Elder Parents

Yesterday I had a hard day's night.

My mom, 89 years old, has had a hard few years now. The aging process has bowled a long list of travails her way. A heart attack caused by one blocked cardiac artery. The subsequent angioplasty and stent after which a frazzled cardiologist said to me: "Her arteries are like rocks." A fall that gashed her forehead. Another fall that led to a coumadin-bruise on her right hand. That's the particularly vicious sort of bruise that leaves one's blood-swollen hand the size of a catcher's mitt. It took two months to return to normal. Another fall wherein she broke her pubic symphysis. This is a part of the hip that doesn't require surgery, but it's an extremely painful and prolonged healing process.

Along the way there have been so many hospitalizations and stints in rehab that I've lost track. The latest was two months long. During this time, we realized and agreed that Mom returning to live with her younger sister, my aunt, in her split-level would be dangerous and downright impossible.

Skipping over the tortuous string of decisions and steps taken, yesterday was the day we were to move my mom into a Continuing Care Retirement Community. I suppose I should refrain from tying us to a certain place by stating its name, but it's a beautiful and vibrant facility. There's good food, and it's hot. My dear mother has a vehement obsession with food being the proper temperature. During this last stint in rehab, between the morphine-derived pain meds, the lukewarm legumes, the chilly chicken and the tepid tea, I do believe she almost starved herself to death at one point. Hot food seems more important than even medications, in her path to healing.

There's also a library, all kinds of activities, a social whirl and, best of all, a well-lit art room where half a dozen residents apply themselves with vigor to the serious business of painting. My mom is a splendid oil and watercolor artist, and I haven't been able to convince her to get back into it for years. I figure that with peers involved in the process, she will be inspired to return to it.

So yesterday was move-in day. In the midst of it all we absolutely had to get to her visit at the retinal specialist. With wet macular degeneration, you don't wait around. Avastin injections are currently preserving the sight of millions of American seniors, including both my mom and my dad. (My parents were one of only about thirteen World War II couples to ever actually divorce.)

The thing about visits to retinal specialists is that they usually take more than two hours. And the actual diagnosis and treatment times take less than three minutes. It's a lot like football. But without the cheerleaders or the beer. Retinal specialists really need to do some serious time-and-motion studies. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Gilbreths would be seriously pissed off at today's retinal specialists.

Both exhausted by the dearth of time and the lack of motion, Mom and I went back to the Continuing Care Retirement Community to complete the forms, direct the excellent movers and settle in. Here's where it got tough on me emotinally--

I felt the same feelings as I had back when we dropped our kids off at the first day of kindergarten, years ago.

And then I combined those emotions with the older ones from when my mom always told me how hard it was when she dropped me off at kindergarten back in 1966 ... 

Time for dinner, and for the first time in years my mom had left a relatively isolated existence and joined a community. Would she make friends? Who would she play with?

She ate at a table of four. The woman on her right had a speech difficulty, so it was hard to communicate, but she had the sort of kindly face that Norman Rockwell frequently painted. The two gents at the table and I had rhyming names: Rick, Dick and Vic. How grand!

I asked Vic what he did before retiring and the main memory he went to was that he was a medic in Patton's 1st Army, and he landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day 1944.

I immediately shook his hand and said, "Thank you for doing that, sir. Thank you so much for your service."

You know what Vic said?

"Anyone would have done it."

I think not.

My dad was also in the medical part of the U.S. Army, mostly in a vast Army hospital in Marseilles. I hope everyone still thinks about what these folks did for us, from time to time.

I got Mom's room ready and went over everything I could think of, and admonished her for the thousandth time to "Be careful and don't fall again!" She seemed happy, especially about the prospect of sleeping in her own bed for the first time in two months.

When I left, I was still overwhelmed with complex emotions. The main thing was that parallel to leaving my daughters to the classroom, the dance troupe or the team, as they took each step on the long bumpy cobble-stoned road to independence. Would Mom make friends? Who would she play with? Would anyone be mean?

Old age, should we even make it there, has countless trials. We lost my mother-in-law, who I adored ever since high school, five years ago to Alzheimer's. It was the most difficult challenge we've ever faced; Alzheimer's Disease is one of human biology's most vicious flaws.

But perhaps there will yet be triumphs. Perhaps my mom will paint again. Perhaps what she creates will be magnificent. A final and uplifting mark on a world that has less of beauty in it than it should.

When my dad turned 90, I took him to see the warbird collection of a brother of a patient of mine. (A "warbird" is a military aircraft, in particular one from WWII.)

My dad had a superb time talking about and experiencing the planes he had been fascinated by all his life. Chatting to some guys who still flew them was beyond excellent.

The signature image from that day, though, was that of my dad climbing up on a massive P-47 and standing there, ninety years old, up on the wing, casually insouciant.

Aging brings countless trials. Aging is bloody awful. But once in awhile, the human spirit triumphs anyway, and it's a beautiful thing to see.

Comments

[Tom Bentley]

Rick, such a rich, deep and moving post. It covers a lot of ground, but does so with a generous and probing spirit. Man, I know what you are going through! And we both know that this complex of emotions will only grow more so. Stay the course, T.