With Reverence and Love: My Mom Just Died--Gonna Eat Some Toast

THIS IS KATHERINE.  Mom had a stroke during breakfast on April 23rd and died yesterday afternoon.  Franny and I were with her.  The journey that Franny and I have traveled for the last ten days has taught us both so much.  With reverence and love for Mom, I want to talk about all we have learned during this passage and try to explain how the title of this post came to be.  Wait for it.

Mom had Alzheimer's and my journey to this place really began almost three years ago when it was clear Mom had lost time and paranoid worries about thieves entering her apartment had become a part of my life on a regular basis.  Mom couldn't tell what day it was or read any kind of clock although it took me far too much time to figure this out.  I began to figure out her calendar of appointments and would call her to get ready for bridge or her hair-do or outings with her friend George.

At the same time I was being Mom's social secretary, I also became the middle man between Mom and the police department.  Mom's jewelry and money and even worse, her Nelson Eddy DVD collection were vanishing and she would call the police.  Once I discovered she was hiding things and then forgetting where she hid them, I convinced her to call me instead of the cops.  I learned her hiding places and teased her constantly about our game and that I was on to her--I knew her best hiding places.  In the daytime, she would laugh and we began hunting together.  Things must have been a nightmare of confusion for her at night.

I remember when Chuck and I had to confront her about all this.  I took her car keys and even though it was a family decision, she aimed her wrath at me--if you knew Mom then you knew her belief in cars and driving dominated her thinking even when her mind was, well, her mind.  Chuck and I started taking her to doctors.  The worst was the first where I was alone with Mom for the appointment and she had to complete a cognitive test.  When she couldn't draw the face of clock from memory and then could not even copy one right in front of her, I knew my mom was really gone.

I have been losing Mom for three years and a new and different Mom emerged over and over again.  The latest version was a happy lady.  She had a huge romantic fantasy that controlled her life.  Mom believed in love and marriage even more than she believed in cars and driving.  Her life was informed by the movies she watched and dreamt about when she was a little girl.  For Mom, being in love and being a wife, was the meaning of it all.  With Dad gone, and then her realistic mind retreating daily, Mom created George, fell in love with him, planned an inordinate number of weddings with him, and stalked him at her assisted living place.

George is connected to reality though and my weekly visits with Mom made me and the Sunrise staff where she lived about the only folks who knew what kept driving her on and keeping her, well, focused.  There are two real human Georges and a series of movies that Mom's fantasy were based upon.  I came to love the blend of the three Mom was so enamored of--I could understand why he curled her toes the way he did.

The first George lived at the same apartment complex Mom did when she was still on her own and they were good, good friends.  They went to dinner together everyday and most breakfasts.  They went to movies and concerts and Mom just loved hanging out with him.  He was smart and funny and he thought Mom was a looker.

The second George lives at Sunrise where Mom did.  I think Jay Gatsby would look like him if he had survived until his late 80's.  This George is tall and slim and Mom thought he was the best looking man in the place.  She was right.  This George, however, had a mind like Mom's.  He had one phrase he repeated over and over again--"And what are you up to today?"  I can't tell you how many times during any one visit he would ask me that.  I can understand why Mom planted a new personality on him.

The last piece of Mom's mythical George was Nelson Eddy from the old movies.  Mom loved Nelson Eddy as a kid and collected his DVD's to watch and then watched them over and over again.  She made me watch them too.  You have to be pretty old to know about Nelson Eddy.  He was the guy who played the Canadian Mountie in the movies and sang "Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I've Found You."

The George I came to know had the mind of the first George, the body of the second George, and the talents and traveling needs of Nelson Eddy.  When Mom couldn't find George, she let me know he had a fine singing voice and was busy doing concerts around the country.   When Mom could see the real George at her place, she ate meals with him and would wait in various spots at Sunrise (her place) in case he might walk by.  This George likes to walk around the outside of the building several times a day and the path went beneath Mom's window.  She sat there often waiting for George to walk by.  There was a point when I asked Mom's caretaker if Mom was bothering George with her stalking and Maryann laughed--George pretty much was meeting Mom for the first time every time he saw her.  This was a pretty big relief for me.

Since all Mom's thoughts of love always led to marriage, it didn't take long before I would get calls about finding her wedding dress or her telling me I needed to pull the weeds in our backyard because she wanted to have the wedding there.  I learned that there is no talking someone with Alzheimer's out of their thoughts so I would tell her the dress was at my house and the weeds were pulled and she would relax and go back to her wedding planning.

The staff at Sunrise learned Mom's fantasy and chipped in.  Mom assigned Lindsey, the activities director and self-proclaimed non-musical person, the job of playing the guitar and singing at the ceremony.  Janet, her daily dresser, was going to be her flower girl.  The wedding grew in size.  Venues changed.  My jobs increased and decreased with her moods.  Her love of George and her upcoming marriage to George was the light that guided her the last years of her life.  She never lost Dad, but finding romance was what she wanted in the end.

Yesterday, the staff at Sunrise visited Mom off and on throughout the day.  They loved Mom.  Mom would sing "Tea for Two" and "Strike Up the Band" as she walked down the halls.  She never got mean as some Alzheimer's patients do.  She just fell crazy in love with mythical George.  Staff members cried and hugged her and said good-bye and Franny and I cried each and every time to see how much they loved her.

The most moving moment was when Lindsay brought in her motorcycle speaker and played "The Wedding March" for Mom only hours before she died.  Lindsey played "Tea for Two" for her as well.  It was as real a wedding as I have ever seen.

Mom's actual passing was profound and cosmic and will stay with Franny and I forever.  Teena (my sister-in-law), Franny and I spent hours and hours and hours with Mom the last days.  At this time, it was just Franny and I.  Mom had lingered far longer than our hospice nurse felt possible.  We had all given her permission to go and said our good-byes.  All the physical signs that hospice warned us of had happened and she was still here.  She was working so hard to breathe.

Franny and I had returned to see Mom after a long morning with her.  Teena had been with us, but she needed to take care of some things.  Franny and I somehow knew we needed to go back.  We did and Franny began reading another one of Mom's travel journals to her.  On a whim and with a pure understanding of Mom's need to ALWAYS BE ON TIME, Franny looked at Mom and told her that she shouldn't be late.  Folks were waiting for her.  It was 3:00 then and Franny told Mom she needed to leave at 3:30.

Franny read about a trip Mom and Dad were taking to Tahoe and with Mom's penchant for detail we had heard about various important bathroom stops and lots of chicken fried steak.  We would stop and laugh or talk about some detail and then remind Mom how much time she had before she would be late.  I remember telling her she had to leave in six minutes.  I noticed her still-working right eye was crying.

Just before 3:30, the hospice nurse (God bless Leslie) arrived and we childishly told her that we had given Mom a deadline and I asked about Mom crying.  Leslie told us she was probably saying good-bye and Franny and I grabbed our purses and started planning a time for our next visit.  Franny decided to go check Mom's tears and kiss her good-bye one more time and Mom gasped and that was the last real breath.  Franny and I dropped our purses by the bathroom door and hugged each other as we walked back to Mom.  We watched her pass.  It was profound, involved physical changes that can't really be put into words, and made us cry even more when we both thought we had couldn't cry any more than we already had.

As Mom traveled this journey she saw "the light," "church doors," and "the face of god."  She reached for and saw Dad, her nephew Rog, and her father.  She drove a wonderful new car she hadn't ever seen before.  Franny and I were changed and will change more from having lived this passage with Mom.  We will be forever grateful.

When I was a young teacher, we had spring end-of-the-year picnics where there was copious celebrating.  There was one such party when we all started talking about funny country western song titles.  The winning title was provided by Ken Weaver who taught Special Ed and coached our tennis team.  He knew about "My Dog Just Died--Gonna Eat Some Toast" and even brought in the record to play the next fall.  It's a title I made a lot of fun of during my teaching career.  I always imagined this country yokel whose dog had died and then the jerk just went and had toast.  I was wrong.  It was a great title and I wish I could find the words to the whole song in case the rest is just as profound.

Franny and I have lived the last ten days outside the world of normalcy.  No meal has been normal.  No sleep has been normal.  Our jobs have not been normal because we have not been normal.  Franny's relationship with her husband and girls and my relationship with Jim have not been normal.    I can't think of any truly normal thing I have done during this time.

This morning I rose, picked up my drawings (I do wee meditative drawings each morning) and made a pot of tea.  I found some bread and made some toast.  I drew my pictures, drank my tea, and ate my toast with reverence and love for Mom and for normalcy.  That old country western song wasn't making fun of a jerk.  That song was showing the huge love and reverence involved in the shift from death to a return to a normal world.  My mom just died--gonna eat some toast.