"Absence Makes the Heart"

I've been absent from this blog for three months, but amazingly, I still get notes and comments from people who read it and find help here. And that helps me - I thought I would just continue to let it go on and post whenever something struck me.

Today, I visited my dad's grave with some flowers that are going to be placed in the small vase that I had installed on his crypt. (Don’t get me started on the cost of these things… $375 for a skinny, 7-inch vase!) I bought the vase because it was too sad to go there and see his bare stone - he deserves flowers. Ideally, he'd have a regular grave where I could plant stuff, really get in there and dig and get dirty with marigolds or petunias or something, but we're limited to artificial blooms. I called up my floral design training and made him a sweet little bouquet of white, yellow, and blue summer flowers.

And I thanked my dad again for saving my childhood writing notebooks, the ones I threw away when I went off to college. Tonight is the premiere of my play Their Town at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company.

I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately - his birthday was June 11, and last weekend, my paternal cousins invited me, my partner, my mom, and my sister's family to a big family picnic. Katie and I took my mom (M. couldn't go), and it was kind of a bittersweet thing, since the last time we'd been together was at my dad's funeral. My mom was very sad - not manipulative-sad, but just sad-sad, as in missing someone who should be there, but isn't.

"The Way We Were"

This morning I read an obituary for actress Betty Hutton, 86, in which her executor stated that he held off announcing her death until after she was buried because "she didn't want to be seen. She always felt that people were expecting a young, 20-year-old bouncing blonde and she didn't want to disappoint them [my emphasis]."

This reminds me of something that my mother has often said over the course of her life, about relatives and friends who were sick and dying - that she didn't want to visit them because "I want to remember them the way they were - not like this." (The "this" was said with pity and something pretty close to revulsion.) When I was a teenager and a favorite uncle was in the hospital, riddled with cancer and very close to death, Mom thought I shouldn't go to visit him because "he'd want you to remember him the way he was." To my credit, I insisted on visiting and didn't buy the lame "way he was" rationale. This same thing happened again a few years later, when a favorite aunt of mine was at the end of life.

Mom's "way they were" contention has always struck me as pathetic and self-centered - it's really not about the person who's dying at all, but about how the visitor will feel seeing them. I would not have wanted to miss my dad's final weeks, in which, even though thin and frail, he was still Dad, just in a different stage of his life. How sad to believe that there's no good reason to continue participating in people's lives when they're at an end. Yet that's what our culture teaches us - and what is at the heart of the abysmal state of end-of-life care in this country.

"Shame on Forbes"

Here's an important post by my blogging buddy Mona, exposing a revolting Forbes.com series of "articles" on starting up and running a senior living facility: read her astute assessment here.

If this ticks you off (and it should), write to Forbes.com and let them know, and also ask them to try running a real piece of journalism on the growing costs and problems of long-term care in this country, instead of this insensitive and poorly researched drivel. Just scroll down to the "comments" section of the article to leave your thoughts.

"Visit 1.0"

I visited my mom yesterday for the first time since she went into the assisted living residence last Monday. Right after lunch, I found her in her cute room, getting spruced up for whatever activity was next. (She wasn't sure, but the schedule told us it was Charades in the Sunroom.) I brought her a primrose plant and some chocolate as a peace offering, as I expected her to lash into me for "abandoning" her. But she was amazingly calm and welcoming, and we talked a little, then went to Charades together.

Try to imagine a dozen dementia-lite octogenarians, some in walkers or with canes, doing their best to play a pantomime game. On top of the obvious challenges, the activity person had inexplicably chosen to play "Holiday Charades," forcing the residents to find ways to act out difficult songs like "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman." Needless to say, it was not a very successful game, and Mom wanted to leave early.

On our way back to her room, we ran into a resident I met about two weeks ago, a very artistic and hobby-oriented woman who has a Victorian dollhouse in her room that she built herself. My mom was impressed and intrigued, but shy about staying to visit on her own, so we sat for a while together and chatted with her new friend. She needs to get the hang of the "visiting" thing, which is very foreign to her.

Overall, I give this initial visit about a B+. There was absolutely no guilt-tripping, not even the slightest hint that I had "done" something to her that I must now undo or face her fury. Oh, she got a little teary-eyed and clingy when it was time for me to go. But she sometimes did that when I visited her in her home, too. It's not really a sign of missing me, the Paula of today - my mother has never known or understood me as an adult. Rather, it always struck me as her sadness that I had grown up, that she had lost her baby. Indeed, one of my mom's favorite sayings has always been, "I wish I could have given you a shot when you were 2, so you never grew up!" An interesting comment that tells you a lot about her - the so-called "terrible 2's" are when children really start to develop a self, and my mom was never too interested in her daughters as people separate from her.

"She's There…, Part 2"

My mother had a good day yesterday, according to a report from my oldest sister C. She attended a musical performance by a local high school group, then had dinner at her assigned table, and finally - the part that really stunned me - "visited with her neighbor."

In the 50-plus years of our relationship, I have never known my mother to "visit with her neighbor." When I was growing up, our next-door neighbor, Mrs. G., occasionally invited Mom over for coffee during the day, but she always declined. Or Mrs. G. would spot Mom watering plants in the back yard and try to engage her in small talk. Later, Mom would click her tongue and complain to us, "Doesn't she have work to do?" Likewise, women she knew from volunteering at my school's cafeteria tried to coax her out for lunch or other activities, but Mom took the term "housewife" quite literally.

Now Mom never worked outside the home, so maybe she didn't understand that working people do indeed take breaks. In fact, the work environment is often quite social; it's something I actually miss in working out of a home office. I still have contact with co-workers from a job I held 20 years ago.

At my dad's viewing at the funeral home, one of his former colleagues - they worked together in a small tool-and-die shop, with about five or six other guys - came up to me and introduced himself. "Your dad was a lot of fun to work with!" he said, and I thanked him for telling me that. I mostly thought of my dad as no-nonsense, but that statement gave me a glimpse into him as a congenial co-worker.

I know that the quality of Mom's days will vary, but for now, at least, she has made an effort to be social. "She sounded great!!!!" my sister typed, with multiple exclamation points. Here's to many more days like that.

"She's There..."

My mom had her first day and night at assisted living yesterday.

Given her mental condition and behavior - she acts like a little girl most of the time - it was very similar to taking a child to the first day of school and having to leave her, even though she cries and throws a tantrum and begs to go home. But you leave her there anyway, because she has to go to school, and you know she'll eventually adjust, make friends, find her place. (I can't take credit for this very apt analogy, since I don't have any children; my sister M., who sent two kids to school, came up with it.)

Needless to say, it was an awful day, starting at 9 a.m., when my sister and I arrived to help my mother take a sponge bath and get dressed. To my surprise, Mom was half-prepared to go - she had packed her toiletry case herself, and had made an attempt to set her hair. She was, it seemed, somewhat resigned to going; but later, she manipulated in every way that she could imagine, including being abusive at times - for example, accusing us both of "not caring anything" about her; asking if I was taking her Social Security checks and her house; and phoning M. last night to announce "I hate you for this!" and hanging up. I got mildly drunk at dinner last night - because I don't drink much or often, it only took one and a half beers.

Mom's abuse, I want to be clear, is not due to dementia; it's the way she always was, really, but now it's ramped up. And it does not make either of us want to go back anytime soon. Indeed, the staff suggested that we give it until the weekend, and make our visits very brief. They were very supportive, and assured us that many people have a difficult transition.

Actually, I suspect that Mom is acting fine with the folks there - yesterday, she was docile with the nurse and social worker, friendly to the other residents. She saved her wrath and whining for us. At one point, I was standing outside the activity room door, watching her observe the post-lunch bowling match. She seemed interested in what was going on, and was even smiling faintly. Then, the minute I entered the room, she became sulky and placed her hands over her face.

I hold in my head and heart that this was the right thing to do, although my sisters are still acting up in their own ways. During the bowling match, M. whispered to me, "Maybe she doesn't belong here," because a couple of the people were physically challenged and my mom isn't. But, I pointed out, many of the people in walkers still have all their faculties; they don't act like they're 5 or 6. Then later that night, M. fretted that we had not done enough to explore how to keep her at home. I got understandably angry, since I feel I have done the most I could possibly do for my parents, whom I didn't even have a good relationship with. My mother is in an excellent facility that will even let her stay when her money runs out - she is literally set for the rest of her life, in a clean, safe environment.

My other sister, C., wrote to me today - the email equivalent of wringing her hands - talking about taking my mother out of the facility. She had called my mother last night and, of course, Mom was crying. I wrote C. a polite but firm note reminding her that there is an adjustment period and that our mother was staying put. And then I related the story to Katie, letting out a bunch of obscenities. It felt good; Katie and I laughed.

I can understand completely why people stop talking to their siblings.

"Things in My Mother's Dresser"


When my sister was emptying out my mother's dresser in preparation for moving it to the assisted living residence, she found some touching things, some curious things.

Some of the touching:

1. Many of the cards we made for her when we were kids

2. A yellowed "Dear Abby" column with the headline "Missing Mom in the Worst Way" (My mother's mother died when she was 10, suddenly, and I believe my mom has never really gotten over it - so this column would have resonated.)

3. Two Kodak cameras - one older than I am that I had never seen before, and one that was aimed at me countless times when I was a child

4. My mother's removable fur collars - I remember her so clearly dressing up for dancing on Saturday nights in form-fitting dresses, high heels, and coats with a narrow strip on leopard skin or mink on the collar. Endangered species aside, it was the fashion in the late '50s and early '60s, and she looked always looked "snazzy," as my dad would have said.

Some of the curious:

5. Oddly shaped fabric remnants, including the cut-out pieces of a dress that was never made

6. Wrapping paper that's been around since my childhood

7. A well-worn paperback copy of Peyton Place, hidden under her sweaters - now there's a story in itself.