A Year Ago Today…

It was Martin Luther King’s birthday, and my mother was still in the hospital, because of the holiday, after her heart attack the week before. It had taken several days before I was able to talk to her doctor at the hospital, even though I had left all my phone number, but he said he only had my cellphone number, which had no voicemail or unknown phone calls coming in. Very poor communication. The doctor told me  he was releasing my mother into hospice care and that he had talked to her about that already. When I asked her if she remembered the doctor mentioning hospice care (which she hadn’t told me about), she said, her voice strong, “Yes, I do, and I’m all right with that.”

Fro the next three days, I was on the phone with anyone I could talk to, recommended by the hospital social worker or people at my mother’s residence, about care for my mother when she got out of the hospital. There were so many different people in so many different positions with so many different jobs, connected in ways not well explained, but I was trying hard to figure it out. The weekend social worker at the hospital was very helpful, far more than the weekday one, who had left the following note in my mother’s room for us on January 15:

“No rehab beds are available at either Jewish home. Nothing will happen over the weekend. Therefore, by Tuesday I’d like a decision whether you want to go forward with placement, or can mobilize the resources for home care.”

What did “rehab beds” mean? “Placement,” I think, meant nursing home, but she never told us that “nursing home” meant “rehab,” or that “nursing home” might well be temporary. Instead, I thought “nursing home” was an alternative to her own apartment, and I was not at all ready to send my mother to a nursing home if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

On this day a year ago, here’s how I felt, according to my journal: “I’m recognizing that stomach-sinking feeling as the same sense of dread I had after [my daughter’s] accident. I’ll be doing something normal, like washing the dishes, and that sense of dread, that something awful has happened, or will happen, will sweep over me.”

Regrets, 2

A year ago yesterday, I drove a rented car, with my husband, daughter, and daughter’s partner, up to my mother’s new residence in the Bronx. I was lucky to find a parking space just across the street, and we all went up to collect my mother, so we could all drive to my sister’s in Connecticut for our annual holiday dinner with her kids. But it wasn’t so easy to collect my mother. We had to help her out of the lobby, move the car to right in front of the door so she would have the shortest distance to talk, help her into the back seat along with her portable oxygen tank, and fold up her walker and put it in the trunk. It was so hard for me to remember how infirm she had become, and I was also busy trying not to notice how shocked my daughter was at her grandmother’s condition.

It was a lovely sunny day, and quite warm, in the 50s. The gathering at my sister’s was a bit frenzied at first, as everyone was cooking and trying to make everything (roast chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots, brussels sprouts) be finished at the same time. My daughter’s marinated vegetables were already done, and dessert was my husband’s brownies and nephew-in-law’s fruit salad. My mother was ensconced on the couch where she remained except when she was sitting at the table. This was her first time at our holiday dinner, and it seemed sometimes that she was a bit overwhelmed by all the talking. But she took part in the dinner table conversation. And my older niece had brought her two-month-old baby boy, so it was wonderful to have a photo of my mother with her latest great-grandchild. Then we left around 6:30, drove back to the city, dropped off my mother,  and returned the car.

The day was a success, and I was so glad we had been able to pull it off. But in the meantime, I was devoting all my worry, not to my mother, but to the movers. For we had hired those Florida movers, who’d left me with the impression that they would be delivering her belongings about a week after they’d picked everything up on December 22. And after they’d packed up her belongings and taken them away, I began to worry about whether she would ever see them again. Who were these movers, after all? I had never moved long distance myself, and once it was all out of my control, I began to think of all the questions I should have asked and assurances I should have demanded. The next day (a year ago exactly), I finally spoke to someone at the movers’ office, who told me it would be at least another week before my mother’s things would be delivered. I was in shock and furious. My mother was living with borrowed furniture and not many changes of clothes — and without her coffee maker. I had messed up, big-time. (To be continued)