap, and I guess you knocked them off in the floor because Skipper got them and broke them.”

 Every time I tell her the story, I get an interesting response.  “Whaaaat?  The dog?  Well, for pity’s sake.”

Or she just gets mad at me.  She doesn’t remember why she’s mad.  She’s just sure it’s my fault.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?!”

We’ve come up with some interesting things she can eat.  One of her favorites is to dunk her cornbread or her donut or her graham crackers in milk.  I used the food processor to grind up the stew, and she seemed to like it just fine even though it made me sick to look at it.  The beans I mashed with a fork.  She has had no problem eating mandarin oranges and jello with fruit.  Tomato soup.  Chicken noodle soup.  Lots of juice and V-8.  Every single meal she reminds us, though, that her dentures are missing. 

A couple weeks ago, my older brother Wayne flew in from California and is staying with my son Slade.  He has been trying to make it to Oklahoma since Thanksgiving, but his daughter Cheyana got married a few days before Christmas in Reno, so he couldn’t come home until after the wedding.

Wayne has always been her child who wasn’t home, so his visits have always been special.  When she saw him sitting on the couch, she stopped her walker.  “Who is that?”  We eased her onto the leather couch beside him; she looked so tiny she almost looked lost. 

Even though she asked him who he was several times, within fifteen minutes or so, she seemed to know Wayne instinctively.

“Did you bring a woman with you?”

(Wayne has always been notorious for having new girlfriends.  He had five children by four different wives, and we’re not counting in-betweeners.  In fact, Mother actually paid for his vasectomy after the last baby.  Now, he’s 68 years old, but she obviously still has the same concern in the back of her mind.)

“Not this time,” he told her.

They had that conversation a few times, along with these a few times:

“Where have you been?”

“How have you been?”

“Have you been working?”
“Have you been eating OK?”

“I’m glad you came to see me.”

This was the second time he’d come to visit, but I don’t think she remembered that.  He’d gone to spend a week in Muskogee with old friends and had just gotten back again. 

Wayne was her war baby, the child she was left to nurse and rear alone the first two years while Daddy was fighting with the 45^th Division in Italy and France.   She and Wayne must surely have a special bond.

So having Wayne around this week has made her happy, but as some have suggested to me, now that he’s home, she may be ready to start dying.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Mother threw up everything she ate.  She has shrunk to 112 pounds, but her belly sits in her lap bigger than a basketball and just as hard.  Sue, the hospice nurse, worries that the tumor may be pressing on her stomach.  Dr. McCoy sent a temporal nausea medicine to rub on her wrists, and that has helped.  She has been able to keep down her food for the last couple of days.

One day this week when she was upset about something, she tottered out of her chair and started the two steps toward Jerry and me on the couch.  We sat her down between us on the soft cushions.  I held her hand, and she calmed down.  She liked sitting between us so much that we’ve done that several times.  All of us try to touch her and hug her so she’ll know she’s loved.  Cord pets her head and runs his fingers through her hair.

Slade came by to see her a couple of different times during the week. If his wrecker gets a call and he is set free in our area, you can count on him to come by to see how his Grandma is doing.  She always recognizes him.  Of course, his booming voice is unmistakable.  She’s quit asking him if he has a job.  Surely she can smell his wrecker job on his greasy clothes and hands.  That’s who Slade is. She sat by him on the couch, too, to make it easier to see his face as he answered all her questions.

Wednesday night she woke me up in the middle of the night.  She was standing at the foot of my bed, calling for Greg, my little brother.  “I’m blind,” she told me when I jumped up to help her.  She had walked all the way to our room in the dark without her walker.

When I put her back in bed, she looked at me and asked, “Is Oscar sick?  Is someone dying?”  That’s only the second time she’s said Daddy’s name since the stroke.

“You’re the one who’s sick.  Oscar died a long time ago.”

“What?”  She looked surprised.

“How do you know that?”

“I remember things.  You can’t remember.  I have to remind you.  Oscar is waiting for you in heaven.”

She closed her eyes.

Thursday she smiled for Charlene and Sue and Wayne.  Otherwise, she has just looked miserable.

In the last two days, she has also gotten weaker and weaker.  When I’ve asked her if she’s ready to get out of bed, she says, “Why?”  She loves her morning coffee, but this morning, I couldn’t even bribe her out of bed with that.  She has been up only twice today to pee in her potty and then straight back to bed, and both times I’ve had to have Jerry’s help to lift her out and put her back in bed.

“Do you want to eat something?” I asked her for the third time today.  It was almost noon. 

“Why?”

“I thought you might be hungry.  The doctor wants you to drink some Ensure.”  She took a swig, making a face, but she drank it all dutifully, three times taking a slug to chase down her pills.  She didn’t like the chocolate pudding at all.  She started to spit it out but choked it on down. When I gave her a bite of applesauce, you would have thought by the look on her face I was making her eat curdled milk.  So I left her alone.  The Ensure would give her some nourishment, and I had gotten the pills down her.

Now, she sleeps.  She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.  Maybe she has been waiting for Wayne before she could start dying.  Maybe.  Maybe she’ll wake up and be fine tomorrow, pushing Ivory the cat down the hallway on her walker.  Somehow, this time though, I don’t think so.

Guilty!

January 20, 2011

The commotion was going on in my head, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or a dream.

“It’s too early to get up.  Why don’t you go back to bed?” Jerry was saying.  I could hear frustration in his voice and knew it couldn’t be the first time he’d said it to her.

“OK, then, you just wait right here.  I’m going to go in the living room and smoke a cigarette.”

She was hollering something at him from the room, then I heard her in the hallway.  “Oh, I’m going to fall!” she cried.  Just as I jerked the covers back, I heard a thump.  “Oh!  I broke my neck!  I broke my neck!” she whimpered in her little girl voice.

Jerry and I met in the hallway, and Chloe showed up, too.  Mother’s arm was split open in three places, gushing blood.   I gulped at the sight of it, such a chicken about blood.  I was driving Jerry crazy, not following his directions to get her up off the floor.  Finally we were able to wisp her up.  We couldn’t figure out what tore her arm unless it was the door facing—there was nothing else in the hallway that could have hurt her.  I went for bandages.  Jerry did a magnificent job of pulling the flesh together and wrapping everything up.  It would do until I could call Sue.

After we coaxed her back in bed, I just had to go in the living room and have a little cry.  I know Jerry felt guilty, and I did, too, even though there was no reason to.  It was almost 6 a.m. now.

At eight, I called Sue, and she came a couple hours later, even though it wasn’t her day to visit.  I was amazed at what a great job she did of taking care of the wounds.  Mother watched curiously, almost as if it were happening to someone else, as Sue pulled the flaps of skin together and fixed them with a butterfly bandage.  As soon as they were bandaged, she seemed to forget them.  I really think her tolerance for pain is off the charts.

January 21, 2011

Guilty

Jerry had gotten up early with Mom, like 5:45.  Their conversation had woken me.  I reared up on one elbow to see Mother, pushing Ivory the cat down the hallway on her walker, on the way to the bathroom.

Hearing Chloe and Jerry all the time in the background, I finally got up about 7.  As I walked past her room, I saw Mother already out of her bed.  “Are you ready for some coffee?” I asked her.  She was talking about wanting something to eat, so I took her to her recliner and gave her some coffee to start off the day.

On his way back from taking Chloe to school, Jerry bought Mom a donut.  He showed her how to dunk it in her coffee so she could eat it without her dentures, but mostly she just took a big bite of donut then filled her mouth up with the coffee.  “That’s good, really good.”  I’ve noticed she likes sugar in the morning.

Mother finished her donut, and I went to clean the kitchen.  “Where is she?” I heard Mom ask Jerry. 

“She’s in the kitchen.”  Too far away to see.

Jerry left her and went to play his computer game.  I kept on working in the kitchen.  When I walked back in to check on her, a deep frown was pinching her whole face.  “He wants me to stay here,” she said.

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“You just don’t want me here.  I have to have too much help.  You just don’t want me here,” she accused.

I felt a pang in my heart when she said that.  I pulled her up out of her chair and hugged her to me.  “That’s not true.”  My eyes filled up with tears.

“I have to pee,” she answered.  I settled her into her walker and pushed her down the hall.

After she peed, I took her into her bedroom and put her in her bed.  Noticing her potty needed emptying from earlier this morning, I toted it to the bathroom and dumped the stinky mess in the toilet.  A little prayer went through my head at that moment, “I don’t know how long I can keep doing this, keep my patience.  Please, her life is so miserable.  Please, God, just let her go ahead and die.”

The second I walked back into her room and put the potty in its chair, her eyes flew open and she said, “I know you just want me to die!  You just put me on this table and left me here until I diiiiiie.”

Was she reading my mind now?  Stunned, I don’t know if I jerked physically or if it just felt like I did.  I bent over her and hugged her and talked softly in her ear.  “Is it me that wants you to die, or is it you?  You’ve been telling me you’re ready.”

I pulled back from her and she just stared back at me.  Tears filled my eyes.  Jerry had heard the conversation.  I sat on the couch, cried a little, blew my nose a few times.  Charlene called and said she was on her way.  When I checked back on Mom, she was asleep, so I sat down and started typing.  She slept until Charlene came in and woke her up.

Charlene left to go into the bathroom for supplies. 

“I know it’s true.  You’re just waiting for me to die.  You just want to put me in this bed and let me diiiiiiiiiiie,” she said to my back.

Charlene walked in, towels and cleaning supplies in her arms.  “Charlene, when you left the room, she told me that I just want her to die!”  I tattled on her.

“Nnnnnnnnh,” Charlene said, as always, but this time with her eyes wide as she tilted her head and shook it side to side, curious and surprised.

“Will I have a bath?” Mother asked.

“No, we can’t get your arm wet,” I said.

“I’ll do anything you say,” Mother was telling Charlene.  “You just tell me what you want me to do.  She’s a sweeeeeeeet person.  She’s always so sweet.”

I had to go back in and sit down with Jerry again. 

“She didn’t mean it, honey,” he said.

“Yes, she did.”

I don’t know if she’s still mad at me about the broken dentures and the missing hearing aid, if I used the wrong tone of voice with her, or if she’s just sick of me telling her what to do.  I know better than to take it personally.  I do know better.

The Case of the Stolen Dentures

 Monday, January 17, 2011

Mother is really strong again.  Today she pushed her walker instead of letting us push her in it.  She can stand at the sink and brush her teeth for a long time again.  She has taken to removing her potty from her potty chair and pushing it on her walker to the bathroom to empty it.  That’s fine with me.

Yesterday, after sitting in her chair all day trying to figure out where she was, she was so happy to find out we had a bed in the house for her that she finally agreed to take a nap about 4:00. 

Later, I set her bowl of stew on the table to cool a bit and went in to wake her up for dinner.  When she spoke, I realized she’d taken out her dentures.

“Where are your teeth?”

“Over there.”  She pointed to the table cart. 

“No, they aren’t there.”  I went in and checked in the bathroom to see if she had put them in her denture soaking dish.  Not there.

When I came back into the room, Jerry had found one of her hearing aids in her bed. 

“Where’s your other hearing aid?” I asked her.

She put her hand up to her ear.  “I don’t know.”  How many times does she say those three words every day?

My stomach turned as I thought about Skipper.  He chews up everything, especially dirty things.  He drags Chloe’s underwear out of her stack of dirty clothes and chews them up under the dining table.  He loves shredding paper towels, toilet paper cardboard, and candy wrappers.  If nothing else is around, he can always find a pencil or an ink pen.  Now, we buy him bones, but the treats he find must be more delicious.

With dread, I pulled back the chairs and crawled under the dining table.  There was the bottom of Chloe’s bathing suit, now crotchless.  There was one of Mom’s dirty diapers, in shreds.  Yes, there was the top denture.  I held it under the light.  Yes, Skipper had chewed a pink hunk off the top and caused a crack from the front to the back. The edges were jagged and sharp. Disgusted, furious at the dog, I started stuffing the trash in a plastic bag.  There, under the curve of a table leg, I found the bottom denture, unharmed except for dog slobber, but no hearing aid.

I had torn her bed apart twice looking for it, and Jerry was on his second try.  Now he was crawling under her bed, sweeping the broom all over the floor to find the missing hearing aid.  No luck.

I took Mother in to the dining table and showed her her dentures.  “The dog chewed them.  See, there’s a big crack!”

Her mouth formed a perfect “O.”  A pained frown dragged her whole face down.  

I started mashing up the veggies in her stew with a fork.  The meat was really tender and fell right apart.  She ate a few bites without much complaint except to tell me it was hot.  Lots of Ro-tel.  She took a swig of milk but kept on eating. 

After dinner, when I tried to put her to bed, she was still upset.  She couldn't remember why.  She just knew she was mad.

"It's time to go to bed," I told her, trying to pry her up from her potty chair.

"Why?" she wanted to know.  Her eyes really searched mine, as if she thought I was hiding something.

"Well, you usually want to go to bed after dinner.  You don't have to.  You just usually do."

After I pulled up her diaper, she stood leaning against the side of the bed.  She stuck her chin out at me.  I didn't feel like arguing.  I think she wanted to.  "Hey, Jerry," I said, walking into the living room.  "Why don't you go talk to Mother?"

"What's wrong?"

"She just doesn't want to go to bed."

I settled onto the couch and picked up my crossword.  Jerry was back in a few minutes.  "I don't know what I've done, but she's pretty mad at me."

"What did she say?"

"Something about church and me being worthless or messy or lazy I think...  Mostly just nonsense.  It's her tone of voice."

"Did she go to bed?"

"No."

I stuck my head around the door, peeking into her room.  She hadn't moved since I'd left her. 

"Come here," she demanded, and as I walked closer, she continued, "Are you even a Christian?"

"Well, yes.  My name's written in the Lamb's Book of Life."  I stared right back at her.

She looked down at me even though she was looking up at me.

"I think I'll just go to bed," she told me, irritated.

"Yes, well, it's time," I said.

Mother was still mad at us this morning.  “I can’t hear!  I can’t hear!  I don’t know where this is!” she kept saying, covering her right ear with her hand.  When I reminded her she’d lost her hearing aid, she looked surprised then upset. 

Fortunately (sort of), Skipper had pooped in the house last night, right in front of the washing machine as always.  Gingerly, I picked up the little turds with a paper towel and gave them a squash, just to be sure there was no hard plastic inside.  I don’t think he’s eaten the hearing aid (yet), but he has definitely hidden it.

When I took her in to eat her oatmeal this morning, I showed her her broken denture again.  She tsked and shook her head, but she didn’t complain.  She gummed the oatmeal and blueberries just fine, every single bite.

When she arrived, we showed Sue, the nurse, her top denture.  “I think a little super glue and a file ought to take care of them,” she said, cheerful as always.  “Otherwise, you can get a little grinder and start grinding up her chicken…”

We'll see which solution works.  I’m still holding out hope for finding the hearing aid.

Cat with Nine Lives

January 8, 2012

I write this on my little iPhone as we drive home from Colorado after celebrating a late Christmas with Jerry's son Chris and Minou and our 4-month old grandson Carson. Our 18-year-old granddaughter Amber took care of her great grandma Dorothy while we were gone. 

Truly, the week before Christmas, Mother was bedfast and we thought she wouldn't make it to Christmas, then one morning Dorothy was back. 

I said, "Mom, you're like a cat with nine lives, and amazingly she chuckled and said, "Well, there aren't too many left!"

Since Christmas, she's been about the same--well enough for us to push her into the livingroom for coffee, strong enough to feed herself at the table again, strong enough to get out of bed, sit on her potty, and climb back into bed at night by herself.  Physically doing OK, mentally not so well. 

We wonder if she has little strokes that kick her down, then she recuperates a bit.  It's like one step forward and two steps back because even though she gets better, she never makes it back to the level she was before. 

Anyway, Sue, the hospice nurse, after meeting Amber and answering all her questions, urged us to go see Carson. Some people were surprised that we left Amber and Chloe with Mother, but I had all the faith in Amber.  She is mature for her age.  She is strong but gentle, always kind, always giving.  I kept in touch a lot on the phone.  Slade stayed with them one night and Cord stayed two.  

Mother hadn't gone to the bathroom for a few days before we left, and wouldn't you know that as soon as we did, the dam broke.  Amber got to wipe her bottom seven times in two days.  I couldn't help but laugh, even though I knew what she was going through.  Thank goodness for those little blue gloves Charlene keeps for us!

Amber said Grandma did ask, "Where are they?" every day, but she was obviously satisfied with her caretaker.  She called Amber "Honey," the whole time and told her constantly how sweet she was.  I think it was good for Chloe, too, who chipped in with the housework, the meals, and a little bit of Grandma care taking.  I know it was five days Amber will never forget nor regret.  Neither will I.

When I got home, Mother looked me closely in the face then said, "Well, why don't you ever come to see me anymore?"

Christmas

 Christmas

Christmas was pretty low-key around here.  My brother Greg came on Christmas Eve so he could go visit Debbie’s dad in Arkansas on Christmas day, so we really sort of had two Christmases.

It was the first time Greg had seen Mother since October when she was in the nursing home, so he hadn’t seen her since she’d become more or less immobile.  He expected her to be worse, though. She can now maneuver into her walker and visit her chair in the living room again.  

Greg gave her a beautiful card and some chocolate truffles.  The truffles were the perfect choice.  She looked like she was wearing chocolate lipstick after a few of those.

It took a while, but she finally recognized Greg, we think. Miranda, his daughter came, and my boys, and we all had ham for dinner.

The next morning was Christmas.  Everyone slept sort of late, even Chloe.  It’s different when you know Santa Claus isn’t coming anymore.  Our little family and Cord opened our gifts to each other.  Chloe passed them out.  When everyone had a gift but Mother, she picked up her card Greg had given her the day before and held it up for us to see.  “I got this,” she let us know.  Chloe handed her my gift to her, a Betty Boop nightgown.  Those two are about the same age.  She was happy to have a present, but she never opened her other one, a bag with bath soap and lotion.

All day long, she didn’t want to go back to bed.  She asked me, “Where is Wayne?” so she knew it was Christmas and someone was missing.

When Amber made it in, a new generation took over the cooking.  Cord and I worked together on the dressing, and it turned out great, much better than the turkey, which I had taken out of the oven too soon.  Miranda, Amber, and Chloe worked steadily.  

As soon as the turkey baked a little longer, we were ready to eat. For the first time, Slade said the prayer.  Grandma listened intently.  When he said, “And let Grandma go on up to heaven to be with Grandpa,” Mother said, “Amen, amen!”   Everyone had a little giggle. 

She didn’t eat much.  Every time someone put something on her plate, even cranberry sauce, she’d protest, “Just a little bit!  I don’t want any more.”  When she started trying to hand food to everyone else, saying, “Do you want this?” we knew she meant it.

After dinner, she was finally ready for bed.

So, Grandma made it to Christmas, and now we’re starting to think she’ll make it to 2011.

She's Back!

December 17, 2010

Amazingly Mother has been better the last two days, especially mentally.  She seems to have gotten a little of her memory back and has begun asking questions about things.  She doesn't use the right nouns, so it's really hard to interpret her.  She knew who her granddaughter Cheyana was when she called this week, and she recognized Uncle Bill and Aunt Rosemary when they came for a visit.  

After almost of week of just sleeping all the time and my feeding her once or twice a day, she is now sitting up in bed, holding her coffee cup herself.  She fed herself her own Cheerios and stew the last two days.  She just ate breakfast two hours ago and is already asking for lunch and supper.  Today she just asked Charlene if she could go sit in her chair, so I guess we will give that a try!

She's mentioned Christmas a few times, so I know she knows what's going on around here.  Yesterday, a minister from Hospice came and sang six or seven hymns and carols to her.  When he sang the chorus of "I'll Fly Away," she started singing along with him. Of course the words weren't right, but she sang.  Tears just rolled down my cheeks, watching the effect of the singing on her face.  Jim prayed for her before he left, and she was nothing but smiles the rest of the day.  She constantly amazes us, the nurse, and her aide.  

Linda Stinson from New Hope called and said the church choir will call her and sing to her on the speaker phone Saturday night. They've done that every year since she moved here.  For years, they caroled her at her house in Muskogee, each year bringing an ornament for her tree.  Last year we bought her a small tree for her apartment, so most of the decorations on it came from the choir.

December 18, 2010

Tonight Linda called to let me know when the choir was getting ready to sing to her.  Last year when they called, she had been at the Christmas banquet at the Village.  She was so sad she had missed their call but was happy she had the recording on her phone so she could listen to it over and over.

I tried to prepare Mother by telling her the choir was going to sing. When the phone rang, I turned on the speakerphone so she could hear.  She listened to the caroling on the phone, but I don’t think she ever recognized who was singing to her.  I can’t tell you how sad that made me.

December 21, 2010

Yesterday morning, Mother got out of bed herself and was sitting in her walker waiting for us when we woke up!  She was so strong, I asked Charlene to give her her first bath in over a week. We both got her into the tub with very little effort. Charlene washed and I rolled her hair.  She came to the dining table for two meals.  She's a little confused about where she is, but she knows Christmas is coming.