The Day My Mother Said Goodbye to Me

I found something wonderful in my document file today. I wrote it a year ago, after discovering my mother had been trapped in a hospital for five days without the notification of her family. When I found her there, I showed the treating physician her Advance Directive, and he promptly ordered hospice care for her (she had developed pneumonia while at the hospital) and released her back to her care home. This is what I wrote on the afternoon of her release:

Out of these five long years spent by you in the relentless grip of Alzheimer’s Disease, when mostly what I’ve known of you is summed up in “disintegration,” I want to remember how you glowed today as we made plans for your dying. Your small, dwindled self lay curled on your bed and barely rumpled the spread, but your face was beautiful, in its ancient joy to see me. You stared up at me in blue-eyed brightness, as you listened, heard, and answered in your right brain, not your wrong one. You smiled and smiled at me, and at the staff that attends your death, and over and over you said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I asked you how you felt, and you said, beaming, “It’s wonderful!” It was wonderful to have you back among the living for those few hours, after we had signed the orders to let you die. You laughed about eating ice cream for lunch, and you held my hand.

At one point you looked up at me, as I leaned over you saying something to you, and you reached up both hands and laid them softly on my face, cupping it in your hands. We smiled at each other. Were you saying goodbye, Mom? I understood your message of love, and gratitude maybe, or maybe just a cherishing of me. It made my spirit soar. I will remember this, Mom.

After Alzheimer’s destroyed you,
you had one glowing day, clear as sunshine,
when your blue eyes twinkled at me.
Your face was beautiful in its ancient joy.
You reached up and cupped my face
in your hands, smiling and studying me.
It’s wonderful you said, and I knew
what you meant.

Diamonds, Vultures, and the Pulitzer Prize

Yesterday was a lively day. Two exciting outings: lunch with my auntie and then a visit to a local thrift shop. I’m telling you, they were the epitome of liveliness. Especially when I found the bargain of the decade: a diamond pendant on gold serpentine chain, marked $2.

Nonchalantly, I strolled up to my favorite jeweler’s shop with the diamond necklace in my pocket, practicing what I would say: “I just want to confirm that these ‘diamonds’ are glass….oh, really?....10 beautifully clear diamonds?....Worth HOW MUCH?....Can you believe I paid $2 for the necklace?....What extraordinary luck!”

But alas the jeweler wasn’t open, so I came home and rummaged around for the magnifying glass to read the symbols on the gold clasp. There was an O….an N….something like an A at the beginning….ah, crap, that’s a V next to it….AVON! It’s a blasted AVON necklace! Well, pooh. They were diamonds for an hour.

But God had something better in store: a red sunset on storm clouds, a glorious light show in the southwest, jagged bolts of lightning followed by reverberations of thunder. Lightning lit up the darkness, and thunder rumbled its way up my legs.

As the light show crackled around me, I came inside and dashed off a poem that I dreamed would someday earn a Pulitzer Prize. The whole day was about transformations of simple things: glass into diamonds, blue sky into evening wildness, vultures into hawks. Does it get any better than this? If it does, I will have to swoon.


Buzzard

She looks up and sees you riding the wind over the landscape,
and something—your freedom? your effortless wings lifting you
where she wants to go, on the updrafts straight to heaven?
—something about you makes her gasp Oh! A hawk!

She sees you not as you are but as she dreams you are. She’s busy
rewriting history in her head, remaking the whole world. A new
creation arises from her dying brain, and it is all so miraculous,
she needs a new language to speak of it. Nouns become verbs,
gerunds grow wings, words take flight in the midst of a sentence
and escape through open windows in her mind.

Oh, hawk! she cries, mesmerized by the circles you carve in the sky,
by your wide black wings like arms outstretched and fingers reaching
to grab onto God. She transforms you with a word. Vulture no longer,
you are majestic. You are not a scavenger, seeker of the putrid dead.
You are now the great hunter who has harnessed the wind
and she would ride you, if only you would please snatch her up.

My 40 Days Are Done

Beware: Strange post follows.

Yesterday was the 40th day post-mortem of my mother. In an attorney’s office, I officially “relinquished possession,” as one person described my seven years of watching over my mother and her affairs.

Forty days is spiritually significant. So is the sum of seven years.

Forty is the time of testing. It’s the number of the days of rain that caused the Flood on which Noah’s Ark sailed alone. It’s the number of years for wandering in the desert without a home. It’s the length of days allotted to the devil in the temptation of Christ. It has been my time of testing.

Seven is the time of completion. In seven “days” God made the earth and saw that it was good. The walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites’ seventh trip around. A duration of seven is used in Biblical prophesy over and over to signify when an event will be completed. For me, the seventh year, when my mother died, is when my work is finished.

Now this chapter of my life has ended. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning thinking of that. I’m free, or I will be, when God has healed my hurt. In one fell swoop, I wrote a long, releasing poem (a section of which follows), and as I finished, there landed outside the window, like a God shot, a spotted towhee I'd never seen before (I found the above photo on the Web). My side of the street is clean, for now at least.

(A selection from)

In the Halls of Justice

They ask me why she left so little
There must be more, and if there’s not
I am blamed for having squandered
or absconded with the lot.

May they now get their fair share
of all the treasures left behind:
the love of books, the love of trees,
the satisfaction found in work,

The child’s faith that in God’s world
all is right, and all forgiven,
the precious laughter she was given
when the intellect was gone,

The certain knowledge she had sinned
but had atoned and now walked lightly
on a journey filled with hope,
the thankful heart, who thanked her helpers

On her deathbed in those awful hours,
who looked at me with shining joy
when she was just a bag of bones
and said how wonderful it was—

Though what it was, I’ll never know
unless I walk the road she walked.
My share is this: I stood as witness
to her effort in the final task

God put before her, and I saw
my mother go where no one goes
except the bravest: into battle,
stripped of weapons, to face a foe

Who killed her slowly.

I stayed to watch each bitter slice

Carve away each piece of her.
I heard her shriek. I heard her laugh.
I wrote down every word she spoke.
I watched as her unfailing faith

Renewed her strength each morning.
I leave them in the Halls of Justice
seeking justice from my mother.
I leave them, far, far richer than

They are, because she gave me
certainty that though I’ve sinned
I have atoned and now walk lightly
on a journey filled with hope.

Mourning Is Electric

A complete stranger, during a business call on Wednesday, became an articulate and insightful grief counselor who had lost her own mother a few years ago. "It's a life-shifting event," she told me. "Lean into the pain. Let it out, whether it be a whimper or a sob fest."

I’m doing well, I think. Sad for me, happy for my mom, full of memories good and bad, feeling like an orphan, being businesslike in attending to Mom’s estate, juggling everything at a time when I feel oddly weak and incapable. Following in that stranger's footsteps, my daughters and I held a wonderful ceremonial gathering at the ocean in memory of our mother and grandmother.

I took an armful of my garden flowers. We went to a beach where my mother and father used to take my brothers and me.

One by one we took a flower and thought of some wonderful thing embodied by my mother when she was younger, before the Alzheimer's took her away from us. Then we threw the flower into the sea.

It was a powerfully lovely thing to do.

Mom seemed very near, free at last and whole again.

Pneumonia Sucks

Last night, the pneumonia turned mean.

We had the family over for supper. While a group of us had gone to see “Despicable Me” with my little nephew Jacob, hubby Joe stayed home to make his olive and cheese enchiladas and Spanish rice. It’s a popular meal with our crew.
The get-togethers are good. We’ve gathered every day since Mom died on Wednesday. For once, I didn’t care about the dust in the corners. But I felt so puny, I trundled off to bed right after supper.

Within an hour, the fever hit, with chills, aching bones, rapid and shallow breathing, plus a bunch of dramatic moaning and groaning. This went on for hours. I made a deal with myself: If the fever went over 102 degrees F, I’d go to the ER again like the paperwork from my Thursday evening visit told me to. By 2 a.m. it hadn’t done so, and the chills and pain were beginning to lessen. I got some sleep after that.

My brothers and I met Sunday afternoon to decide what we had to do next to take care of Mom’s business. Then the out-of-town family went home and I went to bed.
It has been a week since I found my mother in dire straits, and the vigil began. Everything we could do to make her passing easier, we did do. She was not left alone. She had me all through the long nights, even when it was terribly painful to bear. That gives me the gift of peace
Today would have been my parents’ 59th wedding anniversary. I’m sure Mom and Dad are celebrating it in heaven.

I’m going to hitch a ride on the Totalfeckineejit’s Poetry Bus today, driven by Jeanne of Revolutionary Revelry. She gives us three options, one of which is to partake of her recipe for Mint Julep Iced Tea and then write whatever is on our minds. Here’s my offering:

Pneumonia Sucks

1 a.m.
fever rising
chills
rattle my bones
rolling, moaning
lungs gasp
like broken bellows
no one knows
I crouch here
on the couch
everyone sleeps
safe, secure
like they were
last week while
you and I
fought for your death
three long nights
days that bled
into each other
strange I should
fight to breathe
now as if my lungs
sympathize with
yours, they re-enact
your last act
but I realize
how much I gave you
simply being
awake

I Buried Mom in Blue Jeans

My mother had two dresses at one point. One was an orange paisley polyester affair, The other was a floor-length wonder in pale blue polyester, which she made for one of her kids' weddings. I don't think she took it out of the closet since 1977.

We're burying her this morning at the cemetery where her parents and brothers lie. I realized on the way to the mortuary Wednesday that I hadn't brought anything for her to wear. So on the street in front of the funeral home, I rummaged through my trunk and found an old pair of her Wranglers and a chirpy blouse. She lived in blue jeans. The choice made me happy.

I am so grateful for your outpouring of blessings the past couple of days. Every one of you has lifted my spirits. I think I needed those prayers more than I realized. Yesterday after Mom's funeral service, I wound up in the emergency room unable to breathe and diagnosed with pneumonia. I got home, got comfy, and read your comments again. I feel surrounded by peace.

Here is the second-to-last poem I wrote for Mom:

My Mother’s Traveling Wardrobe


Since the FBI gave my mother the boot
four months ago, her wardrobe travels
in the boot of my car. The agents
put her caregivers in the pokey
for trafficking in humans, so
her blouses and pants steer through
traffic with me. G-Men made her
homeless at 79, demented and frail,
but I’ve given her clothes a home
in my trunk. They go where I go,
like Ruth wheeling after Naomi
crying Wither thou goest, I shall go!
Resting comfortably in the back of my car,
they cover the miles instead of her back.

As she vanishes within, her clothes
travel without, cavorting through
the countryside. She grows
more still with each passing day
but her wardrobe’s in motion
smelling strongly of her. Particles
of my mother waft into the car,
assemble on the passenger seat
and rub along jolly as rubber balls
bouncing down the road.

My Mother Hits the Promised Land

To the very end, my mom does things her own way. She spent these past three days getting shed of the mortal body. I was there for most of it, and I used all my spiritual tools to endure.

Trying to care for my mother as she slowly died was the hardest thing I have EVER done. She was a stubborn Norweigian to the end, with a stout heart that didn't want to quit. I told her a hundred times that she was free to go, but she went when she was dam good and ready. She did pay attention to my request that she go on my watch, in the wee hours this morning, and I am thankful.

The photo I've posted here was taken of my mom 18 years ago. We had a wonderful life together. Today I'm working on remembering the good years instead of my final vision of her. Thank you all for your wonderful prayers and thoughts. You made it easier for me.

Here is my last poem about her journey, I think, written during the past couple of nights as she lay dying.

Your Dance of the Final Days


Your chest rises and falls rhythmically, I see
glancing at the narrow bed across the room.
It is anyone’s room, a blue sea of carpet,
a drawn window shade, but here is your old
cedar chest, scarred by memories inside it.
Here is your plywood sewing cabinet,
crafted by your father, its varnish worn.
Here I sit in your squeaky office chair
with the slash of duct tape on its vinyl seat
and its rusty chrome wheels. I watch you
sleep, your labored breathing drowned
by the hum and hiss of oxygen, afraid to look
away. The bedclothes might stop rising
and you slip off, me unaware, intolerable
thought. I want to see you should you slide
from bed and do a jig across the floor.
I never saw you dance in all these years
but there’s no telling what you’ll do.
You have surprised us all before.
You surprise me now with your tenacity
you skeletal lioness, chomping the neck
of the very last giraffe.

My Mother's Swan Song

My mother is dancing her last dance. I'm off line, holding her hand. Please keep her in your prayers. Her name is Frances.

Don't Get Mad; Get Even

They have messed with my mother, and I’m out looking for blood.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Martin Luther King

My mother, who suffers the incapacity of late stage Alzheimer’s, was taken to a local hospital’s ER recently for a routine check after an unobserved fall in her care facility. She had taken that ride two times before in the ambulance. It was the facility’s requirement to protect itself. Both times previously, she’d been checked out and sent back within a few hours. She looked fine this time, too.

This time, however, something catastrophic happened. Hospital personnel took her information packet, containing my mother's identification, medical status, Do Not Resuscitate order, Power of Attorney for Health Care and Advance Directive, emergency contact numbers for her power of attorney agent and secondary agent, and other stuff. It was practically duct-taped to her body. My state’s law requires them to notify family within 24 hours of her arrival at the hospital.

Without gaining informed consent from her family, without contacting her family, without reading her Power of Attorney for Health Care and Advance Directive, the hospital chose to sedate her, restrain her hands, run an IV line, pump her full of fluids, run a battery of tests, find fluid in her lung, and admit her with her hands tied. Then they all failed to call us, her family and agents, for the next four and a half DAYS.

"And where the offense is, let the great axe fall."

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Mom’s directive specifies no treatment to prolong her life. When the hospital folks ran the IV line, they violated her directive. She tried to inform them in the only way she could: by trying to yank out the IV. So they tied her hands in restraints for the next four and a half days. She couldn’t even scratch her nose.

We learned on day five that she was there because a doctor used her medical file to call my brother, Mom’s agent, and ask permission to do a lung puncture. Brother called me and we raced to the hospital, told the doctor about the Advance Directive in her file, and he immediately called in Hospice, because pneumonia is the number-one killer of Alzheimer’s patients. My mother has been pleading to die for over a year now.

So Mom was sent home with hospice care, she survived, and she continues to live in a semi-vacant, endlessly pacing, state, unable to communicate, dress herself, feed herself, and all the other lost abilities that Alzheimer’s has stolen from her.

When informed of their failure to notify family, the hospital staff was aghast. But no one made an apology. When I sent a complaint to the home office, the risk management department called me up and said they were sorry. It wouldn’t happen again.

I’ve been researching federal and state law lately, trying to ascertain what legal power resides in a person’s Advance Directive. The answer seems to be: zip. zero. zilch, when you are a medical institution or a doctor. You can ignore the instructions of a patient, violate her body and her wishes, and you will suffer no consequences. More than half the time, says one study, the instructions are ignored by hospitals and doctors. “Simply,” say the researchers, “as far as we could tell, advance directives were irrelevant to decision making” by medical providers. And they can do it without facing a medical malpractice judgment.

"Don't get mad, get even."

Robert F. Kennedy

The deal is, there’s no "incentive" for a doctor or a medical facility to adhere to an advance directive. The courts in America have time and again dismissed lawsuits against medical providers for failure to comply with a patient’s instructions. In essence, the individual’s right to refuse treatment isn’t backed by law when you need it most.

Medical providers can violate patient rights flagrantly without fear of being held accountable, because the courts refuse to penalize those providers for their failure to honor the directive. Your Advance Directive is a legal document with no power of enforcement. Until state and/or federal law changes that situation, you have no civil right to be protected from medical personnel who issue life-prolonging treatment.

The courts that back the medical providers claim there’s no way to compensate a person for “wrongful living.” The pain and suffering of the patient whose life is “saved” has no value to the courts.

Nothing is going to change unless medical providers face a big hit to their pocketbooks. You would call that an “incentive” to change behavior: a court awarding punitive damages to someone like my mom. The federal and state governments need to create a policy that imposes civil liability and promises stiff penalties for a physician or medical facility that ignores a patient’s clear wishes.

The Baby Boomer Generation had best wake up and fight for their civil right to self-determination. All those Advance Directives we so dutifully fill out, at this point, aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, even though they adhere to state law. There is no state law, let alone federal law, that says anyone has to pay attention to them.

But I’m mad as hell, and I’m going to hook up with an attorney advocate, and we’re going to sue the sons of beaches. They messed with my mom.

“Justice is never given; it is exacted, and the struggle must be continuous.”

A. Philip Randolph

Riding the Rails with Mom

“I see the train,” said my mother, touching her walker.
“It sure keeps you moving, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Yes,” she answered, looking up at me in surprise, “it does.”

My daughter and I visited Mom on Sunday morning. She had a glow, said my daughter afterward, when we found her in the dining area with the other elders. She had a sprig of jasmine tucked behind her ear.

We went outside with her to the padded chairs under the umbrella. Mom wasn’t feeling very communicative, and she played with the woven end of her belt while I told her all the news I could think of. When I stopped talking, there was a silence, and then she said that thing about the train. Maybe she was just waiting for me to shut up. A little later she said, “It’s sad about the trees.”

I don’t know for sure what she meant, but last winter she was concerned about the leafless trees. She thought they were dying because she had forgotten about seasons. So I told her, “But the trees came back! We had lots of rain. They’re doing well now.” I smiled at her. She said, “Oh, yes,” and smiled back.

The activity girls came out and asked if we would like to go to Sunday devotions and singing in the big room. We took the long walk down to it, me leading with my hand lightly resting on Mom’s train, and Milo playing Caboose.

The girls handed out the words to some great old hymns and started the CD. I gave the folder to Mom, and she held it steadily in front of her while I pointed out the words and sang them as loudly as I could. A friendly lady with a spectacular voice sat beside us. Between the songs, she told me that she had five grandchildren. Each time was brand new again.

Mom didn’t smile but she seemed to take pleasure in the music. It was lovely, looking at and listening to the elders, some nodding, some singing, some just sitting patiently. The girls read one of Psalms, and then we said the Lord’s Prayer. Mom didn’t speak it. When it was over we sat waiting for our turn to be taken back to Mom’s “neighborhood.” One of the girls came over and thanked us for coming. I asked her if she had seen “Benjamin Button.” “This is like that,” I said. She said yes it was.

I told my daughter as we walked back, “This is like preschool too.” Milo said, “It’s sad.”

When we got ready to go, I told Mom I loved her. “I love you too,” she said and kissed me. Milo said, “I love you, Grandma,” and Mom said, “I love you too.” Milo put her cheek next to her grandma. “Give me a kiss, Grandma.” And Grandma kissed her cheek.

They age backward, I told Milo when we went to the car. They lose their abilities in the same order they gained them. I think my mom is about two years old now. It’s just like the “Benjamin Button” film, I said again because it has been on my mind. It’s really sweet. “I’m glad I went to see her,” Milo said. “It’s nice to know she knows who I am.”

And it’s nice to know she knows she is loved.

~~~~~~

My Poetry Bus friends: If you'd like to hear me reading a poem about the significance of one's name, click this link, wait patiently for the file to download, then go to 7:21 and listen until 8:21.

http://kcbx.org/mp3archive/eoa091202.mp3

~~~~~~

Were you saying goodbye, Mom?

Can you tell a story in exactly 55 words? That's the G-Man's Flash Friday challenge. Check out the challengers here.

After Alzheimer’s destroyed you,
you had one glowing day, clear as sunlight,
when your blue eyes twinkled at me.
Your face was beautiful in its ancient joy.
You reached up and cupped my face
in your hands, smiling as you studied me.
It’s wonderful you said, and I knew

it was dying that you described.

~~~~~

Learning About Dying

We’re taking Mom home to her room at the care home today. She’s been such a great gal in the hospital, by all staff accounts from the long weekend before we knew she was there, and by my own experience Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Wednesday, she actually called me by my name for the first time in a couple of months, she recognized her sister, and she said to me, "That's a big smile." She spit her medication at the nurse this morning, and this afternoon she nicely told the pretty young doctor, "You have a nasty nose."
She meant to say, "You have a pretty face," because that's what she has always said to young women since getting dementia. But she gave us a good laugh.

I’ve learned an awful lot about dying this week. I’ve learned what the physical process is, how the body and the person living in it prepare it to stop functioning. I’ve learned how death often comes, the sounds it creates, how hearing is the last sense to go, why Mom’s legs and hands are so cool to the touch (even the bloodstream knows what to do and where to send the remaining energy).

Hunger and thirst go away, as they seem to be doing in Mom, an instinct that naturally reduces the strain on the body’s organs (like the gastro-intestinal tract), which are growing weaker. It appears also to be more comfortable and relieves the person of several potential conditions that would be distressing, like fluid buildup in the throat or lungs, having to poop or pee and not being able to, etc.

What stands out for me is how well organized it seems to be. The brain might be shrinking and disintegrating, but it remains a good director, as if God designed it that way.

When a person can no longer say more than six words in a row, the brain stops controlling the swallow reflex and the involuntary muscles involved. The person then can’t swallow. But that doesn’t matter, because hunger and thirst have disappeared. Starvation and dehydration develop next, and they seem to anesthetize nerves that conduct pain messages. Hospice knows how to relieve any discomfort that arises out of the process.

I’m thankful to God for my mother’s long life. She wasn’t perfect, but she was human, and the Almighty gave me lots of good years with her.
I’m so glad my mother left an Advance Directive and made her wishes known every which way but loose. That makes it so simple: just do what I know she would do. (She would jump out of bed and run naked through the streets if that would get her to heaven sooner.)

Mom's in Hospital

*****

We just learned yesterday morning (Tues) that Mom has been hospitalized with pneumonia since Thursday night. Four days without a friendly face! Heads are going to roll at the hospital. I'm sharpening my axe ...
Mom has advanced Alzheimer's. The most common cause of death for someone who suffers from Alzheimer's is pneumonia. Ergo, Mom might die of pneumonia. We're asking God to give her peace and comfort. If you pray, please add Mom's peace and comfort to your list.
We're chosing to do nothing about the pneumonia except administer antibiotics. Today, Mom clearly said, "Oh, God, please take me home." Later she laughed at some random image or idea that crossed her mind. The doc is calling in Hospice. I'll meet them tomorrow. Thanks for your prayers.

I Tried Laying Hands on My Mother

A hank of hair rests on the bony forehead
which swells above the chin
which droops toward the neckline
bisected by the wide slash of mouth
An immobile line.

I brush back the thatch of white
But it falls through my fingers
I touch the knobby cheekbones that rise
like mountains above the sunken cheeks
Every movement of my hand is forced
against a tide

Suddenly I remember my daughter
at the age of five, lying on her bed
with the nightlight on. Her eyelashes
make little wings on her cheeks
I draw on her soft little face with a finger
tip, and I sing a monotonous song:
I’m skiing down your nose and skiing
round your eyeballs…I’m skiing round
your cheeks and down around your mouth

She lies on her bed still as a statue
while my fingertip skis over her face
and I love it, and she loves it, she asks
for this. And this I can’t give
to my mother, lying still as a statue
on her bed. My hand will not allow it.

A Fatal Headache

Since Sunday, Mother's Day, I've been a daughter (blue) more than a mother (proud) or a human being (reasonably content).

"Your arms are thick and flexible," observed my mother, in a moment of clarity on Sunday.
In response, I held out my arms (I was wearing a bright red sweater) and did a series of arm exercises for her. She smiled at that.

"It's very easy to lie down on the rug on the books," she said. I wonder what this meant. She used to read many books. She encouraged us to read books. In her final years as a reader, she went through Reader's Digest Condensed Books like water. I'm not clear on what she meant by lying down on the rug on the books, but it's a whole sentence, and that's good.

"[Unintelligible] happened to Germany?" she said softly. I took it as a concrete question and answered it in the context I knew she used to be keenly interested in. "Germany was devastated by the war," I said. "It was defeated and divided into East and West. It was rebuilt, and later it was reunified."

She stared at me. I stared at her. Where would we go next? I was pleased we were having a conversation.

Later that night, I Googled "Alzheimer's stages" and surfed the medical websites, learning about my mother's brain. I learned about dying neurons and tangles and the slowly shriveling brain. This is my mom, I thought as I watched the illustrations of the brain areas being destroyed by protein plaque and tangled up nerve endings.

Fifty percent of the blood in our bodies flows through a mighty mass of vessels in our heads when we are thinking hard, planning, organizing, writing, exercising the brain. Vivid sparks of life transmit information. It literally lights up.

My mother's brain is like a spaceship with its systems shutting down. The mainframe computer has a virus. Last to go will be the engine room, trying to propel the ship in darkness.

She has entered stage six of Alzheimer's seven stages. The ability to form words will keep her there in stage six. Words are precious connections between the brain and the world. When the brain fails to make words, the body systems begin to fail. In stage seven, only sounds can be made, and the brain loses its ability to voluntarily move muscles. Physical deterioration follows relentlessly.

I woke with a headache this morning, but my head is full of words. Words keep us alive. How do you like that?

~~~~~~

Stripped Down to the Basics

With Magpie Tales, we’re given a photo and we must tell some story connected to the photo. Above is this week’s prompt. Visit more interpretations of the photo here.

My mother speaks this tale. She is losing her grip on what we call reality but she holds on to what she is: daughter, sister, walker with quilts.

My full life is stripped down to a cane, a sewing table, and an old cedar chest.

I have been an imperfect woman, and many other people along the way: a daughter, sister, wife, mother, lifeguard, meat cutter, cooker of bread and beans in the lean years, business owner, unhappy widow, grandmother, gardener, worker bee.

I have raged, sung hymns, slapped my daughter, loved my husband. I have put my shoulder to the plow all my life long.

I have witnessed the birth of my great-grandsons and I have walked mountains. I have bowed before the giant sequoia. I have bowed before the altar of my Maker, and I have repented.

I have watched my sons grow up to be men. I have sweat and swept and wept. I have lived my life in blue jeans.

Now my life is pared down to this: I seek my way among confusing halls and lost rooms with my cane. I have sent the sewing machine away but kept the slim table my father made. My mother’s cedar chest still rests, as always, at the foot of my bed.

I no longer know the man in the photo on the nightstand. It was all so long ago, and he is so young. I claim nothing anymore.

My mother’s quilt, colorful cotton patches, hand-stitched by arthritic hands, is what I carry now. I take it with me on my journeys through the hallways that spin and wander through my life, and I hold it like a child holds a favorite blanket. I know my mother made this quilt. I know little else.

I know you when you come to me in dreams. I am a girl, walking with my sister through the leaves on our way to school. I see my brother, teaching me to dance. I see your happy eyes.

I know that My Redeemer Liveth. And though I cannot sing, I know the words, and I will know His face, when he comes for me.

~~~~~~

The Alzheimer Poet

My poor old Mama
with her disintegrating brain
shows distinct signs of humor
as she arises from the dust of herself:

How are you?
Better than eating dirt!

Would you like to do something?
I’d rather do that than play in the mud!

Are you happy?
I’m happy!

Life seems to have just opened up!

~~~~~~

When she said that last bit about life opening up, Mom spread out her hands, making like a flower opening to the sun. Hooray for my mother! Thank you for your prayers. I have a lightness of spirit since visiting her yesterday and finding her so perky, speaking Alzheimer’s poetry again.

This is a Friday Flash 55, a tale told in exactly 55 words. It’s hosted by the G-Man, Mr. Knowitall, and you’ll find dozens of creative storytellers on his blog today. Like my mom says, It’s better than eating dirt.

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Peace in Difficult Hours

These are days that try my soul. Why would God afflict a woman who loved Him with a terrible case of dementia? Why would He give her a healthy body and disinegrating brain?

As she struggles in the new care home, wetting herself, endlessly pacing without sleep, thinking whatever fragments of thoughts are allowed through that mind, I struggle with deepening depression. It is Spring, life is good, there is much that is fine. But my mom is so ill. It's an oppression that follows me wherever I go.

My cat Mystery is interested in life. She wonders nothing about the inequities or spiritual conundrums that plague me. This morning I am doing a 2nd step with a sponsee. I praise my creator for lifting me out of the depths of insanity in which I dwelt for 37 years. I show Him my fist in memory of Mom.

Alice Goes to Wonderland

This is my mother posing in front of a favorite barn before she became so bad.

Since the FBI closed down Mom's home, I am stunned and desparately unhappy. Of the half-dozen facilities we visited, all turned Mom down but one, the most expensive 30 miles from home. She didn'' even have to bare her breast to be rejected. She simply had to have occasional outbursts of lucidity.They want TV watchers.

Wednesday night, we went to a local store for a few items for her. She would be staying with me until suitable accommodations could be found. There in the front of the large store, she had a meltdown. She wouldn't follow me, claim any affiliation with me, loudly claimed I had to leave her alone. Reason makes no difference in a meltdown.

I was thankful for the strangers who quietly distracted her while I ran and got my car and drove it onto the sidewalk. Strangers gently walked her to the car and several of us gently pushed her in. I locked the door and we were off, me sobbing and her angry shouting NO! repeatedly. I actually screamed at her. I screamed I hate you! I hate what you've become!

The night was not over. I aimed Mom at the door of the house and walked up the sidewalk with her. My hubby Joe answered and so did the three beagles. Mom began shouting that this was not her place and she had been kidnapped. In an effort to relieve her of her packages, she struck out at one of us, we ducked, and she went down. She landed on the edge of the low bookshelf and ripped a four inch deep gash in her arm. She fought like a banshee. We called 911. They calmed her down.

Now to the ER and its hours and hours of waiting. For some reason, I think to do with her dementia, they decided to keep her overnight at 2 a.m.. They have kept her for five nights. She can't walk, she can't talk coherently, but she can sure eat.

I meanwhile, feed her meals by hand, make calls to care homes, taking her for walks, and manage to burn up some hours doing I don't know what.

I am calling her "Mommy" now. God help us . Make her heart stop. Please.

For the whole story about the FBI raid, see Tuesday's or Wednesday's post. At this point, my brain is a sieve.

******

Can You Smell the Sound?

Oh I can smell the sound...

My mother, March 2010

When I arrived at the care home where my demented mother lives, she was beside her bed, folding and refolding her underwear. She had torn at the fragile skin of her arms with her fingernails until there were substantial wounds. This was a disturbing new behavior.

I helped her get dressed and took her for a long drive through the green hills and pastures. We had our usual Alice in Wonderlandish conversation. I pointed out a new bridge. Yes, she said, “We played there because it wasn’t being worked on that particular day.” I pointed out a horse in a pasture. “Look at that camel!” she said.

I had to stop the car at one point to make a phone call. When I was finished, she looked out the window at the tall green grass. “Oh,” she said happily, “I can smell the sound…”

It was a beautiful moment. Never mind I had to cut her fingernails because she’s forgotten how, and it grossed me out. Never mind the one-sided conversations. She could smell a sound! How wonderful! I’ve never heard of such a thing.

I was lectured yesterday by an older woman friend who went through Alzheimer’s with her mom. “This is just another part of her journey,” said my friend. “Laugh at it when you can. Go with the flow.”

Well, here is what flowed last night, a poem from my mother’s comment.

Oh I can smell the sound
a freesia makes in its sweet purity
It is the sound of all life has to offer
in one fragrant package of petals
It is the sound of roots growing
deeper, the sound of joy,
the smell of music swelling
on the breeze from the west…

Fragments of My Mother

Today, my mother has forgotten how to write her name.
For this woman, an avid reader who trained me to love libraries, a business owner who put her signature to documents all her life, Alzheimer’s disease has destroyed that final link with written language.
Her writing skills have been deteriorating for quite a while. She couldn’t spell anymore. But even three weeks ago, she was able to sign a card to her sister. It seemed instinctive, her hand shaping and flowing through the many letters of her complicated last name. For 59 years she scrolled out that signature.
Today, her name was missing parts, whole segments had vanished, and it broke my heart.
Okay. We trudge on.

*****

I have missed my visits to friends in the blogging community. For a few days here, I’ve had to knuckle down and work on assignments. Met my deadline, though, yesterday.
There’s something succinct about my tendency to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done by tomorrow, and it’s written in the Alcoholics Anonymous guide to the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions:
“Consider, too, our talents for procrastination, which is really sloth in five syllables.”
I stand convicted of sloth.
But today all that is behind me, and I’m looking forward to a drive through the beautiful green countryside with a brother and my mother. The natural world in my neck of the woods flourishes with the generous rains after a three-year drought.
For some reason, a verse from the 23rd Psalm leaps into mind. “He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”

*****

My next plan is a small-press competition called the “Poetry Project: Fragments from Sappho.”
Sappho was a timeless ancient Greek poet whose body of work includes numerous fragments of poems. Tupelo Press challenges poets to write a poem using one of 10 fragments as a first line or title.
I’m going to play around with a few. Here’s one, with a first line of a Sappho fragment:

YOUR DELICATE LAUGHTER SOARS

But I to you of a white goat sing
a tune more lusty than your sensibilities
You are too fine a goblet
to bear the peasant wine I pour
while dreaming of my shepherd

*****