There and Back Again

My brother and I went to our aunt's funeral service Thursday. Google Maps lied about how long it would take to get there so despite leaving ten minutes earlier than planned and consistently exceeding the speed limit  (by only about 5/10 mph) we barely made it with minutes to spare which was still pretty good since our family has, for generations now, a well-deserved reputation for tardiness.

(Beautiful downtown Pahokee)

Part of the problem is that there are no direct routes between our corner of the Gulf coast and their section of the Atlantic shore what with Lake Okeechobee directly in the way. We took the southern route around the lake which was technically shorter and despite construction along a good chunk of the route we were only held up once (in beautiful downtown Pahokee) where the road went down to one lane for half a mile and the flag man waited until the line of vehicles backed up enough on our side to make it worthwhile to switch the directional flow of traffic (we, of course, were the first car in line.) for the record, Pahokee makes Belle Glade (which we also passed through on the southern route) look like a thriving metropolis and Belle Glade was once, way back at the beginning of the epidemic, the AIDS capital of the world although they seem to have gotten it under control since the BG General Hospital is now the BG General Hos  tal a farm implement distributor.

(The road and the dike)

We never did see the lake despite driving right next to it for fifty or so miles since it is completely hemmed in by a 25-35 foot tall dike. We drove along beside that straight, flat-topped sloping green wall on one side and low, flat open miles of sugarcane on the other until the monstrously huge sugar refinery rose up alone in the distance all towering smokestacks and multi-acre-covering building. There are very few roads out there but railroad tracks built up on berms crisscross the area.

(Another section of dike)

Aunt Shirley's service itself was pleasant enough, if Baptist. She'd become increasingly religious as she aged and at least some of her grandchildren (although not her kids so much) seem to be also. One of the grandkids sang a couple of songs in a very nice strong, light baritone. It was interesting to see how few of my generation even pretended to join in the hymns.

From there it was a short convoy to the cemetery where the preacher said a few more words and I had my most traumatic experience of the day when the groundskeepers offered bottled water to the attendees (the tent sheltered only the coffin and immediate family and the rest of us were out in the direct sun). One woman handed a bottle to a small boy with the instructions, "Give this to grandpa." The lad proceeded to hand it to my closest cousin who was born less than six months before me! Grandpa? Grandpa! WTH?!? I'm still debating what I want to be when I grow up!

Then it was off to to one of the cousins' homes for store-bought platters of sandwiches and veggies supplied by the church folk and trying to identify people in old photographs and other reminiscing and then retracing our steps another three hours back home through dying towns and cane fields. We did see a train full of sugar cane, trucks full of oranges, a parade of some thirty brand new snub-nosed farm tractors going the other way (perhaps to the BG General Hos  tal) with a police escort front and back, and more vultures in and beside the road, up in trees and on telephone and light poles than I'd seen before in all my time down here.

Mom, A Life: Part Nine

Mom, A Life: Part Eight

The Final Years

Dad was in a serious car accident just as they were building the new house. That, and the fact their contractor absconded with several thousand dollars necessary for the finishing work, meant the move was delayed, drawn-out and a little traumatic. They stayed with first one son and then the other (both of whom were living in town at the time) and eventually the place was completed.

In late 1997 Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent cryogenic surgery. During follow-up another tumor was discovered and he began chemotherapy. As Mom described it from the x-rays, "It looked like a loaf of French bread wrapped around the back of his stomach." At first he responded well and they could see the tumor shrinking almost daily but suddenly something the doctors called a "wildfire" took over. In less than a month, on March 22, 1998, Dad died.

Mom continued to teach ceramics at the Senior Center and occasionally took on jobs either when she wanted extra money or just because she was bored. (She did a short stint as a dispatcher for a rental car company out at the airport one time.) She gave up driving and my brother, who had sold his house and moved in after his girlfriend died, chauffeured her around. In 2000, my brother managed to pull off a surprise 80th birthday party at the country club that included her children, grandchildren, most of her nephews and nieces, surviving sister and brother-in-law and a host of friends.

The remaining dozen years passed quietly. Mom's back had been giving her problems for decades. What with slipped and disintegrating discs and severe scoliosis she became hunched over at the waist and barely four feet tall. (She was 5' 6" most of her adult life.) As her mobility decreased she stopped going anywhere except ceramics class and doctors' appointments. We had always planned for Mom to live to at least 100, both because she thought that was a nice round number and also in hope she'd passed on longevity genes to the rest of us, but in 2008 I received a letter from her hinting at imminent problems. I moved in with Mom and my brother to help him look after her. The letter turned out to be a touch melodramatic.

Mom talked about moving to an assisted living facility but, although we got brochures and made some visits, her heart wasn't really in it and she stayed home. Her mobility became worse and she was plagued by occasional incontinence and so stopped going to ceramics out of what might best be called anticipatory embarrassment. She most definitely did not want her friends to see her deteriorating.

Mom was diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's in 2010. She never discussed the diagnosis and I often wondered if one of the effects of the disease was that the implications never really sank in with her. She was put on a drug that noticeably slowed its progress, and for the six months immediately after the diagnosis she showed real improvement both physically and mentally. We even made one last visit to the ceramics class at the Senior Center.

Eventually, though she spent her days mostly on the couch reading and watching TV, although she no longer enjoyed watching sports as she found she didn't understand the rules or the point of the games any more and had no patience for anything lasting longer than a half hour or so. She read continuously, both magazines and large print books from the library.


She still dressed herself (with an increasingly eccentric creativity), made her own bed and did her own laundry (or tried to. We took that last chore away from her after she washed some disposables and filled the dryer with cubic feet of fluff). She had a great appetite and ate everything we made for her enjoying the occasional glass of wine with dinner. Although she had more and more trouble finding the right word, she never lost verbal capability and always recognized people. Her biggest problem was insomnia which could keep her bouncing up and down all night long and exhaustedly napping all the following day.

In February 2012, I noticed a decline in Mom's cognitive abilities. Despite the doctor's warnings about the inevitability of Alzheimer's, Mom had been so stable for so long that it came as something of a shock. During an appointment in early March, her GP noted a spike in her blood pressure and asked if she had a living will and DNR order on file. He recommended we post it on the refrigerator. Mom's insomnia was worse and she was a little more agitated than usual over the following weekend and then, sometime over night or, more likely, early Monday morning, her heart just gave out.

Mom died at home, in her room, Monday March 12, 2012, fourteen years after Dad. She was three months shy of 92.


Post Script

This sketch of Mom's life turned out to be a lot longer than I'd originally planned, yet it is still far, far too short to do her any kind of justice. I haven't mentioned her sense of adventure and willingness to try anything at least once. She'd go out in the woods with us kids to explore the "cave" we found. She had us all grilling Japanese food on hibachis and eating with chopsticks back in the '60s. She taught tolerance (no excuses) and encouraged intellectual curiosity. She's why I was listening to Stravinsky and Berlioz at age eleven and owned the complete Yale edition Shakespeare at thirteen (best junior high school graduation present ever!) and why I can cook for myself well enough to entertain in several different styles. ("You're either going to get married or stay single. If single, you're not rich enough to eat out every night so you'll starve if you don't know how to cook. And if you get married I'm not going to have some other woman complain I gave her a helpless son.")

Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.

Sisters: It's Genetic, Except For the Learned Parts

We received a call from one of my cousins yesterday evening. He was letting us know that his mom, Mom's kid sister, our aunt had received the birthday card we'd sent by way of him. We sent the card to his address because his mom, despite being almost three years younger than ours, is in much worse shape mentally and physically. She lives in a residential facility on the other side of the state, is not mobile on her own, and often does not recognize familiar people.

Considering that Alzheimer's is genetic and both sisters have it our main consolation is that it seems to be very late-onset in our family. I am pleased Mom is holding up as well as she is.

As a matter of fact, the reason we remembered to send the card on time was because, when we put up the 2012 calendar in the kitchen, Mom went straight to it, flipped to February and wrote in her sister's name on the appropriate date. It's right there in legible script, in pen.

Considering how bad I've always been at remembering birthdays (with no valid excuse), I find that pretty impressive.

Sisters

Mom's kid sister telephoned yesterday. Actually, the procedure was closer to that used by heads of state, self-important CEOs and movie moguls ("Get me Matt Damon's people!"). My cousin Elaine called me to let me know that her mom wished to speak to my mom if Mom was available. I said she was and we both went to put the old girls on the line. Mine got there first and kept shouting into the phone, "Hello? Is anybody there?" even after my aunt was on the line.

The conversation sounded something like a multiple translator hot-line dial-up between the US president and the USSR general secretary, too, if they were both deaf and half-senile.

"Don't speak so loudly, I can't hear you."
"You're where? Where are you calling from?"
"Oh, that's nice. What did you do? Where are you?"
"Where am I? Where am I?" ("You're home, Mom.") "I'm home. They've fixed it up nice so people can come in and help." (It's just my brother and me. No one comes in.)
"What did you do? Ice cream? Where?"
and so on. . ..

Mom thinks her sister has lost/is losing her mind and she has had at least one stroke, but, honestly, whenever I've seen my aunt (last spring when my cousin, Gerry, died) she seems to be doing just fine. Mom's the one who is ahead in this race.

They had a nice conversation during which about one third of the potential amount of information was actually exchanged, and then Elaine came back on the line, and I was going to have Mom give me the phone so I could ask her for some genealogical information on that side of the family, but the phone's battery died and being the old piece of junk that it is, it has no memory, or last call redial, or anything of that sort so I'll have to try and find her number somewhere else.