Homeward bound
She sits on her bed in a room empty of all else save a modest suitcase and a wicker nightstand with a note taped to it that reads, “Give to Paula the hairdresser.” The bed’s going to Pam, one of her caregivers.
In the closet rests a single pair of empty sneakers, for tomorrow; a few stark wire hangers dangle above. The living room holds another suitcase, larger, next to a wheelchair and two walkers instead of the usual sofa. Otherwise, just an expanse of wall-to-wall beige carpet, holes in the walls where the pictures used to hang, and the large windows that gave her a view of the trees in all seasons.
My mother’s going home. What can “home” mean, at the age of nearly nine-three?
Not the home where she grew up as an only child surrounded by four adults, the large Victorian by the harbor with the rose garden that her grandfather lovingly tended. They dressed every evening for dinner there; he wore spats on his shoes and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Not the home she lived in for forty years while she raised her children and had parties where thirty sharply-dressed couples danced in the basement, and where she was widowed still young enough to be vigorous and healthy.
Not the apartment where she lived for eight happy years with my stepfather, whom she’d met when she was eighty and he eighty-five. He’d taken one look at her at a Florida party and said, “That’s for me,” and they were together till shortly before he died a few weeks after 9/11.
Nor is it the home she’s lived in for the last five years, an independent living facility for the elderly in this New England town where I reside. It’s far away from the New York City borough where her family settled a hundred and sixty years ago, and where she’d lived her whole life prior to coming here. No, this place has never been—could never be—home to her, despite its familiarity and elegant comfort.
This town isn’t even home to me, although I thought it might become one when I moved here six years ago during one of those “times of transition” (translated: upheaval and heartbreak) in life. I thought it would most likely be a resting place for some small time before I’d move on. But instead my stepfather died, my mother couldn’t live alone, and there was no place that suited her needs close to home.
So she came here, and I became the person who saw to it that things went relatively smoothly; who found the doctors for her (although she kept switching them without telling me), who took her out for dinner every Sunday night (her residence didn’t serve dinner on Sundays), who raced over in a crisis and tried to make things better.
A year and a half ago my mother had a stroke, a crisis beyond my power to soothe. And though she’s made all sorts of “progress” since then, she’s reached a shaky equilibrium where she still needs a certain amount of help, and still has a great deal of fear.
Two months ago a friend of hers from New York told her that an assisted living facility was being built in the community where my mother had lived most of her life. My mother made inquiries, my brother visited the model room and talked to the management, and a few weeks later she announced that in early November, when the place opened, she was moving.
And now that day has come, and my nephew is driving her down to her new room in a new building filled (or soon to be filled) with new people. She’s anxious; that much is clear. But a powerful urge to go home is driving her, as well.
At ninety-two, even though she once knew thousands of people, a far greater number of them are now dead than are alive. But since she knew so very many, there’s still a surprising number left. They’re not necessarily the people she would have chosen if she’d had her pick; but she didn’t, and none of us do. The survivors are a random bunch, but they call her on the phone and they swear they’ll come visit her now that she’ll be nearby. I hope they remember their promises.
I place her pills in plastic compartments as I talk to her. I could almost do this in my sleep by now: the beta blockers in the ones marked “morning” and “evening,” the coated aspirin in the “lunch” slots, the vitamins everywhere, the Lipitor and the this and the that in their allotted places. I’ve got enough containers for one month’s worth; after that a nurse or nurse’s aide will be doing this.
She already relies on the kindness (and competence) of strangers. In her new place there’ll be a new bunch of strangers who will become, if not friends, at least trusted and familiar helpers. She’s said goodbye to the crew who’ve been taking care of her for the past year and a half, wonderful women all. She’s said goodbye to her fellow residents, too, but she never made good friends here and is focused on the ones to whom she’ll soon be saying hello.
And I? It may be time for me to move on, as well. If she hadn’t been here, tying me to this place, I might have moved years ago. Probably to a larger city, one with more action and more choices—or the illusion of more action and more choices. Soon I’ll be writing more about this, and maybe have some sort of contest, with a list of desired characteristics: choose the perfect city for neo.
But that’s another post for another time. Right now I’m thinking about my mother, hoping she finds what she’s looking for in her new place—if she doesn’t, I imagine I’ll hear about it soon enough.
But in one way she’s blessed: she knows where home is. How many of us can say that, any more?
Reading this is like coming upon a lovely vista, during a walk through your blog.
My Mom suffered a stroke in April. She has made a miraculous recovery, and is well on her way to returning to 100% recovery.
Several of the ladies she rehabbed with selected future residences based upon their feel for the current residents of those facilities. If they felt they would make friends there, they were eager to go. Maybe your Mom did some of that reconnaissance.
When you take care of family, grandparents, kids, parents, whatever; it limits you but it also anchors you. It tells you who you are. Which I think is more important than where you are.
Obviously, you have good verbal skills, and the Internet provides an opportunity for self-fulfillment. So that part of your life is covered.
I am not sure changing location is the key, at any point. Not to be metaphysical about it, but most of our reality is inside of us.
Good luck in any case.
Not the home where she grew up as the only child surrounded by four adults, the large Victorian by the harbor with the rose garden that her grandfather lovingly tended. They dressed every evening for dinner there; he wore spats on his shoes and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Imagine being able to remember what that place and time was like.
I sometimes feel a little old when I have to explain to my kids what life was like before DVDs – even before VCRs.
My grandmother remembers what it was like to write with a quill pen, she remembers fetching water from the backyard well, watching Lindbergh fly over Ireland on his way to Paris. She’s also had a lot of homes, but even though she misses something about each one, she was always able to adapt to change. I wonder if the ability to adapt well is one factor that helps people live to such a fine old age?
I hope your mom enjoys her new home.
Wonderful post on what we all have or will face as the older generation fades away. I buried my dear father several years ago and treasure every minute of the time we all spent rallying around him as he died a natural death to the end.
Today, after untying many family knots in ensuing years, I have one foot firmly planted in the home of my roots and the other enjoying a little freedom and adventure here and there.
I have to say, it’s wonderful. Every chapter has its benefits and challenges. But going home to a city I still love soon in Middle American is the best of all.
Enjoy the richness of the process, as I’m sure you will. Your mother is a fortunate woman, indeed.
How very blessed you are Neo! To have her still, alert, alive and active enough to decide she wants to move, one more time perhaps, to the area that she most calls home. Yes, it will likely increase greatly your ‘on the road time’ but the knowledge that she is content and at peace overrides all of that doesn’t it? I lost my Mother when she was just 37 and my most beloved granny 16 months later. And admit to having felt somewhat ungrounded and adrift ever since that horrid time. I never got to know my Mother as an adult daughter, you are so fortunate to have had that experience. I am, however, blessed to have as my best friend my now adult daughter. And the circle goes on, does it not? I can’t really imagine how difficult it has been for you to see her go, to let loose this string of sorts that has bound you…to her and to your location. But she is returning to where she wishes to be and your opportunities for change have opened. I’ll be anxious to read of your criteria for your possible new location! Having been in military for ….uhm….many years, seems there is no area of the country I’ve not called home for a time. You’ve many readers I’m sure who will have multiple opinions to offer! Her memories remind me of my great-grandfather in the last year or so of his life. He could not remember who, exactly, I was….but lordy what he did remember! The first time he ever saw a car, or a plane, the life of a coal miner back then….I pumped him for everything i could get him to speak of and they are precious indeed. All my hopes for your Mother’s move, and contentment, and your search for where you next belong in this world of ours.
You’re both blessed to have each other.
Lovely post.
Neo,
Beautiful !!
What a blessing to have your Mom still around and at her age, still able to communicate so well.
Your decisions for the future will be clearer after your Mom is settled and enjoying her life at “home.”
Praying for both of you.
ExP(Jack)
Neo:
“Come grow old with me!
The best of life is yet to be:
the last – for which the first was made…”
Robert Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra
Your mother is a treasure: and the best is yet to be…
Charles
Neo –
Look into this.
I know it will be a stretch, culturally, but maybe not.
If it works out, maybe you could get something like a contract requiring season tickets for two to the San Francisco Ballet and the Chicago Symphony.
http://www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/admin21162792392
My little dad, was a strong, intelligent powerful man for our family and our community as we grew up. He kind of surprised us when lived to be 93. He out-lived my mom by nine years and he was frail and fragile at the end but we sure treasured every day we had with him.
Neo, you are indeed blessed to still have your 92 year old mother and the chance to enjoy her at this time.
Pleas just keep up your wonderful spirit and continue to share, in your most gracious prose, with us as your mother continues this journey.
Thank you also for helping me keep a perspective on the political stuff this past week.
“It may be time for me to move on, as well. If she hadn’t been here, tying me to this place, I might have moved years ago. Probably to a larger city, one with more action and more choices–or the illusion of more action and more choices. Soon I’ll be writing more about this, and maybe have some sort of contest, with a list of desired characteristics: choose the perfect city for neo.”
Pre-emptive suggestion: The Big Island
Seriously; that’s where I’ll retire…paradise.
My parents insisted on moving to Florida after my Dad retired. Shortly after my Mother had a number of strokes, leaving my Dad unable to care for her. The staff at the facility were Mom was moved to were all very nice, well meaning people, But the pay scale in the Gulf coast was so low, the turn over was huge! Dad came everyday to visit from 8am until almost dark every evening to be with her, taking a toll on his health. After almost 2 years of family members rotating back and forth from NJ we convinced my them to come back. There is no happy ending to my story, both pass away shortly after. I miss them both.
Neo-neocon:
As a former Michiganian (a native of the liberal haven of Ann Arbor) in my fifties, let me make a recommendation about relocation. If you are unafraid of driving, come to Texas. It is a marvelous place for people unafraid to work.
You can have your choices of lifestyles, too — from the business oriented (Dallas), blue-collar (the Upper Gulf Coast); rural (Piney Woods), hippy-dippy artiste (Austin), or Tex-Mex (San Antonio).
You can’t beat the seafood on the Gulf Coast, and you will find it a hoot being more liberal than your neighbors, rather than the only conservative on your block.
And, btw — despite what you hear in the Northeast, Texans are probably the most laid-back people in the world about lifestyles. As long as you don’t shove it in their faces, they are live and let live.
Dear Neo,
I take care of my mother who is 82 and your essay was beautiful and reminded me of the many hard decisions we need to make as we get older. Thank you.
I lived in New Haven for 6 years, and liked it very much. The Yale community attracts a lot cosmopolitan elements to what is actually a small town. Getting to New York City is easy by either car or train, which I imagine may be important to you.
And New Haven is home to Modern Pizza, the best pizza in this spiral arm of the Milky Way.
The biggest drawback is that New Haven is in Connecticut, where there is an alarming tendency to end words with superfluous consonants and vowels. (It may just be me, but I feel an existential horror every time I see a “Shoppe”. Some things just aren’t natural.)
Getting back to being serious, thanks for a very touching essay.
The truth is that none of us get to choose what kind of old age we’ll have, or if we’ll have one at all. We can have an effect on our old age but we cannot control it. My dad died suddenly, in the middle of work that he loved. Many people envy that, but I wonder if he would have preferred to be here to take care of Mom. Mom went from walking to being unable to stand or walk in the space of a day or so, with no evidence of a stroke. At that time, she got increasingly confused and now doesn’t recognize her children at times. She’s not a gentle eccentric old lady who says unexpected things–she seems to resent the confusion. While we can’t know for sure what she’s thinking–asking her does no good–it is painful to think that she hates her old age.
Your mother and you have been given immeasurable blessings.
Yes, I agree, go to Texas. Some place with a lot of strip malls and no zoning regulation. How about Waco, near your Leader’s place?
That way you won’t be surrounded by liberals in my lovely New England.
How fortunate that your Mother is still able to make choices! Mine died at 62 from a primary breast CA that metastasized to her liver. My grandmother outlived her and, while visiting in our home for Thanksgiving of 1987, suffered a stroke which took her from the relative independence of an assisted living apartment to the hospital and then the nursing home. Though she could understand what we said, she could neither speak, write nor use the right side of her body. And when she was ready for discharge after 3 weeks in the hospital, it fell my lot to tell her that she was going to a nursing home, one of the saddest tasks ever undertaken by this then 37 year old. We wanted to take her to our home but had no room and none of the requisite nursing skills. She lived from Thanksgiving through the next August and I visited nearly every day to read her the news and she was especially interested in the exploits of the Braves after baseball season opened in April of 88. She never regained her mobility or her speech but was relatively good natured in spite of her new limitations. Speech was the most difficult for her to give up being an outspoken advocate of any cause she deemed just. We celebrated her 99th birthday there with cake and candles and presents and song and our three children age six and under. So I am sorry that your Mother is going home – be glad you have her still at age 93 and enjoy each and every day for the gift that it is!
Don’t let those New Englanders who know little about Texas dissuade you … Texas should be on your list. Take it from a transplanted Connecticut/New England boy, who would never go back.
Take a trip to Austin in the Spring or Fall, so you can fall in love with the hill country before you hit the Texas summer heat.
When the time comes, we’ll have more to say.
From the sound of the New Englanders, they can’t wait to throw you out. Make their dreams come true and move to Texas.
So, what do we have to offer you as a bribe to move to Seattle?
A touching piece . . . Hard to think of our Energizer Bunny, the Goomp, entering a home. He talks about what is to come often . . . says he’s ready — but not eager — to go into that dark night . . . Hates the idea of being in a home.
Neo,
As another ‘woman of a certain age’, My hat’s off to you for your involvement. I grew up in a four generation home, and raised my children as 5th gen. Leaving it was a wrench, and mom also left to go to an independant “self contained” unit when dad was failing in his health. She’s now 90 and in *end stage renal failure (4 yrs and still tickin). She gave up driving @ 90, and relies on me 100% for getting around. We’re best friends, my daughter is cut from the same cloth; but in the East Bay area so can’t pitch in physically. Mom, is sharp, reads omnivoriously and got an i Mac @89yrs old, she emails to Australia where my big sister and all the great grandchildren reside. Get your mom on email ASAP, it will broaden her scope and encourage her to wake up every day to see what’s come in the mail. Between the walker, a new lifeline locket and weekely shoping jaunts, mom’s able to remain independant. When the time comes, she’ll come ‘home’ to stay w/ us for however many months/years she has left. We are moving a bit further away this spring, but still w/in easy reach of her for the weekly shop and emergency trips to visit. The next abode will have a spare room for visits. Eventually we hope to convince her to toss her lot in with us and recreate the old family homestead that worked so well for over 22 yrs. As for me and mine, we ARE planing on being every bit as independant or situated in an area that we can segue into a local “Golden Gehtto” as dad refered to the adult community they moved to.
Happy Hunting for the next new place, and bless you for being a good daughter.
Chrisy
God bless you and your Mom, darlin’.
I also invite you to Texas. I lived in Connecticut for a few years and found some of the folks there to be just as friendly as Texans. I’m sure you will fit right in wherever you end up.
But we’ll love you no matter who you are in Texas.
And that’s something you can’t really say in New England. Been there, done that. Wasn’t welcome, despite paying their bills. Good luck.
Subsunk
That was one of the best posts I’ve ever
read. I could relate, as my mom had a
massive stroke and struggled in a nursing home for nearly two years. There
she cheered the other lonely souls and
found some remaining meaning in her life. God be with your mom and with
you on this journey…
As a native Texan, I second the sentiments. Go to Austin in March for the wildflowers and Barton Springs, and it’s warm enough to hike in your shorts then too.
Neo;
Yours was an excellent post, and a great reminder to us 40-somethings of life’s winter challenges. Your mom is much blessed by you, oh dutiful daughter.
When I was about to emigrate to Canada from England in ’67, being eager to try somewhere new, my mum said to me, ‘You’re the same person wherever you are’. I’ve learned the truth of that one and also that you can’t go home again. If I go back now for a visit, I realise how much being here has changed me, and the folks back there don’t seem to have changed over the years one little bit, so I just don’t fit in any more. But I still miss the English countryside and the sea.
Having recently relocated here I have to put in my two cents for western Tennessee. All four seasons, and beautiful in each of them. Plus, you would cry for the cost of living I now enjoy. $380 annual property taxes (!), $10 monthly gas bill, $32 water/sewage, my highest summer electric was $145. Get out of the northeast neo…you’ll be amazed how far your income will go! 🙂
neo,
Though I don’t see good odds of you ever moving to Texas, I should say that I also live in Texas – in Ft. Worth – a jewel box of a town which almost no one knows about. Ft. Worth is home – no kidding – to some of the finest museums in the world.
Still, if somehow you moved to Texas, you really should live in Austin, or in the hill country just west of Austin. The area is beautiful – sort of a Texas style Garden of Eden. You might enjoy Austin’s hippy-dippiness: “Keep Austin Weird” being the town slogan.
I rarely waste energy defending Texas against the small-minded barbs it consistently receives. Yet, it is fun to see that so many of your readers are my in-state neighbors. It’s also fun to see their enthusiasm for a state whose inhabitants truly rever freedom, and free enterprise. The people in Texas are wonderful(neo readers – naturally). The quality of life is extremely high.
Lovely piece, Neo.
My dead father’s brother likes Texas; my year-dead mother loved spending a timeshare two weeks in Hawaii.
As an American in Slovakia, I’m often asked how often I go home.
“Every night.”