Packing Her Life Away

October 27, 2010

Cord spent the night last night so I could go over to the Baptist Village today and pack Mother’s things.  I hated to leave her so soon after we had gotten home, but I had no choice.  Jerry was working at Putnam City High School.  I had been saving boxes for quite a while, expecting this day to come.

We have moved Mother four times since Daddy died.  She stayed at the two-story rock house in Muskogee, with its 4 and a half acres and barn, its garden, its orchard, its grape vinyard, for three years after he died.  My older brother Wayne stayed there with her to tend the property until she finally decided to move.

They had lived in that house, the home of my childhood, exactly forty years.  You can imagine how much Stuff they (we) had all collected over those years.  Looking at her collection of dishes and utensils, vases and doilies, I decided we should probably visit a few antique stores before she sold things for 25 cents in a garage sale.  She rethought her garage sale but still got rid of lots of stuff.  My brothers took care of the barn.  They picked her out a new riding lawn mower for her smaller lawn.

She moved into a cute, one-owner 3 bedroom home on Jeannie Lane.  The minute she hung up her painting and her family portraits, moved in her velvet printed couch, it felt like home. 

The first night there, Jerry and I stayed with her to assuage any fears.  Now, you can take or leave the next little story I’m going to tell you:  Just as I was falling asleep, I felt a presence beside my bed.  I somehow knew was my daddy—his closeness, maybe even his smell.  I felt him say, “She’ll be all right. I’m here.”  I got up on both elbows to see, but he was gone.  So I felt pretty safe leaving her there the next day.  


She thrived there for several years, surrounding the house with flowerbeds, staying active at New Hope Baptist Church, doing her own shopping and cooking.  We still had Christmas dinner at the dining table in her kitchen every year until she moved to Oklahoma City.

She decided to move to Independent Living at Baptist Village when she turned 90.  She wanted to be closer to me.  She knew she could progress through the stages at the Village, never having to be a "burden" on me.  She was independent while there, still driving to our house, the grocery, her doctor until finally she admitted she couldn't see and gave up her car.  At about the same time, she told us she'd burned up every pan she owned and that must be a sign it was time to move to assisted living.

Considering this to be her next-to-the-last move, she had downsized to only her favorite clothes and shoes.  She kept only the keepsakes she couldn’t bear to part with and knew someone else would surely want someday, her boxes of letters from Daddy during the Korean war, newspaper clippings, photographs, a few plaques, Daddy’s war medals and flag, quite a few vases and knickknacks, her myriad photo albums, and boxes of jewelry and family keepsakes of her mother’s and grandmother’s.  I wondered how many things she would have had if their first house hadn’t been blown away in the tornado.

Now in her tiny apartment, I sifted through the boxes one last time, sorting, labling, deciding what to give away.  She had the bare minimal of kitchen gear and dishes. I filled one huge suitcase with clothes I was sure she'd never wear again to give away to charity.  I would give some to people she knew.  I packed half her shoes to donate.  Cord took her couch and tables.  I took the little round dining table we’d bought at K-mart, promising myself to use it to eat on instead of just to fold clothes on.  We took the TV we’d bought Mother for her birthday two years ago.   I saved some things for my cousins. 

I was a little sad as I packed her life away, but I was glad I was doing it while she was still here instead of afterward.  I felt a poignancy in going through her jewelry, remembering which dress she’d worn this purple necklace with in the 1960’s, remembering she’d worn this red pin on a certain jacket lapel.  I was sad that I couldn't ask her, "Now, did this belong to Grandma Thomas before you?"  So many questions, too late to ask...

In the end, there is really so little left of us--what lives on in our children, for the most, four generations...

When I got home that night, I could tell Cord had had a tough day, trying to  reorient her to our house after I'd left again.  That evening I was exhausted and stressed, and I'm sure I passed my mood on to her.  She was so full of questions I got tired of answering over and over and over.  I gave her a Xanax and put her to bed.

At six in the morning, Jerry found her sprawled in the floor, her bottom in her bedroom, her legs in the hallway, sitting there in the shape of an L like a 1950's doll.  He called for me.  

I had been up at 4:00, found her on her potty, put her back in bed.  So she couldn't have been there too long.  But her legs were blue and cold.

She refused to let him pick her up but instead scooted over to her bed, placed her hands on the footboard, and started to pull herself up.  I heard Jerry say under his breath, "So tough!"  She couldn't straighten her calves, so Jerry just lifted her up from behind, and she was standing.  No bruises that we could find.

"I don't know where I am," she said.  "Who are you?  Who ARE you?"

Later, when she woke up again, I helped her into the bathroom to get her dentures and hearing aids.  She was moving slower than yesterday, that’s for sure.  In the bathroom, she glimpsed herself in the mirror.  “I can’t look in the mirror.  I don’t know who she is.”

It was Groundhog's Day all over again.  All the progress she'd made--gone.  Another stroke?  We could only guess.