Mother

My father passed away a year and a half ago. My grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago. Now, my mother is apparently in her last days. She has been on dialysis for years, has low blood levels, can no longer walk, and is now confined to a bed (under a restraint order) lest she should try to get out and collapse. She has a mass of fluid on her lungs that might be cancer, but the doctors fear that she would not survive the invasive cancer testing procedure.

She yells out frequently, and there is a suspicion that the drugs are contributing to this behaviour. She asks to be let out of there and howls in pain. So, the doctors are reducing her drugs: no more anti-depressants, no more meds for high cholesterol. But, she is on Oxycontin and antibiotics and a medicated inhaler.

The doctors believe she is dying and now there is a DNR order. It's odd, because she came to my grandmother's (her mother's) funeral recently, though it was nearly impossible to get her in and out of the vehicle. Her legs are useless and she screamed with pain, complaining that she was being abandoned, even as three of us were trying to stuff her into a mini van.

I know that she is lonely in that nursing home. When my dad passed, she didn't really react, but he was someone she knew for years--most of her life, in fact--and I think that had an effect. And now, her mother is gone and, although she has always claimed to have hated her mother, she must miss her. After all, she lived with her for years and years until she was admitted to a nursing home, years before her mother met the same fate. It seems like her mother was her only friend.

She mumbles nonsense in between asking to be set free from the nursing home. Perhaps she has given up? On the other hand, she may hang on for years. You never really know, I guess, but at present, it seems grim.

Funeral

I think one sign of aging is when you see certain people only at funerals. At my grandmother's funeral a couple of weeks back, I saw people (relatives really) whom I had not seen since my father's funeral a year and a half ago. It reminds me of younger days when I saw certain people only at weddings.

Anyway, my maternal grandmother passed away recently just short of her 92nd birthday. She lived a long life, so this was not a morbid affair, but one with humour and stories. She married at age 18, in a classic Ontario 1930s shotgun wedding, something that had been kept a closely-guarded secret for years. My grandmother refused to entertain questions about how old she was when she married in combination with the question of how old she currently was. I assumed that this was part of a larger plan to hide her age, but it was an effort to hide her shame, a shame she seemed to carry for most of her life. Once Alzheimer's crept in, I suppose she no longer thought about it.

Of course, by the time I had figured it out, pregnancy out of wedlock was no longer an issue, at least for most people. After all, my brothers had been spreading their seed far and wide with no regard for tradition, and that seemed like normal practice to me.

Alzheimer's is a horrible affliction and I hope I never have to confront it. The first time my grandmother failed to recognize me was a shock. After some time, she managed to put it all together, but more recently, she didn't have a clue, and that was very sad.

She is now resting (I'm not sure that I like this term) beside her husband who predeceased her by 29 years, and her grandson, who passed away at the age of 5. I remember him well.

My Dad & Brother

I headed out to the rural parts of Ontario last weekend to visit my father in hospital.  He has been battling various types of cancer for a few years, but the illness now seems to be taking a greater toll.  I am sure that the steady stream of pharmaceuticals are also inflicting some sort of hell on his brain and systems.  He was not vocal at all, only managing a few mumbles, though since the visit, he has been more communicative.

My step-mom fed him soup and ice cream,  I have to say that watching one's formerly vital father being fed is not a pleasant sight.  It reminded me of when I fed my children.  It's the same really: they turn their heads to refuse the offering; they decide they want more; they change their minds. He looked weak and frail, something I could never have imagined when I was young.

My dad's future is uncertain.  Doctors are reluctant to offer an estimate on his remaining time, but seeing as though the cancer has migrated to his spine, his time here would seem to be severely limited.  Even if he rebounds, he will not go home.  My step-mom can't control him.  It may have been the drugs, but he recently moved some furniture out of the house and threw a plant out the door as well. Even when he was at home, he wanted to "go home" and waited for the movers to take his stuff back to his real house, in his real town, and be with his real wife.  This may be Capgras Syndrome, wherein those afflicted feel that a family member is an impostor.

My mother has been in a nursing home for two or three years, since she broke her hip.  Her mother, now 90, is also in a nursing home.  She has no idea who anyone is anymore.  And then there is my brother.  The good news is that the doctor was proven to be completely wrong in his diagnosis.

My brother, once thought to be on his deathbed, executed some sort of remarkable recovery.  He can walk with the aid of a walker.  He can talk.  He has problems with short-term memory.  His is weaker on one side.  He remains, it has to be said, susceptible to further strokes.

My brother, should he continue to improve, will be placed in a rehabilitation facility. My dad, should he improve, will end up in a nursing home for some period of time.  Most of my family will be in institutions.

Happy New Year, and all that

If I can't win the lottery, why can't someone I know win the lottery, like my father or sister? That would be almost as good, as I am fairly sure they would offer me some cash (unless I have completely misread them and overestimated their fondness for me). My grandmother is another story: her memory is deteriorating, and she would have great difficulty deciding what to do with all of that cash or even remembering who her relatives are.

When I walked into her house at Christmas (the door was not only unlocked, it was ajar, so that her neighbours can easily enter. I am not sure that this is a good idea. She wears a Lifeline around her neck, and two people call her daily to make sure that she is still alive. In November, she turned 89.

She looked at me blankly and I realized that I would have to give her my name. The first name wasn't good enough, so I had to add my surname. Still, she looked at me blankly. The two children were with me, so I guess I looked harmless enough, so she allowed me in without any fuss or complaints. I referred to my mother, sister, father, etc, to see if I could spark a memory. Finally, she seemed to get it, but then she suggested that I had never been to her house before, a house she has lived in for 33 years. She could not remember the names of the kids.

She announced relationships for every person she mentioned. Her daughter-in-law was not simply S_____, she was "S_____, my son's wife." You would have thought that she was talking to a stranger or someone she hadn't seen in 25 years. She offered us inedible candies, which were only marginally better than the Humbugs she used to dispense in my youth, Humbugs that were suspiciously without cellophane and which seemed always to be covered in pocket lint.

She ignored the gifts we brought to her, complained that she accidentally gave one of her grandchildren $5 too much at Christmas, and described in great detail how horrified she was about some gifts she had received. One top had a zipper all of the way up the front, right to her chin! She argued that no one would wear anything like that. The waist of the pants was too high or too low or something. She told this person never to buy her another gift.

Bah humbug, I suppose.

On Choirpractors and Homopaths

Every time I speak with my father, I am reminded of the bizarre way in which people from my part of Ontario speak. I mentioned that in a post entitled Dropping the Dialect. In that post, I listed a few key phrases that my father uses. Since his diagnosis with prostate cancer a few years back, he has been seeing a homeopath. He believes that this treatment has helped, and I thinks that's great, even though I am not sure that the stinky tea actually does anything. After all of this time, my father (and my sister, for that matter) are unable to pronounce homeopath.

It is pronounced thusly: 'hO-mE-&-"path

In other words, is has four syllables, including a vowel after hom and before opath. My dad (and sister) continue to say homopath. I suppose that there is a very real possibility that my father is seeing some sort of practitioner with the name homopath, but what kind of medicine or pseudo-medicine this person would dispense is too bizarre to even contemplate so early in the day. Anyway, for some reason, I haven't summoned the courage to tell him that his pronunciation is off.

And this reminds me that my grandmother says sam'ich instead of sandwich. She also cannot say chiropractor. She says choirpractor, which I gather is someone who dispenses chiropractic medicine to large groups of singers.

Anyway, today is conference week. I am at a conference as I type, and will be again tomorrow, when I am presenting with two colleagues. Then, I will be attending another conference from Wednesday to Friday, so you may not hear much from me after today.

Technorati Tags: dialects, family, conferences

The End of Bathing

This is about my mother. She is fragile, in her late 60s, vacant - the doctor said so. He said she was empty, but the meaning is the same. She stares a lot, says little, except when she remembers to take her pills. On those days, she speaks with hypermania. It's a challenge to keep up.

Her red skin is contoured with blue veins, just like her father's. She wears a red and blue map on her face. Her grey hair is tinged with yellow from 50 years of cigarettes, 50 years of exhaling into emptiness. I remember her portrait softened by smoke, stinking of stale tobacco. She is old now, older than her years.

She found her way into the bathtub, managed to lower herself with her frail arms. Bathing is out-of-fashion in the house she shares with her mother. They prefer to stand over the sink and sponge bathe. Installing a shower is too expensive, not that there is any shortage of money. The bank accounts are full, the house paid, but my grandmother still buys her clothes from thrift shops and lawn sales as though it is 1935.

I try not to picture it - my mother clawing at the side of the white enamel, failing to achieve any kind of grip, her feet finding no purchase in the slick tub. She calls for help from her 87 year old mother. Maybe she can lift her out, but my grandmother is too weak herself, with her two plastic knees and two plastic hips. She looks as strong as ever, kind of like an ox or a streetcar. She is thick, heavy, with fingers that point in all directions of space at once, thanks to her arthritis.

The next thing to do is call to the neighbour to free my mother. I am reminded of that old folk tale, the Enormous Potato. They will form a chain: my grandmother, the neighbour all pulling. Soon, there will be a dog, a cat, and a mouse all lending a hand. Instead, the neighbour fails and they resort to contacting Emergency Services. Someone dials 911. An ambulance arrives with two paramedics. They hoist her from the tub, leave the stretcher by the door, and retreat to talk about that one with their colleagues. This is the one about the woman who couldn't get out of the bathtub. It's not an urban legend.

Technorati Tags: mother, grandmother, bathing, bathtub, 911, emergency, trapped

12 Random Facts about my Grandmother

One thing on this list is not true.

1) she reuses toilet paper (she hangs it on the side of the sink to dry)
2) she is 86 years old
3) she buys her dresses & shoes and lawn sales and thrift shops
4) she is independently wealthy
5) she was a grandmother at 37
6) she was a great grandmother at 57
7) she could be a great great grandmother, but I can't prove it at the moment
8) she had a shotgun wedding
9) she has a pet parrot that is 47 years old
10) she has two artificial knees and one artificial hip
11) she sleeps in a reclining lounge chair
12) she used to drown kittens when she & my grandfather owned a farm

Technorati Tags: grandmother, family history

I got back yesterday from four days off. It takes a while to get back into the routine. In the midst of the time off was a birthday party, my Grandmother's 85th birthday party. It was very good timing, as I have been researching my family tree. My great uncle was there, still spry and alert at age 90. I've learned that my family is long lived on all sides. My family tree has now expanded to 1300 names. I have found relatives in BC, Calgary, Detroit, Nevada, Florida, etc. I spoke with an aunt as well. The funny thing is that I have a newspaper clipping of her marriage announcement from the 60s. I expected her to look like that, but she was much older, of course.

I also spent some time doing research for a new article. My last one will be out in January. This one delves into new territory and should be quite interesting, I hope. For a few hours, I considered applying for a Ph.D., but then reality hit me and I reconsidered. I am not sure that I have the energy for that. Although, it would be a good way to use my sabbatical, since the part time program requires an eight month residency. Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. Maybe I should just do another masters degree. Is three too many?

At last, the first three seasons of Seinfeld are out today on DVD.

Marginalized is stuck in my head and I can't get it out. It's the best song on the latest Rheostatics CD.

Technorati tags: genealogy