A Letter to the Son of Another Mother--Moving to Aegis Living

A Letter to the Son of Another Mother

10:00 a.m. Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Dear Jonathan,

            Mom made the transition much, much better than I thought she would, but of course this was just a transition, and we don’t know what happened when she fully realized that she had no bathtub or that her roommate is totally deaf or that Adele—the best functioning one—repeatedly introduces herself and asks, “What’s your name?”  To the same person.  When she tries to open the door requiring a combination number, an alarm goes off.  If it weren’t for that she’d get a lot of good exercise because the corridors really do provide a space to walk that’s much straighter and more extensive than her home.  Her former home.

            I think I told you about Monday, when she’d hated and feared everyone in the vicinity except for us.  We were no longer the bad guys poisoning her food.  It was Al, the sitter.  “He’s a demon.”  She knew the food—and even the water holding her dentures—was poisoned.

            But yesterday, she was radiant again and saying, “I have nothing but good things to say about Kaiser.”  She even suggested it was a good place because “it’s not so high falutin.”  I hope she doesn’t think that Aegis is high falutin.  She did say, when we were discussing a place on Friday night (about 24 hours before she was admitted to the hospital because of erratic behavior) that she wanted a place that wasn’t high falutin because “Your dad and I never believed in that.” 

            She was so much the way she’d been on Sunday, when she’d held court.  She asked Suzy about her cats, Shane and Shawn/Sean.  She asked me “Is Jonathan coming out on the fourth?” and I said yes.

            She spoke—but only briefly--of wanting to go home and being ready.  “The only thing I was doing was being  irritating,” she said.  She spoke of getting “some therapy.”  But soon we got her back on the track to Aegis.

            The B.M. aspect that was absent on Sunday (and even on the Demon Monday) was back.   But aside from that, most of the moments at the hospital were good ones.  The sitter there most of the time (not Al the demon) was Amarchi, and Mom said they’d had a lot of fun.  Mom, whose spirits always rose when she was reminded that Aegis was next to the Pleasant Hill Public Library, asked Amarchi what she thought about Aegis, and Amarchi said, “You’re gonna be fine.” 

            Mom said, “Oh, I thought you said I was going to be fun.” 

            Amarchi said, “You’re already fun.  Now you’re gonna be fine.”

            Other things she said were that she felt “as light as a feather” and at Aegis she would have “an opportunity to have people visit me.” 

            She told Amarchi she hoped that she would see her again, and Amarchi said, “I’d like to see you again, but not in a bed,.”

            Mom said, “Oh, I thought you said you’d like to see me again, but not in a bag.  I definitely won’t come back in a bag because then I’d be a ghost.”

            We’d been reading ghost stories, she and I, while Kathy and Suzy set things up in her room at Aegis.

            We read from a book of stories by women, Calyx, and we’d been reading a very engrossing short story about a Chinese woman who was adopted along with her sister by a white couple.  In the story her sister commits suicide and the woman meets a man who tells her ghost stories. 

            Mom and I really liked the story, but people kept interrupting.  This was particularly frustrating because each time they interrupted she’d go back to a page we’d already read.  By the time she finished reading it again, there would be another interruption.  So while she might say that Kaiser was perfect when it wasn’t being inhabited by demons and sadists, I’d say that Kaiser’s one fault was that it kept interrupting ghost stories.

            That was one of the times she said she was ready to leave the hospital.

            I told her Aegis was the kind of place I’d like to go to when my time comes, and she said, “Do you think you’ll be with me later?” 

            “Maybe eventually,” I said.

            We talked about when in Fall 1964, she’d gone back to school at the same college I was starting at when she was a senior and I was a freshman and both of us were honor students.  We’d be honor students at Aegis too even if we didn’t both start there at the same time.

            To the other people in the room, she described my job as one teaching students with no knowledge of English at a college so they could be “sized into English,” and even though I’m supposed to be teaching intermediate and advanced students on the academic track, this is midterm time, and I felt she had it about right.

            She really liked the collage I’d made for her.  She’d already showed it to Amarchi, and I thought the exchange was cute:

            “Did you see it?”

            “Yes, you showed it to me.”

            “I’ll bet I did.”

            The “I’ll bet I did” seemed an acknowledgement of both her short-term memory loss and the fact that she liked the collage.

            Mom told about a dream, but I don’t remember what it was!

            But the B.M. obsession persisted, and I’m thinking that she may truly be in pain, needing to go, so that it has a physical basis, but her fear that she’s going to have a disgusting accident that will turn people against her and embarrass her beyond redemption seems to be irrational.  (I do sometimes wonder whether the change she made from sleeping with Kathy to having her own room and own bed came after an accident—incontinence or worse.)

            So there were the declarations like “I don’t want to pull my pants down” and “I feel so bad to go to that place with a B.M.  It’s bursting.”  “It’s my nastiness.”

            How horrible it must feel to believe you’re disgusting.  I want to reassure her—let her know that she’s beautiful and clean and nice-smelling!

            The second (and briefly there) sitter was a black woman who was going back to school but feeling a conflict between her five-year goal and being a good mother.  She told me about Morgan Freeman’s “Prom Night in Mississippi,” and I told her about Howard’s End because she had studied women’s history.  I also mentioned Geraldine Ferraro and thought of you because that’s why, after my separation from your dad, I broke down and bought a TV—to have the broadcast of the Democratic National Convention in SF, where she was nominated.  Do you remember?  It was a tiny black and white TV, and I kept it in the closet except during those hours.  It was only on 12^th Avenue that I broke down and got a bigger colored TV, which you showed me how to program to record video cassettes

            When Mom was reading the table of contents to Calyx, she came upon the phrase Crepe de Chine and remembered that “it’s very difficult to sew on because I made your prom dress out of it, and it wasn’t ready when your date arrived….Remember to always have a paper of little gold safety pins because you can make a whole seam of safety pins.”

            When the discharge nurse interrupted our “Ghost Story” to say, “You look good in your clothes” to Mom, Mom said, “Merci beaucoup, monsieur.”

            At one point Mom and I changed places.  She sat in the chair and I lay on the bed.  The sitter came back in and said, “Now she’s the patient and you’re the sitter, and I’m just me!”    Mom said, “Well, if you’re just you, just you is plenty!”

            Mother was also quick witted and funny.  She asked me when I was going back to school, and I said, “Monday,”  and she asked me, “What’s today?”  When I said, Tuesday,” she laughed and said, “Haha.  You missed it!  They’ll probably just dock your pay.  I could write you an excuse.”

            The husband of the woman in the other part of Mom’s room came in at one point, and Mom said, “Yes, you and I saw each other in another place,” and he said, “That’s what you’ve said, but I don’t think so.  Maybe we should talk about this.” 

            I wondered whether Mom was clear on just where she was going.  She was being upbeat for us, I think as well as to keep up her own spirits.

            Shortly before she left for Aegis, she said, “This is something that I’ll do till the end of my life.  I’ll know that this will be it.” 

            But then she countered her own thought by saying, “I’m going to have new experiences, and I like new experiences, right?” 

            In “Ghost Story,” the sister telling the story finally opens the box left behind by the sister who committed suicide, and I couldn’t help thinking of Mom and her box of belongings transported to Aegis.  It’s a nice box.  I’ll show you pictures of how nicely Kathy and Suzy set up Mom’s room, but she quickly missed the one-to-one care she was getting in the hospital (as well as on Poshard). 

            Kathy had to sign still more papers and help the nurse create a medicine chart.  Mom was very polite—even gracious—to the people who wandered into her room.  (One of them was Kay, her deaf roommate.) 

            She explained that if she seemed grouchy it was only because she was having trouble with her digestive track. 

            Yelba, one of the people in charge, greeted Mom and said they’d found out that we were all vegetarians, so they’d make an omelet or a stir-fry, and they did.  Mom didn’t want to eat because she was sure she would soil the chair, so we let her walk up to the nurse’s station (past the combination locked door 4,3,2,1 Star, which Suzy opened).  That’s when I noticed how strong she was and how briskly and straight she was walking.  There was something about the lack of walking space on Poshard that encouraged her to walk stooped over.

            But once she was given something to help her B.M., we three sat down at the table, where a care-giver called Eva introduced and welcomed her and those able to do so applauded. 

            Mom said, “I’m very happy to be here,” the way a monarch must speak to her people even when she’s in pain.

             But she whispered to Suzy and me in reference to all the brain-dead people around her, “This isn’t a very lively crowd.  I don’t see anyone I can talk to.” 

            Suzy reminded her of Adele, the lively one, and I reflected on their conversation so far.

“Hi, What’s your name?”

“Nadine.  What’s yours.”

“Hi, I’m Adele.”

“I’m very happy to meet you, Adele.”

“Hi, what’s your name?”

But Ada also quotes a very long sort of religious affirmation she knows by heart, saying something about how her purpose in life is to serve the Lord and she can do this by not complaining about all the pain and misery…  Not exactly that but enough like that for Mom to say, delicately, “That has a muted sadness about it.”

             Then Mom recited some Biblical verses. 

            Shortly after Kathy’s two hours filling out papers, when we were back in Mom’s bedroom, Mom told Adele, “One thing I like to do is give massages,” and Adele turned around and said, “See how quickly I turned around,” which I thought was a wonderful variation on “Hi, what’s your name?” and on the poem with the “muted sadness.”

            At one point, sitting on the bed, Mom said very simply, “I’m losing my home and everything that’s familiar to me.  I’m losing my partner, who will probably have someone else move in, and that’s all right.  Probably Tom.”

            “No, Kathy says she loves Tom, but she would hate to live with him,” I told her.  “Don’t tell Tom I told you this.”

            We hugged Mom and said goodbye.  She wanted Kathy to bring her purse even though she doesn’t need it.  She didn’t need it on Poshard either.  She just wants it because a woman must have her purse, this extension of herself, even if the wallet inside has no money, no credit cards, and nothing but pictures.

            Before we got to the combination-lock door Mom said, “Those weren’t enough hugs,” and we went back and hugged again.  There was no crying, no pleading.

            But that was yesterday.  It turns out that Assisted Living is the higher functioning unit—the one with the nicer piano.  Mom’s section is Recollections/Memory.  Beside the doors there are 8x11 frames holding some identifying pictures as well as the name of each person.  You see people who got their degrees from Smith and Berkeley, and now their minds are completely gone.  Mom’s mind isn’t.  I wish she could get into the other section of Aegis.  If only she didn’t fear explosive bowels. 

            I left the collage for Mom to reminder how wonderful she is and how much we love her.  But the pictures of her are very recent.  The pictures they have on the walls are of their college days.  They say the long-ago is more recognizable to the residents than recent pictures.  Mom’s not quite at that stage, though. 

            I can’t help thinking about when Mom and I first took David to Napa State Hospital, where he wasn’t as bad off as the other people on his ward.

            But Mom’s being so brave.  I hope she feels the love we feel for her.

Love,   Another Mother