dreaming of tomorrows, remembering yesterdays

I used to watch my children sleep and wonder what they dreamed about. They would twitch and move around as if their dreams were full of adventure and excitement. I’d lean against the wall or door frame and just memorize their faces and listen to their breathing. My oldest son, so full of energy and brimming with enthusiasm would run through his dreams the same way he ran through his days. The same way he still does. My younger son, precise and thoughtful, would dream the way he lives. And I would watch them sleep and savor the silence as I memorized their childhood. I knew one day those children would be replaced by adults and they’d move out and on with life. 

Today I spend my time watching my Mother sleep and I wonder what she dreams of. Does she dream of life with dad, does she dream of meeting up with him someday? Are her dreams just empty wishes for an end to the nightmare of her waking hours, or do the medications she takes give her the only happy moments to her days? Every so often she jerks awake and looks at me with tears and fear and asks where we are and what will happen to her. I answer in honesty”mom, we are in your room and whatever happens I will go through with you.” And she nods her head and closes her eyes and  drifts back off while I sit quietly and just watch her sleep.

sadness before knowledge..

I know I’m going to be sad today, I just can’t tell you the who part of it yet. It isn’t because Spring is playing hide and seek with us, it isn’t because my basketball brackets are half done before it’s half done, it isn’t even because my new bra is pushing the ladies back up to where God put them.. it’s because I know this will be a bad day. Not only dealing with the fall out from Mom’s bad week, but also because I know someone I love at the home has passed away but I’m not sure who it is yet.

The reason I know is because a friend on my FB page is sad. She works at the home, she’s already there. So I know someone’s passed away and I can probably guess who in less than five guesses but I don’t want to think it’s anyone there. I love these people, they matter to me. They’ve all gotten so dear to me that when one passes it reminds me of why they are there. It reminds me that the people who care about us matter and it reminds me that we (and me and you) are only human and humans make mistakes, hurt each other’s feeling, make each other cry, and sadly humans die.

I’m going to mourn a friend today, I don’t know who but I do know I will miss them.

it's my potty

This is a rant and a heads up I hope. A little lesson about dignity. Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night and you feel that urge, you may be sleepy but your bladder isn’t. You know you won’t make it until morning, there’s no chance of falling back asleep. What do you do? You probably get up and stumble through your bedroom in the dark, feeling your way around your bed, across the floor and out into the hallway towards the potty. Ahhh! You head back to bed, crisis averted.

Now imagine this: you are elderly, in a bed that is yours but not your own. You can’t get up without help but you know you have to go. So you push your call button and no one come. You push it again, someone either comes in and turns it off or they tell you no. No, you can’t get up, no they won’t take you. So you push your button again and yell out for help and a person tells you to shut up or be quiet. They tell you to go in your brief and they leave you that way until your morning aide comes in and cleans you up. They leave you lying in it for hours,they rob you of your dignity and strip you of your pride.

Where is the dignity of growing old when the people taking care of you won’t allow you that tiny bit of decency.

Someone’s getting fired up here today. Someone who took my Mother’s  dignity away and robbed her of her pride.

when a bad day is a good day and a good day is a bad day

It’s all about perspective.

It’s music time at the nursing home today. They’re lining up in the halls to see the main event. There will be depends thrown and shrieking galore. Well maybe not for real but if they could, they would. How’s that for a mental moment?

They’re all here, my mom even gets her hair done because every other Wednesday is dick day. I kid you not. That’s his name. He looks a little like a human q-tip but he has a way about him that they love. As I sit back here and type this he is warming up. The air is thick with liniment and anticipation. “He`s here,he`s here”.  He sings the oldies they love. And they do love those so. Ladies who no longer can speak tap along on table tops, gentlemen who cannot remember their words sing the songs. I’m looking around the room and seeing the faces of the residents and even those who cannot feel sway in their chairs to the stylin’ sounds of Dick T. It takes a bad day and makes it good.

And there are bad days lately. Bad days that to you might seem very bad, to me seem almost good. Good days that seem great to the staff are bad to my Mom. It’s a confusing world for her. She hurts but she doesn’t want to sleep all day. She’s groggy but at least she doesn’t hurt. There is no happy medium. So she exists. Awake as pain pills wear off and sleeping when she hurts the least. Every other Wednesday is looked forward to and she gears up for it for days. It starts early, I go up at the break of her dawn. I take her to her hair appt. and help the hairdresser wash her hair. Then it’s set on tiny rollers and she’s placed under the dryer. This is where I really come into play. I hold the dryer at an angle with one hand and her head up with the other. If I don’t it takes forever to dry and Shirley girl gets cranky. I no likee cranky Shirley. Once she’s dry we comb and poof and spray and tah-dah! it’s done. Seems so easy but it drains me.

My Mom always had hair done and nails filed and polished. Her clothes always matched and were taken care of. I try to give her the same. She may not care much anymore but I do. If she had her dignity in life, I want her to have it as life ends. If  Shirley wants to pretty herself up for the world’s best nursing home singer then I will make it happen. I line her up with the other groupies and take myself to the back of the room where it’s safe. Why? because the aforementioned singer has a major thing for me, much to the amusement of the staff. He starts to sing and the room is transformed, a few sing along, some tap their tappable parts, even the men are enthralled. The songs are done with his own special style and I make sure to avoid all eye contact during the loves songs. I sit in the back with a friend’s Mother who is chattering away as if it’s silent. I’m not too sure what she’s talking about but she doesn’t usually come down so I’m happy to see her.

In front of us is Mom’s roommate Doris and her sister. Every Wednesday her sister comes up. Mom isn’t Shirley to Doris, Doris calls her Sadie. Mom hates it and no one knows why Doris does it but Sadie it is. In front of Doris is a new gentleman and a woman I assume is his wife. I’ve seen him at the end of the hallway, in front of the nurses desk. He doesn’t communicate well but today he’s clapping along and his wife is up dancing and holding his hand while he smiles.

My mom is in the front row, we go down early to get her spot. Next to Mom is Jean and another Jean. Both dear to me and both special in my heart. Delores is missing, she hasn’t been well. Then Rosie the former dancer whose legs don’t cooperate but her arms never stop moving to the music. We have Linda who can sing any Motown song and identify it’s singer, Sandra who sings in Italian, Pearl and Johanna, a new lady whose name I haven’t learned yet and behind all of them the rest of the crew. They look forward to this and they love it so much. And for most of them, like my Mom, this hour of music makes a bad day good. And to get a day that goes good is a blessing, one that we count.

emotional weight lifting

I'm not as strong as people think I am. I just fake it really well. Outside I'm calm and in control but inside I'm a Jello salad similar to the ones Mom used to torture us with. I wobble and shake but I can still hold the things that need holding.
I had a snow day yesterday, pretty much everyone in our area did. I won't lie, it was nice. I rambled around in my pjs, watched a couple movies, chatted up an old friend or two on the phone and skype. I did things that had nothing to do with Mom. She was in my head, she's been in my head my whole life. I just didn't focus on her because she's in my waking hours and in my sleep.

I am not ashamed of being weak, I don't know why I hide it. I hide it from Mom because somehow I've become the go-to person for our family. We're not a large family anymore. Just Mom, my brother, my kids, and myself. My kids are grown and off into the world, as it should be but my brother is a stranger now. When we lose Mom I will lose him. We'll talk once a year but the gap is there and he's the one who put it there. If I'm the go-to girl, he's the fall-apart fellow. When something needs doing, I do it. When a doctor needs speaking to, I do it. When there's a crisis, who you gonna call? me. He can't handle it and he's not able to face it. But like the old Smothers brothers routine... Mom loves him best.
It used to bother me badly but now I think I prefer it this way. I've stopped trying to get parental approval that will never come. I am proud of who I am, in spite of the mistakes I've made. In our family tree my brother was the branch they hung the star on but that branch can only hold a thin and fragile star and my branch bears the weight of many objects. My branch is hidden beneath those objects and isn't pretty and straight but his branch breaks easily and is just for looking at. He's the family show pony but I'm the jackass who carries all the burdens. Now there's a mental image to amuse us all.
I'd rather be me than be him. When life gets difficult, and it always does, he quickly buries his head in the sand and pretends things aren't so bad. I don't want to live that way because when you bury your head in the sand to avoid the big issues you miss out on those small happy things that buffer the bad. So I get the doctors, the bad news, and the paperwork and he gets Saturdays and Sundays to be there for an hour and be Mom's hero. I think I'd rather be me, childhood and all.

At the point when my parents neighbor summoned me to Florida, I had risen above my childhood and turned my back on my parents. It took me so many years to forget but I hadn't forgiven. After I got sucked back into the family disfunction I had to face those memories and forgive my parents. I had to accept and understand that I could not change the past, I could only change my own future. My brother, a child raised in the same house as I was, didn't get the same parents I did. His scars were so much lighter and less deep than my own but his are still with him and mine have faded into the past they belong in. You would have thought that the golden child would have grown into an adult with both feet on the ground and I would be a psychological mess but it's the opposite. We're both weak, we both cry, we're both soft in the middle but his is his lifestyle now. I am weak, I do cry, I accept that about myself. I just allow myself that time and move along with my life, he wallows.

Another lady I adore passed away yesterday. When I go up today I'll see the name tag missing from the door and I'll cry. I'll be sad because these elderly people, and the heroes who tend to them, are dear to me and I mourn the loss of each one. I'll have my few moments and not be ashamed and then I'll pull myself together and do what needs doing. I am strong but I am weak, weaker than people think.

life is a highway and I’m in the passing lane going 35 with my left blinker on

my Dad would be proud. His van is still on the road, driven by my brother’s whatever you call her. It’s still got it’s war wounds from the last year of Dad driving. He actually managed to hit the same pole in an empty bank parking lot … twice. He was telling us he wasn’t driving but the neighbor told me she’d hear him start the van up and go driving down the road and she’d keep her fingers crossed until he got home. I’m glad I didn’t have to have his license taken but I’m gladder still that he never hurt anyone. I don’t know if I could parent two of them, raising mom is my toughest challenge.

I’m going to post a lot about my mom, no avoiding it. I think I should introduce my Dad. Dad was a lot of things, some bad which I won’t discuss. He was a proud man who lost everything they had because he believed the shysty McShysters (yes, plural)  who kept sending him vague promises of riches soon to come… all for a price of course. So Dad would imagine those riches and write a check. The only ones getting rich were the aforementioned shysty McShyster s.  I cannot blame Dad for dreaming, I have dreams of my own. Mine are “what ifs” his turned into financial nightmares. His became mine when he died and I sat in their place alone,  surrounded by ghosts and memories and a forrest worth of papers, bills and letter piles all promising riches for the price of an entry fee. My dad was so smart but yet so very dumb.

And he was a smart man who made a career of engineering. Not choo choo chugga chugga engineering, although he did work at a railroad company. He probably would have loved being a train conductor. I can’t count the times he pulled off the road to watch a train pass by. It was a love his sister and brother shared. When at my Uncle’s house for Thanksgiving dinner only two things would stop a meal; a patient in need of care knocking on my doctor uncle’s home office door or the faint sound of a train approaching. Both Dad and my Uncle would place their napkins on their chairs and rush as one out the door to see the train and count it’s cars. Annoying at the time but a heartwarming memory now.

My dad was the family fixer, builder, and disciplinarian. I will leave his sins for another entry, some memories do no good when remembered. He and my mother were married 63 years. He was her pillar. The role I had thrust upon  me was one he signed up for.  And for all his faults he never ran when it got tough to tend to her. He signed up for the long haul and got one. I do not admire all about him but I admire that. He was a good neighbor, a good father to my brother, a hard worker and above all else, he was a husband to the mother he left to me to take care of. If I can give her even half the care he did, she will be well taken care of..