Cognitive Dysfunction or Emotional Dysfunction?

There is a difference between “emotional dysfunction” and “cognitive dysfunction.” For those caring for an old-old, it’s helpful to understand the difference. My mother suffered from emotional dysfunction. And though it hurt my ego, it’s a pattern I was familiar with, and it was not going to change—she was more of who she had always been. It was her emotional dysfunction, not her cognitive dysfunction, that pushed my buttons. I could help her cope with the cognitive dysfunction, but that she didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts was her emotional dysfunction. And I couldn’t change that.

A post from the front line during my caregiving days.

I’ve been feeling that I’m living crown-over-slippers in the Cinderella syndrome. My mother doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate my contribution to her living. Why is that?

Well, I’ve had an epiphany. Living close to an old-old has heightened my awareness of my own immortality. The day will come when I can no longer do what I can do now, and that’s a bit of a freak out; like being the ghost of Christmas future. But what of my mother? She has my youth in her face day in and day out, reminding her of what she can no longer do; the ghost of Christmas past.

I watch my own children in the prime of their lives—raising children, boundless energy for friends and activities, and home improvement without fear of back injury and knee pain; a whole future ahead of them—and I understand a bit what my mother sees. But, unlike me, she has nothing ahead.

I ran across some information online about “emotional dysfunction” and “cognitive dysfunction.” For those of us caring for an old-old, it’s helpful to understand the difference.

My mother suffers from emotional dysfunction. And though it hurts my ego, it’s a pattern I’m familiar with, and it’s not going to change. As our parents age, it’s likely their emotional functioning will become more of what it has always been.

Cognitive dysfunction is another rabbit, and is new to all of us. It demands a new kind of response, and it’s not going to be perfected overnight. The only way to deal with it is to take it as it comes. And just when I figure it out, it changes again. How do I deal with that? Imperfectly. I make mistakes, which pushes her familiar emotional dysfunction buttons and my childhood outrage buttons and we go into battle mode. And then we forgive each other and ourselves and move on.

My mother’s frustration with old age doesn’t manifest in anger often—she is not a person given to emotions, remember? But she is angry, she must be. Her body is failing her. She can’t see, or hear, or depend on “normal” bowel function. She can’t dig in the dirt or change a light bulb or cook her own dinner. It’s outrageous! And here I am: young, active, capable. And in her face day in and day out, reminding her of days long gone, never to return. Reminding her of all she can’t do. Maybe even doing it better than she ever did it. Is she proud of me? Damn straight she is. Will she tell me? Never. Why? Lifelong emotional dysfunction. I’m beginning to see how this works.

It’s her emotional dysfunction, not her cognitive dysfunction, that pushes my buttons. I can, and am, helping her cope with the cognitive dysfunction. That she doesn’t seem to appreciate my efforts is her emotional dysfunction. And I can’t change that.

Like a child who acts out at home, but not at daycare, or an adolescent who holds it all together at school, but is alternately sullen and outraged at home, the frustrated and fearful elder lashes out at caregivers. They feel safe to let down their guard with the person closest to them. Is it appropriate? No. Is it okay? No. Is about the caregiver? No. Is it crazy-making? Yes. Is there anything to be done about it? Was there anything to be done about the toddler or the teen? It ended when they outgrew it. My mother’s will end when she dies. But I can learn to cope with it.

▪️  Time away. I realized before I started this gig that my life still needed to be about me. I’ve been here three and a half years now, and I have clung steadfastly to that resolve. My mother has occasionally challenged it, thinking I’m not earning my room and board. I take trips (but not guilt trips), I have a regular day away each week, I have coffee with friends, I spend time with my grandson (and miss the far away ones). And I have been known to assure my mother that I am earning my keep; and much, much more.

▪️ Get help. A few months after my arrival, when I realized this was not going to be the one year commitment I made, but that it would be until, well, the end of time—her time, hopefully not mine—we hired help. We are lucky she has the resources for that, my sisters and I certainly do not; but there are also volunteers and seniors’ programs, one only need look. And the parent doesn’t have to like it. I didn’t agree to “do it all,” and I’m not going to. I’m just not.

▪️  Engage in and take time for interests. Whatever they might be. Stay relevant to yourself. Follow your curiosities. You won’t get this time back.

▪️ Let go of expectations. I came here thinking there would be emotional recovery. Maybe it happens for some parents and adult children, but I think it’s most unlikely, and then only if the parent is deeply sunk into dementia. We don’t change our spots; certainly not in old age. Lose the glass slippers and pull out the hip waders, there is deep shit ahead. And put blinders on that tiara.

My mother depends on me now, like I used to depend on her. It’s a radical change. And I do just about everything wrong. It’s how it is. And, of course, it’s not how it is. It’s her circumstances that are wrong, not me; it’s her circumstances she is angry at, not me. We are doing well enough, my friends. And even Cinderella got her paradise in the end.

When I Am An Old Woman

Daughter on Duty, January 2015

Mama—whose ENT told her this week she was close enough to 99 to call it that, since she will be the next time she comes to have her ears cleaned out—is fond of telling me what I will understand when I am her age. I will understand what it’s like to be old. What it’s like to lose control over things. What it’s like to lose your independence. What it’s like to feel guilty that I didn’t do more for my mother. Because she wishes she had known all those things so she would have done more for her mother. Then she wouldn’t have spent the past two-and-a-half decades feeling guilty for whatever it is she feels guilty about.

My sisters and I have all pointed out to her that her mother was difficult. That she did the best she could and she has not one thing to feel guilty about. We have wondered why the lesson she learned was not how to be more grateful for everything her daughters do for her. But this post is an exploration of what I hope I understand at 99 because of this experience, rather than what she wants me to learn.

1. It is not all about me. Nor should it be. It would be nice, of course! Don’t we all want it to be all about us all the time? Get over it.

2. If salting my food makes me happy and knocks a day off my life, so be it. In fact, be grateful if it does.

3. There is no cure for old age. Let doctors save their time for the young with life ahead and treatable maladies. *

4. If my child wants to live in my home to care for me, and I can’t talk her/him out, give them the house. Adapt to their decor, their belongings, their organization; or pretend to. Get over it and be grateful to still be in my home, if that is what works best for everyone involved. (See number one.)

4-1/2. Talk her/him out of it.

5. Move to a small dwelling, on a bus line, or walking distance to a grocery store, library, coffee shop if I want to be independent. Otherwise don’t complain about not being independent.

6. Complain to a friend, or a therapist, or a minister, or a tree, or the cat about my children. Not to my children.

6-1/2. Have a cat.

7. Treat a paid caregiver as a companion, not as hired household help.

8. Treat an unpaid child as a partner, not as hired household help.

9. Don’t treat an adult child like a not-adult child. I may think my child will always be my child; but glory be, thanks to me, or no thanks to me, they have grown up. Let them be grown up. They might even know stuff. Gasp. I might even have taught it to them.

10. There is more than one way (my way) to do everything. Some might even be better than my way. Gasp. If it’s not, keep my mouth shut unless asked for advice.

11. If someone fixes my dinner for me and all I have to do is sit down and eat it, just say “thank you.”

12. Don’t feel guilty for what I didn’t do, for mistakes made, for words said, for words not said. Just say, “I’m sorry,” even if the only person I can say it to is myself. Then let it go.

13. Seek information before making accusations. Then skip the accusations. Who needs that shit?

14. Own up to being forgetful or confused. Put a big ol’ sign on the bathroom mirror, “Remember, you forget stuff!” Let it be okay that my child is the keeper of memory. In fact, be glad for it. Say “Thank you for keeping track of the details! I’m old! I can’t remember shit!”

14.5. Say “shit” a lot. Except in the #15 usage.

15. If I can’t see or hear or walk or sleep or poop, assume everyone knows that. Don’t tell people every time I open my mouth. See number one.

16. There is always someone worse off than I am. If there is not, and I deal well with my worst-off status, I win!

17. Realize that we are all interdependent all our lives. Let that be okay. There is no independent and dependent.

18. Don’t be 99. Don’t make getting old the end all, be all. Save up pills. Or something. The oldest person doesn’t win shit.

19. Give this list to my children to read to me when I am old. I’ll probably need a reminder.

20. See number one.

My mother is teaching me so much! Just not what she thinks she’s teaching me.

* I have a different feeling about #3 in 2023. Doctors need to care more about elders—mostly they just need listening skills. But all the rest are still spot on.

What’s on Your Plate?

This “Daughter on Duty” blog post, cut from the Mother Lode manuscript, was written long before I understood that encouraging my mother to continue to age in place was possibly a very big mistake.

I was chauffeur last week to Mama and our neighbor Sandy for a visit with a long time friend. Chloe, largely debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, lives in a progressive care community 50 miles away. Both Sandy and Chloe are nearly 20 years younger than Mama, who likes to imagine that she is the more fit because she doesn’t use a walker; and, ergo, all concern needs to paid to their infirmities. Perhaps worrying about them makes her feel stronger and more able to ignore the fact that they can see and hear. Whatever gets you through the night.

The visit has been in the works for weeks. By that I mean obsessed over. Picking the date, misremembering the date, considering changing the date. Lunch out or lunch in. What car to take that will be comfortable for Sandy. My small SUV will be difficult for her to get into. Mama’s car might need repairs. (Mama’s car has no air conditioning, the only concern in reality, but not one she thinks of.) What time to arrive in Shelton; what time to leave home, allowing time to get Sandy and her walker in and out of the car; how long it takes to drive there; how far it is from the interstate, there might be traffic lights to consider; wanting to arrive in time to have time to have time.

Mama wants to orchestrate it all, and her preference is to do it without getting any real information, but to stick with her modus operandi: Speculation. Which is not to say without multiple phone calls to all parties. She makes up what she thinks will be the barriers and presents them along with her idea of solutions. Sandy tells her getting into my car is not a problem, but we solve the dilemma by taking Rebecca’s Outback. I tell her I have the directions from the internet and she doesn’t need to turn her stacks of paper upside down looking for the brochure. She does anyway. I tell her it’s a 53 minute drive, and we do not need to leave an hour and a half before Chloe suggests arriving. We do not need to allow additional time for the bathroom and visiting before lunch, because the suggested arrival time is 30 minutes before lunch for that reason.

Mama says I’m like my father: I don’t like to leave time for contingencies. I practice my listening-behind-the-words skills: “I know you don’t like to be late; neither do I. I will make sure that we are not. And if we are five minutes late or early, it will be okay.” She relaxes.

Mama insists that Sandy sit in the front seat so she has more leg room, even though Sandy protests and Mama can’t hear any conversation from the back.

We arrive in Shelton 10 minutes ahead of schedule and Chloe is waiting at the lobby door. We sit down in the private dining room, then wait 40 minutes for wait staff to greet us.

Chloe reserved the private room because it would be (and is) quieter; but the florescent lights do not supply enough light for Mama to see. She asks me to sit beside her so I can tell her what’s on her plate. (The answer is “nothing,” as it will turn out.) But then she can’t hear because Chloe, at the head of the table, turns toward Sandy across the table from Mama. Mama fiddles with her hearing aid remote to no avail. I know she can’t hear a friggin’ thing. I am frustrated for her and anxious. Will she be upset if I ask Chloe to look at her when she talks? Or if I suggest a rearrangement? Finally Mama whispers to me that she hates to upset things, but maybe if Sandy and I traded places, Chloe could talk across her instead of away from her. It helps moderately, but Chloe still talks softly and tends to turn her body away to watch for wait staff, whom she finally goes in search of.

A young waiter who appallingly talks baby talk to Mama finally comes in to take orders. Then leaves again to get the menus that were never brought to us. There is not one thing on the menu that Mama can eat except strawberries. There really isn’t much that Chloe, with some of the same intestinal issues Mama has, can eat. Salad or carrot and celery sticks. Strawberries. Vegetable/ steak soup. Chef Salad. Philly Cheese Steak sandwich. M&M cookies. Mama doesn’t eat raw vegetables, lettuce, cheese, or beef. They are out of strawberries.

They could make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Baby Talk tells her. I ask if they have tuna. He leaves and finds out there is enough for half a sandwich. Fine. She will have that and the soup ladled without the steak. He takes the order to the kitchen and returns to say it’s not tuna, it’s chicken salad. Mama says that’s okay if it doesn’t have celery in it.

When the food arrives there is a bologna and cheese sandwich for Mama. The chicken had celery in it. She rejects the sandwich. (Why didn’t I ask for toast and peanut butter?) She has a tiny cup of soup, which she says is good, and a few oyster crackers. If the soup isn’t her preferred scalding hot (which I doubt it is), she doesn’t say anything. Sandy gives her the single slice of hard boiled egg from her chef salad. I would have, but my serving doesn’t have one.

Chloe talks about her children and Mama interrupts to ask about her children; thinking she is filling silence. Chloe does not ask about Mama’s activities, but Mama does manage to find an opportunity to say that she got too much of a medication in the hospital and it made her blind.

I thought the day was a disaster, but Mama says it was so good to see Chloe and she had a good time. “I didn’t go for the lunch,” she says. (I, on the other hand, had naively thought I would be off the hook for cooking dinner.) “Perhaps not,” I say, “but it was a good lesson in why you need to stay at home, not move to a place like that, nice as it is.”

“I would have a kitchenette,” she counters.

“You are going to prepare three meals a day?” I ask, aware that she is struggling to get a simple breakfast and lunch herself. No response. I wonder if she secretly appreciates her personal chef just a bit more.

Mothering Rhymes with Smothering

When Mama tells me not to touch my mouth or eyes while I have a cold, I cut her off as she is about to tell me why. “Stop,” I say, holding up my hand, palm out, “just stop.” I don’t tell her to stop mothering me, I know she would say, “I am a mother, Gretchen, I can’t just stop.” And I know she believes the definition of mother is “Never, never stop instructing.” I don’t want to get into that conversation with her. She’s 98, she is not going to change. But I do need to protect myself.

I know there are those whose mothers are no longer with them who would give anything to be told to button their coat, and I get that. Perhaps I will eat my words when that day comes. But while there are many things I will miss about my mother when she is gone forever, I don’t think constant instruction will be one of them, even in a symbolic way.

Instruction has always been the part of mothering she has felt most confident in. I think she hasn’t quite known how to interact with her competent daughters, and so she clings to what she knows. I don’t think she realizes when she does it to me, the effect is that I feel cut down. It didn’t bother me when I lived 2500 miles away and heard it over the phone line. I was living my own life, and doing it quite well. I could brush off her instructions on how I “should” be doing whatever. And, of course, she didn’t really know I was washing dishes without using a dishpan. And if I were Michelle Obama living with my mother in a big white house, doing my competent part to keep the most powerful country in the world running smoothly, and my mother told me to cover my arms or I might attract unwanted attention, I would probably be able to blow it off and remain firmly in control of my grown up status.

But living in her house, doing pretty much everything wrong; and not being a wage earner in a job where I feel like I am in control and appreciated, it’s hard not to feel twelve. So when she tells me to pull the chairs out from the dining room table when I’m vacuuming, I tell her that I know how to vacuum. And when she suggests my coat is not warm enough, that I will catch cold, I tell her that colds are caused by cold germs, not cold weather (or wet hair). I also tell her I know that every mother from the 1950s believed that, she was not alone. (Also, it is sixty degrees, or I would have had a different coat on.)

Rebecca had dinner with her the other night and the conversation turned to the fact that Mama used to take the train to Seattle to go to the eye doctor, and she had to take a cab or the bus from King Street station to the clinic. Rebecca asked her if it ever amazed her that she did all of that by herself, if she was proud of herself. “Well,” she said, “I’ve always taken care of myself.”

“So,” Rebecca said, “you were independent and capable of taking care of things. Why don’t you believe that your daughters are capable in the same way? We do come from you, you know!” She said one never lets go of being a mother, and you had to be a mother to understand. (Rebecca is not a mother, so ouch to that.)

Rebecca knew it was pointless to suggest a mother could also be proud of what her children have done and become, and be proud of instilling in them a sense of confidence and ability. Mama doesn’t know how to be proud of herself, and that makes it hard to take any credit for her daughters’ accomplishments.

I used to feel like a grown up, but these days I think I won’t again until I am the oldest generation in the family. By then, perhaps, my own children will be ready to be the oldest generation. And will tell me what to do and how to do it.

Bumpy with Chance of Potholes

August 2016

Life is a beach, some say. For me, life is a trail. Change or reorder the vowels, as the situation warrants. The very best thing about my small home town, and being back here as an adult with a car (with 268,000 miles on it), is there are literally hundreds of beautiful places to go—from mountains to sea—and be home for dinner.

When I returned four years ago to care for my mother, I didn’t have to be home for dinner. She heated one of the frozen dinners she insisted on buying or ate leftovers. Now, though, she can’t see what’s in the refrigerator and she can’t read or remember the instructions on a frozen dinner; and she is increasingly particular about food. So now I’m home for dinner unless my sister can be there. I wonder when the day will come that Mama can’t be alone at all. I’m grateful it’s not yet.

Monday I went to Tolmie Peak in Mt. Rainier National Park. As I rattle across the washboard road up the mountain, dodging potholes and sinkholes, I observe their connection with Mama’s life, and mine with her. She is better at avoiding them than I am, as she steers clear of my backtalk. I am apt to challenge her dementia and her woe; but I am getting better at not falling into the holes with her, protecting both her and myself.

Like yesterday when she said she guessed “we” shouldn’t make a pie again because the rhubarb juice burned onto the pie plate and she had scrubbed and scrubbed but it was never coming off. She guessed we could look for another Pyrex pie plate at an antique store. Was she really saying “you ruined a family heirloom”? I apologized and promised to work on cleaning it. “Just leave it,” she sighed. Michelle apparently got it clean, it was back in the drawer last night. I once might have said something about it not being hopeless after all, but now I let it go.

She fell into a sink hole the other day after a session of taping her epic life story. She was almost in tears as she told me at dinner that while she could remember the man she passed in the hall at her job 75 years ago, see his face, and what he said every time they passed, she couldn’t remember that his last name was Burroughs at the moment she was recording the story. “My mind is really going,” she whimpered. “That’s hard,” I said sympathetically, not adding what a minor forgetfulness that was. Not pointing out that she is on her ninth 90-minute tape and is only now at when she met my father, clearly remembering a great deal of detail. Only this one forgetting was important to her right then. She didn’t want to be bothered with facts.

On the other hand, she refused to believe me yesterday that her small cavity was filled in December; that it wasn’t at her February exam that the dentist said she had one; that she doesn’t need to go in before next month’s cleaning appointment, suddenly thinking that it can’t wait another moment. Such a jumble of remembering, not remembering, misremembering. These clear signs of cognitive dysfunction are harder for me to let lie.

As I have gotten moderately better at not challenging her memory when it doesn’t matter, I realize that when I do correct her I feel irritated with her. Don’t you dare lose your mind; I will keep you from it. When I don’t challenge her, even in my head, I feel sad. In the same way that anger is easier than grief, irritation is easier than sadness.

She hasn’t blissfully left the past behind and moved into life in the moment. She knows she is forgetting and she’s frightened. She insists her version of the story is the correct one, and she accuses the forgetting on those who care for her—pushing us into the pothole—because that’s easier than admitting the holes are in her brain. And it surely beats letting us be her memory.

I am doing well stepping between the roots and up and over boulders on my way to Eunice Lake and Tolmie Peak, until I lose my focus and stub my toe hard, going down on one hand on the steep trail. As I navigate the downhill switchbacks that come next, my toe throbbing, I understand the inevitability of imperfection at this job. I will lose focus and double back on myself, relearning what I have forgotten.

As I wind back and forth, down and down, I hear the voices of those above and below me, voices that will quiet on the straight sections, leaving me alone. They might be the voices of those who have gone before, reminding me that this is noble work and that someday I will appreciate having had the experience—a gratitude I’m not feeling right now. Or maybe they are the mentors providing information about why things are the way they are and suggestions for dealing with it. Or maybe it is my own voice, reminding me to let go of my stumble on that last root and keep going.

I grip my trekking poles and propel myself determinedly forward as the trail straightens and climbs back up.

Mama and I are climbing a mountain, and it certainly isn’t an obstruction-free or level trail. But we will get to the top. We will emerge from the trees and into the alpine meadow of wildflowers overlooking the mountains and the heavens. When we reach the summit, I will return alone, re-walking the trail in reverse order. This is grief. This is joy.

I drive home after my hike, sad the day is over, breathing new life for having done it.

Climb Every Mountain

Sunday had all the appearances of being a socked-in miserable rainy day; the kind I longed for all the years I lived in the southeast but rarely got. Oh, it might start out looking hopeful, but then the sun would break through and ruin it. I would feel like I had to go for a walk or work in the garden or something, and there would go the day of self-indulgence.

On Sunday, I decided early on—before the day began—I was going to stay upstairs in Mama’s space all day. After I cooked us brunch, I would light candles in the fireplace and pretend it was a fire; and dress lightly enough that I could sit under an afghan in the too-warm house and read until time for figure skating. Then I would pop corn, knit, watch TV.  When that was over, I would resume reading and probably nap. I haven’t had this favorite kind of day in the 18 months since I moved here. I was about to find out why.

I made biscuits for brunch. Mama was excited. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate a biscuit. “There was a country store that your daddy and I used to stop at on our way to hike in the Smokies and get sausage biscuits for our lunch.” “Did you like them?” I asked. I can’t quite picture my mother eating sausage biscuits for some reason. “They made a delicious cold lunch,” she said.

While Mama cleaned up the kitchen, I lit the candles and sat on the sofa under the afghan with my book. From there my perfect day went south.

I love to watch figure skating. Always have. In high school, I switched out the poster on my bedroom wall of Julie Andrews spinning in an alpine meadow in favor of Peggy Fleming spinning on Olympic ice. In the winter, I was glued to Wide World of Sports. On Saturday, Mama had enjoyed watching the competition with me until I had to go out. On Sunday, she came in and sat down in the recliner next to the sofa, asking if couples would be skating. No. Within seconds her body slumped and her mouth fell open; she snored three feet from my head through the first group of the men’s event. She woke as the second group was warming up and moved to the swivel chair in front of the television. Between each skater she swiveled to face me, blocking the TV so I couldn’t see the scores, and asking me questions during the commentary: “Did you think he was as good as the last one?” “Did he make any mistakes?” “What was the matter with that jump?” “Are the couples going to skate?” “Do they just skate in one corner of the rink?” “Was his music different?” “He looked embarrassed, was he?” (That last regarding the gold medalist overcome with emotion after his performance.) I tried to answer. She couldn’t hear me. I repeated it louder. Then a follow-up question.

Just as it ended, and I was praying she would eat some lunch then take a nap, the sweet neighbor who often comes to visit on Sunday afternoons called. When Audrey presumably asked how she was, Mama told her she was lazy. This is her response when she hasn’t accomplished whatever she thinks she should be accomplishing, which is never. I’m so glad I didn’t absorb her belief that self-care is the equivalent of laziness. What a burden. Jo Ann tells the childhood memory of our mother calling from the kitchen to ask what she was doing. “I’m in the bathroom,” Jo Ann would call back; because if she said she was reading she would be told to come and do some chore. I  remember Mama saying rather snappishly that she didn’t have time to read the newspaper, or a magazine. I never saw her reading a book.

Audrey is coming at 4:00, the time I figured Mama would be napping and I could inhale the solitude. Maybe she will take an early nap if I help her get something to eat. She says she’s not hungry. She moves into activity mode; striving, I guess, to make up for two hours of laziness. She brings the calendar to me. “Is February first really a Saturday? I can’t work out how that is.” She wants me to prove it mathematically; that is, on my fingers. Then she wants me to go with her to the basement freezer to tell her what soup is there; apparently the list on the refrigerator is insufficient. She doesn’t believe me that there is soup in the upstairs freezer. I let it go and take a spinach and a pea up to add to the collection falling out when the freezer door is opened. I also take up the five containers of celery soup that she had me take downstairs Friday after telling me it wasn’t good. She is going to throw them away. Yes! Later I find them crammed into the upstairs freezer. She waters the house plants and makes two phone calls. I give up and go downstairs to my cave, my stomach clenched, feeling like I’ve been skating up a moving glacier into thin air.

Finally I hear the microwave ding. I guess she has warmed some soup. Audrey comes. No nap; no silence. I start dinner and Mama lies down at 5:45, just as Rebecca arrives for supper. While pizza dough rises, I write the first draft of this post. As I finish, I hit some key and the whole thing goes poof. No recovery options.

That was my mountain today. Meanwhile, my writer friend Taline just scaled Mt. Kilamanjaro.

While I Made Risotto: A Partly True Braided Story

Written December 2013, when my mother was 97 years old. Not knowing what to write at a writing retreat, a suggestion was made by the teacher to write (i.e. make up) the end of the story. It’s based on a very real feeling I had while Mama napped as I made risotto one day, wondering why she wasn’t getting up as dinner time approached. Much is fact, but not her age at the time of writing or of our walk in the woods. I fast forwarded a couple of years, because I wasn’t ready for her to go, but didn’t want it to be too long. She departed her beloved earth in 2018 at age 102.

It’s Thursday, the day Mama’s paid care partner doesn’t come. We go for an excruciatingly slow walk in the morning—her walking stick in one of her hands, her other in mine as I walk ahead of her on the trail through the woods by our home. For so many years she walked faster than I did on pavement. I raced to keep up with her when we were shopping, even as an adult. But she never could be hurried in the woods. She stopped to examine every plant and identify it for my sisters and me, and later her grandchildren: trillium, bunchberry, false Solomon seal, spring beauty, ocean spray. I didn’t care what they were, I just wanted to get to the destination. “Can we keep going?” I would whine. At 99 now, she has lost her vision to glaucoma and macular degeneration. She hasn’t coped well with her fading vision in the past years, constantly obsessing over it, and I am surprised I persuaded her to walk in the woods with me. We continue the awkward shuffle along the trail through the moss-laden trees, branches dripping with goat’s beard lichen. I tell her where every root is, every step onto uneven ground. It demands my undivided attention.

The vegetable broth warms on the stove while I dice mushrooms and mince shallots and carrots.

The air smells damp green. Last year’s dry sword fern fronds rustle in the breeze above the emerging fiddleheads. A barred owl up late sits silently watching from a Douglas fir branch above us. We walk in the Natural Area on the hill where we live that my parents were pivotal in saving from future logging. It is seventy-three acres of trees, trails, and native plants—along with the invasive non-native English ivy and holly—owned by the City and preserved, now, in perpetuity. Outside of her daughters, it is my mother’s finest achievement—her legacy.

I warm the olive oil in a large skillet and stir in the mushrooms.
When they are soft, I remove them from the pan and set them aside.

It’s spring, Mama’s favorite season of new life and hope. I love equally, or more, the turning inward time of autumn, and have never understood why she doesn’t see its beauty. She is a glass-half-empty person. She says autumn is a harbinger of winter, the season of her discontent. Today, though, she wants to know if the trillium are blooming. She knows all the spots where they should be. She asks if we are at the fork in the trail where our path meets the neighbor’s at the maple tree with eight trunks. “Are there trillium under the tree?” she asks. I tell her where each patch is and if they are newborn white, middle-aged pink, or dying purple. I tell her when we get to the vine maple that has arched, tunnel-like, over the trail probably since long before we moved here in 1960. It’s just beginning to turn spring green. She tells me, as she does each time we walk, “When I walked Rebecca through here to catch the school bus she would say, ‘Let go of my hand, Mommy, so I can skip through my fairy land.’” Rebecca tells me that wasn’t where the fairy land was, but I don’t correct her. Just beyond the bower is where the puncheon road used to be. The pieces of wood at intervals across a low spot kept the cows that were driven through here to their summer grazing home over the hill at the turn of the last century from sinking into mud. It was still visible when we moved to the hill 55 years ago, but gone now.

I add more olive oil to the pan and stir in the shallots and carrots, cooking them soft, as Mama’s delicate stomach requires.

We make it all the way to where the path meets what used to be a dirt lane from the reservoir down to the old Girl Scout day camp where Mama, a leader, did nature activities with generations of Scouts. I take her to the marble marker that declares the spot overlooking town as “Staebler Point, Leaders in Preservation.” It looks like a grave marker. She slowly bends down to brush the dead leaves of winter off the slab with her gloved hand, balancing herself with her other hand on my arm so she doesn’t topple over. She is so slight, I barely feel her weight. We rest for a while on the log, drinking from our water bottles as the weak sun warms our faces. She wants to know how much ivy there is and wonders if the volunteers have been in lately to pull it down.

When we get back to the house she exclaims, as she has every time we have walked there in the almost four years since I returned home, “I never thought I would be able to go in there again!” I wonder, as I do each time, if this is the last time. I wish I had taken her more often before she lost so much of her sight.

I add the Arborio rice and stir until it is coated with oil and turns pale gold. I pour in white wine; it sizzles as it deglazes the pan.
The dry rice quickly drinks up the liquid and the aroma begins to waft into the air.

For the past two years, Mama has spent increasingly more time sleeping—or resting as she says; she still rarely admits to being asleep. She nearly nods off at the table after her lunch, which she still prepares herself, with help now from her morning care partner. The effort is exhausting and by the time she eats she is too tired to get up from the table and lie down, sometimes staying for half an hour or more. If she takes a short nap, she moves from bed to recliner and sleeps there until time for dinner. It is unusual for her still to be in bed when I start the evening meal, but not surprising after the day’s fresh air and exercise.

I reduce the heat and add a half cup of broth to the rice.
I never made risotto for myself. I had never heard of it when I had a family.
When I came here there was a box of mix in the kitchen drawer.
It reminded me of a friend’s essay in the church newsletter one year during Lent, about making risotto from scratch.
It sounded like too much trouble for one person; too self-indulgent maybe.
But now I make it for Mama, and enjoy a meditative state while I stir.

I am in awe of Mama’s courage in taking care of herself and this home and property for the 20 years since my father died. I never saw her as a capable person. I was wrong. We are alike, she and I. I see that now suddenly. If there is someone in our life who believes themselves to be the stronger one, we give our power over to them. Left to our own survival, we step up. This time, though, she has not let go. She has clung tenaciously to her independence and control these years since I came to live with her. She doesn’t see me as more capable. I am her child. When I am exasperated by her insistence on doing it herself and her way when I could have done it more efficiently, she tells me, “Someday you will understand, Gretchen.”

Add more broth. Stir until the liquid is absorbed. Add broth. Stir.

I briefly wonder about Mama, perhaps I should wake her. She doesn’t like to spend so much time sleeping. She used to get up in time for the local news on TV, but she can no longer hear it. And even when she could a bit, she was only interested in the weather forecast. As her vision went into rapid decline, she became a master with the mute function on the remote control, turning the volume on every few moments to see if it was time for the weather and then back off. It drove me half mad. But she doesn’t even bother with that anymore. She just asks me, and I never know. I always say, “It will probably be foggy in the morning, or maybe just cloudy, and it might drizzle. In the afternoon, the sun might come out. Or not.” I am usually right. Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to get her up. Besides, I am making risotto.

Risotto can’t be hurried. It demands undivided attention.
I pair it with something that can be put in the oven to take care of itself so I don’t have to multitask.
It gives me license to say, “Don’t bother me now, I’m making risotto.”
I wish I had made it when my children were small, I could have used the break.

I’m getting a little concerned about Mama now. She can’t hear me in the kitchen, even though the stove is on the other side of the wall from the head of her bed. Sometimes she says she can hear me, but I don’t believe her. She also insists she hears geese in the mornings—before she puts her hearing aid in—when I don’t hear them even through my bedroom window, which is always open to stave off the stifling heat of the thermostat turned up too high because Mama is always cold. Perhaps she remembers the mournful honking as they fly in ragged formation up the valley, and hears them in her imagination; maybe it’s the current manifestation of her tinnitus. Smell is her one of her most undiminished senses, though—second only to taste, she can apparently taste the difference between brands of margarine. She should be smelling dinner cooking. The risotto can’t be left right now. I dismiss my curiosity.

Mama can’t eat al dente rice, the way I prefer it, the way the recipe suggests.
I no longer even think about the sacrifice of my desires, though, or bother to prepare it two ways.
I add more liquid.

Why isn’t she getting up?

Finally the rice is soft enough. I stir in the vegetables, butter, and a little Parmesan—
if Mama knows there is cheese in it, she won’t eat it.
I sprinkle it with sea salt and grind some pepper over it.
I taste it one more time. Food of the goddess.
I put the lid on the pot and move it off the burner.

I walk down the hall and gently push open the door to Mama’s room. The heat knocks me back, as it always does. It’s a small room for a master bedroom and the bumped up auxiliary baseboard heat keeps the air heavy. I don’t know how she breathes. The heat intensifies the smell redolent of old people: cleaning that isn’t done often enough because she refuses to hire a cleaning person, dander, the Nivea cream she became partial to after its use in the hospital caused her to believe it was better than the Noxzema and Pacquins that always sat on her bathroom counter during my childhood, Depends in the bathroom wastebasket, old shoes and long unworn clothes in the closet, old draperies covering windows only opened in August.

I can barely distinguish her tiny body under the purple and gold chevron afghan her mother crocheted years before my birth. Her hair—like her mother’s and like mine, white since we were in our 30s—is flattened to her head on the pillow. I move closer. I flash back to my little girl self in the middle of the night after a nightmare. I would tiptoe the short distance between the bedroom I shared with my little sister and my parents’ room and stand at her side of the bed—always on the right, perhaps because that’s the side whatever baby’s crib was on in the house where we were all born—loathe to wake her, willing her to sense my presence. Usually she did, as mothers do; but sometimes I had to touch her arm, lightly as a feather. Then she would come immediately awake and hold up the covers and I would crawl in beside her. She would put her arms around me and I was safe again.

There is no telltale grunt I have grown accustomed to as she randomly switches from nose to mouth breathing as she inhales. I watch the covers: there is no subtle rise and fall of her emaciated chest. When I lightly put my hand on her arm, she doesn’t startle and say in sleep-thickened speech, “I didn’t mean to stay in bed so long,” as she usually does when I have to wake her. I lift the afghan and slip in beside her on Daddy’s side of the bed that she never took over when he died unexpectedly in the hospital. I slide my arm under her bony shoulders, and turn her toward me, knowing the motion can no longer cause pain to her brittle bones and her spine, crooked from severe scoliosis. I hold her cooling body, still smelling of the rich earthiness of her beloved woods from our morning walk, against my warm one.

Tears fill my eyes. I thought I was ready. I am not ready.

“Lullaby and goodnight, with roses bedight . . . 
Lay thee down now and rest, 
May thy slumber be blessed.”

It was a peaceful departure. While I made risotto.

_________________

To read the eulogy I wrote for my mother, “What My Mother Gave Me.

For the risotto recipe, “Risotto with Mushrooms.”

Looking Ahead

Autumn 2017

A friend’s elderly mother unexpectedly died. My friend is the only other person I know who lived in her mother’s house. It was a bond, a commonality, that is broken now, and I feel the loss. Her mother died well, two days after making marmalade, with time to say goodbye. I want that for my mother, but it’s already too late: she is no longer able to make marmalade, or live her best life.

I woke to that news one morning last week, then fell apart in the shower. The water rained over me, mingling with my tears. I can’t imagine this house without my mother in it. I don’t know if it will be an exaltation of space or a vault of emptiness. I can’t imagine that it will ever come to pass. She will always and forever be here. And that may be true even after she’s physically gone. Sometimes my body remembers having my own home—being a grown-up—and it feels so different here in my mother’s house. When she’s gone, I won’t have that jubilant feeling of “this is mine, I made this happen,” as I did in my own new home. It will always be my parents’ house, and I will be a squatter as long as I stay here.

This week, under the Seattle sun, baby Adrian and I walk the 15 blocks to pick up three-year-old Elliot from day care. Elliot sticks close to me on the walk home, holding my hand while I push the stroller one-handed, until we cross the last street and he is on his home block. He trots ahead of me then, arms swinging, head swiveling left and right as he takes in his surroundings. If he could, I think he would whistle. He turns into his driveway, well ahead of his brother and me, yelling, “Mommy! Mama!” hoping they are home from work. He knows his familiar. He knows where he is safe.

The day after I return from Seattle, Mt. St. Helens at the edge of the huge blue sky is visible from the windows across the front of the house—all the windows since I had the branches of Mama Fir trimmed up [after Mama moved to assisted living], a sixty-fifth birthday gift to myself. I track an eagle floating on the breeze from one end of the valley to the other. This spot on the earth is my familiar now. Maybe it has become home, my safe place like Elliot’s.

I don’t know how long I will stay here when my mother is gone—and it isn’t entirely up to me since I’ll share ownership of the house with my sisters—but I want to stay long enough for the next generation to remember it, to consider it their ancestral home as I do my father’s childhood home in Michigan. That familiar place, with my uncle’s recent death, no longer belongs to the family after more than 100 years. That my four grandchildren be able to tell the story of those who lived here to their children when I’m gone is suddenly of utmost importance to me. If that means living for a few more years in a place that will never be my own, and spending more time and energy than I would like to maintain it, so be it.

Conversations with Dementia: The Leaky Kitchen Sink

The sink is leaking. I stopped Michelle from pointing it out to Mama this morning just as she opened her mouth to repeat what Mama, thank God, didn’t hear the first time. After dinner, Rebecca and I notice there is water puddling in the cupboard under the sink. While Mama gets ready for bed, Rebecca and I clean up it up and take the linoleum liner out to the deck so the cupboard can dry. Mama comes in, and we hustle to get it back together so she won’t notice, knowing she will obsess over it and she has already had an upsetting day. But we inadvertently leave a basket of cleaning supplies in the sink and it’s too late to move it without being obvious. We aren’t worried, she is just heating her rice bags in the microwave and has no reason to walk over to the sink. She walks over to the sink. “Damn it,” I breathe. Rebecca tells her it is leaking a little, but we are taking care of it.

“You don’t know what needs to be done,” Mama snaps, “turn off the dishwasher!”

It is clearly the sink faucet that is leaking, but Rebecca obliges.

Rebecca says she will call her plumber. She tells Mama he will probably call in the morning. She goes home and I go downstairs.

I return upstairs when I hear Mama in the kitchen. Wearing her nightgown and walking shoes, she has her head under the sink peering around with a flashlight.

“You didn’t put the bucket in the right place,” she says.

“We put it the only place it could go and still catch the drip, which it is doing,” I say.

“And the pipe is wet,” she says.

“Yes, that’s why there is a bucket.”

“We should turn off the water,” she says.

“It’s just a slow drip,” I say. “It will be fine.”

“And the bottom of the cabinet needs to dry.”

“That’s why the linoleum is outside and the cupboard doors are open.” I tell her the plumber called and will come on Monday. “He said we did everything right. It’s not an emergency, the bucket will catch the drip until he comes.”

“I thought he was going to call tomorrow,” she says.

Tomorrow I’m going hiking.

Worrying in a Snowstorm

It snowed last night and it’s floating lightly down still. I feel enveloped in beauty and solitude. I haven’t seen Mama since Friday and now it’s Wednesday. I was sick Saturday and I didn’t want to expose her on my way to Seattle for childcare on Sunday. She’s expecting me today and I have no way to let her know I’m not going to venture down the hill. We do need to get her a phone; I’m sure she feels isolated.

I go for a walk in the woods leaving virgin footprints on the trails, but for the deer and rabbit tracks. It’s a wonderland in black and white. In mid-afternoon, though, the weak sun breaks out, melting the sidewalk and steps to the carport; and, according to the forecast—which is not necessarily trustworthy, since it missed the snow event entirely—the temperature is to be above freezing for a little while. I decide to try driving down the hill just before early dinner at the Manor when Mama will be up from her nap.

Rebecca checks in to see if I have been yet. I tell her I’m going shortly. She texts again. Mama has gotten an aide to call Rebecca on her cell phone so Mama could talk to her. She’s “worried sick because no one has come,” Rebecca texts, adding an eye-roll emoji.

Skidding in the driveway, I get to the road. It is not clear, of course. It may not melt for days at the curve under the trees with the temperature in the twenties at night. I have all-wheel drive, but my car is old.  This was a bad idea. When it comes to driving in snow, I’m a worrier too.

When I reach Mama’s room, she practically falls into my arms.

“I was so worried!” she exclaims.

“That’s why I was staying home,” I say. “I thought you would understand I didn’t want to come down the hill in the snow.”

“Have you been home?” she asks.

“All day,” I say. “But you told Rebecca you were ‘worried sick’ so I decided I would venture out. And I wanted to see you,” I add belatedly.

“But I thought you were coming back from Seattle today.”

“I came back yesterday, Tuesday, like always. I left early, in fact, because of the forecast.”

“I didn’t know that,” she sighs.

Rebecca tells me later she told Mama yesterday I would be home last night, but Mama forgot. When Rebecca told her I was “on my way,” she thought she meant from Seattle, so she hadn’t stopped frantically worrying even then.

And she had thought Rebecca was going to the dentist at eight o’clock, twenty minutes away on two-lane roads; an appointment Rebecca canceled. “I had visions of you both stranded on the road, sitting in your cars freezing!” she says.

“You only have to remember one thing,” I say, knowing she won’t: “neither of us will drive out of town in snow and ice.”

I can’t keep her from worrying, she’s been doing it her whole life. But dementia exacerbates it and I will drive myself crazy trying not to be the cause of it. I don’t know if a phone in her room will help or not. I can think of a dozen pitfalls: she won’t hear it ring, she won’t take a nap for fear of missing a call, she’ll fall hurrying to get to it, she won’t remember how to use it, she won’t be able to hear, she’ll misunderstand, she won’t remember, . . . I don’t know what to do. I guess what we’ve always done, my father too: let her worry. It makes my stomach hurt.