The other day was no exception. I heard the dreaded beeping that indicated the presence of messages on the system. “You have ONE new message. Dial 1 to retrieve your message.” Beep. The voice in the message was somewhat garbled through a bad connection, and the effect was exacerbated by a thick accent of (to me) unknown origin. I heard something about “this is...calling from...Lodge...your mother...gold rings...envelope...Degree of Intervention Form...Category 2A...2B...Doctor...2B...Degree of Intervention.”
My mind raced through the possibilities.
I had done the inevitable roller coaster through “gold rings”--something about her jewellry--a minor concern, really, in the grand scheme of things--to “Degree of Intervention.” The latter is a legal form on file at the care facility, to be signed by the Power of Attorney and/or next of kin (I guess I’m both), essentially codifying a DNR (do not resuscitate) order so that one’s loved one can die a natural death without excessive intervention in the form of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, etc. It’s not quite that simple, though. These forms never are. You can choose from four menu options.
I’m still swallowing the guilt of having a feeding tube installed for mom last fall, I guess. Various folks have let me know by direct and indirect means that they found my decisions and actions unconscionable. I don’t know, I guess I was supposed to just let her starve to death, if you call that dying with dignity.
I agree her current life is not desirable. Not only can she not talk (beyond a few stock words and phrases--she can’t make up her mind to say something and then say it) or eat normal food (most people would call what she’s able to eat, “mush”); she cries so much, it’s just heartbreaking. Once she got on the phone to me (with the help of a nurse who then just left the conversation swinging in the wind) and sobbed for half an hour straight, trying to tell me something which I was never able to determine. Thank god the kids were in bed, and my husband was out of town (at his own mother’s funeral--I keep intending to tell mom about this death but simply cannot bring myself to do it--seems like whenever I’m on the verge of being able to do so during a visit with her, she starts crying or wants to ring the bell for a nurse to help her go to the bathroom), so I was alone.
Another time she left a message: “I’m calling... I’m calling... I’m calling...” times thirty.
I’ve had so much time to process all of the grief about my mother and her situation, that I seem to be reverting back to a response that characterized my feelings when she was still living with us: anger. I know this sounds bad, but I’m just being honest. I’m flashing back to an incident that happened on the ferry last summer and which now seems imbued with metaphorical significance.
On that fateful trip (sounds like we’re venturing into Gilligan’s Island territory here), I had gone upstairs and left my mom in the car; we were returning from her speech therapy session in town, something I crammed into an overfull schedule by sheer force of will. The girls were waiting to be picked up at daycamp and daycare respectively. I know my motivation in taking mom to the therapy sessions was simply that this was something I could do for her, instead of what she really wanted or needed, which was simply affection.
Anyway, on this occasion, I came back to start the car about a minute before the ferry docked, and--every driver’s nightmare--I simply could not find my keys. My mom said she had taken them from the ignition to try to open her pop can with them, but she could not remember what had happened next. A frantic search ensued. No sign. In desperation, I phoned my husband to come down and bring me the spare set of keys from our apartment. Meanwhile, the ferry attendant warned me that if I could not get off the ferry before it was time to load the cars, I would have to go back to the other side. Flashing through my mind were the enormous complications of being unable to pick up my kids. Taking five minutes to bring me the keys was one thing, but if my husband had to miss the rest of his workday, that would not be good. We were already falling hopelessly behind in our house renovation--time and money had long run out. (At least we had mom’s pension cheques paying the rent back then; you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.)
Short story short, the spare keys arrived on time, and I got off the ferry OK. Later I found my set of keys under my mom’s seat--I remember I hadn’t checked that seemingly obvious option very carefully because I could never bear to be physically close to her. This makes me sound like an awful person, and indeed I do feel like one most of the time these days.
Obviously none of it was her fault (she was upset and confused, genuinely remorseful), which I think made my anger even worse--I did not have a focus or a means of expression for it, so it just festered, as it had been doing for the 45+ years of my conscious life on this planet.
All of this preamble is to explain that it was not because of my being such a loving and caring daughter that I panicked when I got that message. I don’t know what it was. I have been feeling for some time now that every time I say to myself that things couldn’t get much worse, they do. I end up wishing I hadn’t taken it for granted when things weren’t so bad.
But back to the fateful phone call that night. I called back the Lodge and tried to remain calm.
“Someone left a message for me, so I am just trying to clarify the situation.”
“O jess, I vas me,” a thickly-accented voice said. Great, I thought. But thanks to the miracle of real-time conversation, I was able to ascertain the truth.
My mother’s hands were somewhat swollen, so they had removed her rings and placed them in an envelope at the nursing station; I could pick them up the next time I visited. They had wanted to let me know particularly because the rings seemed valuable--as indeed they were. One set was my grandmother’s (my mother’s mother’s) engagement and wedding ring in delicately-wrought gold (I’ve taken to wearing them now, and they feel as if they have always resided on my right ring finger); the other set was my mother’s engagement and wedding ring from her second marriage--why was she wearing them? Looking in her desk at home I saw photos attesting to her attachment to a marriage I thought she had counted as being in the past. I would not wear those rings, but I put them aside carefully. (Though, come to think of it, I seem to have already forgotten the “safe” place where I did so--no real surprise there, I suppose, given my ambivalence about her long-ago decision to bring a repeat sex-offender into the house when I was still a teenager--to be fair, I wasn’t living with her myself at the time). But I digress!
The nurse whom I spoke to on the phone also indicated that the next time I visited, the doctor advised I should indicate category 2B on the Degree of Intervention form, which would allow for mom’s hospitalization for a minor ailment (category 2A, which I had previously selected, did not allow for this possibility--goodness knows why I chose it, except that maybe at some level I was hoping to avoid a repeat of my previous errors in judgement, if any). The nurse hastened to assure me that this--the request for the 2B selection on the form--was all theoretical at this point; my mother was “vine” and did not need to go to hospital at the present time. “Vine,” the nurse assured me, no doubt responding to the anxiety in my tone of voice--the unspoken questions and answers that transcend all language barriers. “Vine.”
I reached for the fruit of the vine (my only solace in these dark days), and heaved a sigh of relief. No crisis. This time. I felt the spectre of doom receding; I felt the weight (a clunky old telephone? a car battery?) being lifted from my chest. After all, it turned out, it was simply a trivial matter: 2B or not 2B.
Dear Cuz Deb
ReplyDeleteI love that you can write so openly about stuff that most people would never open up about. And I love that you make I a good story too. But it pains me to think of all you are going through. I have not walked in your shoes so I don't know what I would do but I do suggest that you consider that other's opinions are based on their experiences and are not reflective of yours. So don't feel guilty because others disagree with your actions if you did what you thought was best.
Love you
Cuz Elle