the day after

Well, you could say my mom got the last laugh. She would have let out a big guffaw had she been there this morning. Or rather had she known that she could do this one final act of defiance: dying her way.

My mom died last night. We thought she had a few more days left in her, but we were wrong. She slept the whole day and by evening she was gone. I got the call just as the debate was going into its most precious moments. She would have laughed at that as well. She did not mind interrupting me in the course of the day. Mom, I can't talk now (about the aide who disrespected you last night). The kids are here. Mom, later, okay? Fine, two more minutes and then I really have to go.

The Hospice person asked me if I would like a viewing of the body. It's one of those things -- I would personally not have requested it -- I've seen her plenty in the last few days of her life. I do not need to see her in death. But, once offered, I changed my mind. Maybe I owe it to her? I mean, she'd hate that I did this, but on the other hand, maybe I can do a private little speech? Because really, what I need most right now is quiet time with my own thoughts and maybe I could put a few good thoughts together into something like a good bye speech? So I said okay. In the morning, I'll be there. My solicitous daughters asked if I needed them at my side. I said no to the Chicago girl but yes to the Madison one. We'll go early in the day.

So is this a closure of sorts then? Or are we doing more to honor her? One thing I know for sure -- my mother did not want a funeral or a memorial service upon her death. Pity for a hard life she loved. We never gave her enough of it even as she offered us, me especially, so many opportunities to speak the magic words that she craved: you've had a miserable life, you were treated like dirt throughout, and yet, here you are! We are so so sorry for you. My failure here was that I could not say it. Lies and halftruths were spoken aplenty ("yes mom, everything is fine here, no one is sick, everyone is good!" -- even as kids were banged up from falls, grownups were sick with Covid, the world would be on the brink of something horrible and there I was -- "yes mom, it's all good. we are fine.. no problems." Why? Her sympathy was worse than whatever malady I faced. She dramatized everything and if you went in thinking that a day was difficult, sharing that with her would have you believe that we are at the cusp of a planetary disintegration. So, drama she craved. But celebrations of life's joys and marvels? Not for her. She shunned Christmas and birthdays. Celebrations are for children -- she'd repeat this every year and especially on November 15th. (She would have been 101 this year on that day.) But surely memorial services aren't for children, so why be so adamant about wanting none? 

Or maybe funerals are in fact for children. Maybe I should listen to what they need and not to what my mother stated as her dying wish.

Morning...

Breakfast...

I think about this all day. My kids knew her all too well. She was the last of the grandparents to die. She'll be cremated. Without ceremony? They want a memorial.

When my father died (in March, 2013), I was traveling with a friend through Italy. There wasn't a funeral nor a service for him and when his ashes were scattered, I wasn't invited. No one thought it was important enough for me to cross the ocean and attend. The fact is, for a long time, I had seen my father just once a year, on my then annual trips to Poland. We did not otherwise keep in touch. He wasn't the kind of guy who would track the life of another, even if that "another" was his child. And so his death cut out very little substance from my life: one annual trip to the apartment where I lived out my adolescent angst, cancelled. 

The death of my mother is a whole different story. My days were full of her, especially in recent years as she went from independent senior living, to assisted living, to hospital care, to rehab and finally to the Hospice nursing care facility. I managed her affairs, and I responded to lengthy emails detailing all the wrongs that befell her, and I listened daily to a repeat of all those woes by phone. On good days, she would enumerate all the ways in which the staff had failed her and then end with these same words -- "but I can't complain." I never once said -- but you just did!  If I occasionally pushed back, it was because I wanted her to believe that the aides and nurses were not out to kill her, or even neglect her. A useless endeavor. She hated it when I denied her the right to gripe. Oftentimes she'd hang up on me. Clearly I did not understand.

Thinking now about the good things in her life, I try to recall times when I thought her to be happiest. When she was the ambassador's wife in New York -- definitely then. It was a real paupers to privilege story and she loved every minute of their sudden leap to the top. But if I asked her now, she herself would say that her happiest days were with my daughters when they were very little and I occasionally left them in her care. Only with them did she appreciate the value of play. She relaxed her emotional guard for them alone. In my children and grandchildren she found no fault. Children had this going for them: they could not fail at life. All adults, young or old, including us, her daughters -- we were all suspect and we disappointed her constantly and she was not shy in letting us know about it.

And if we had a memorial, what would I say that would spotlight the happiest times I had with her? I would talk of images I had growing up: I remember picking flowers along the riverbank when I was very little, holding her hand, singing a song -- this would have been on the day she would come up by train to visit us in the village where we lived with my grandparents. And later, much later, I remember car trips and stops at Howard Johnson's for their 21 flavors of ice cream. Or was it 28? We sat in a booth -- she was always by my sister's side, I was by my father's. I wondered then why we were stuck in these roles -- was I more my father's child and my sister hers? 

As a very young kid I loved my parents totally and desperately. I thought they were the best! No one had a mamusia that spoke such good English or a tatus that was a respected diplomat! I was prouder than proud. 

Then we stopped being little children and everything changed. I was a teen, we were back in Poland and, well, read about in Like A Swallow. Things went sour. We were growing up, she got lost in her own affairs. And we were straying into lives she could not understand. So she lost us. There were many grumbles, but her biggest blow up came when I left my husband.  I would not see or hear from her again for a handful of years. And she dropped contact with my daughters too. Didn't attend graduations, didn't reach out (except to my ex). 

None of that sat well with me over the years. But, you must know -- my mother was not uncaring. She was not mean. She simply was not able to relate to adult children. And difficult as she was -- such a handful! -- she was also incredibly generous with and kind to my kids. She had a pension from my father and she was frugal with it -- except when it came to buying things for my girls. Once a year, we went kids clothes shopping. No store in the mall was off limits. That they each had Abercrombe & Finch sweaters -- as desirable in those days as expensive athletic shoes may be today -- was only thanks to her. That we went to Borders for a book splurge for the kids -- that, too, was thanks to her. She never cooked dinners for us (she was a terrible cook), but on a special occasion, she would take us out to Porta Bella for an Italian dinner or to Imperial Garden for Chinese food. Her treat. It pained her that in her final years she was not allowed to spend money on the great grandkids. She would have bought them a heck of a lot more plastic than they needed, and even bigger packs of KitKats if she could. Spending time with them wasn't what she longed for. She wanted to spend her resources, what little she had, on them. (Rules of her benefit program did not allow her to spend more than $50 on anyone but herself. How she despised that limitation placed on her!) 

But the fact remains -- my mom was a handful. I never gave up on her, but it is also true that I felt like I was in a rip current that would drag me out to sea and ultimately sink me unless I used all my strength to stay afloat with all that negative stuff she threw my way. There was that never ending drum roll, that ominous message -- wait until you get to be this old, this frail, this unhappy!  She'd been saying that since she was fifty. Spreading the fear of what's to come. You'll get diabetes -- she'd tell my sister and me. It's genetic! And it's horrible!

So long as you agreed with her in life, you were golden. In the last years, mostly I let her speak her mind. I let her make her wild claims. I was, therefore, mostly golden. But part of me wondered -- had I spoken up for myself, for others, had I insisted on greater gentility when referencing well meaning hard working people, might have I turned things around for her? Might we have had better conversations, might I have been less saddened by almost every back and forth we had? Imponderables, all of those thoughts and questions. 

Every mother teaches her daughter so much! I've often said my mother taught me to watch my step. To not make those mistakes she did. To allow people to be themselves and love them deeply for all that they bring to the table. She couldn't do it and it cost her. I knew I needed to do a generational shift there. My kids, grandkids should never feel shame for making decisions they feel are right for them. I'll always always love and admire them, and as I've taken to telling them -- I not only love them, I like them! I like that they are not me, that they pick roads that would have frightened me. I like that they dress, eat, play according to their own moral compass.

This and my commitment to a never ending search for joy. Finding contentment, turning my back on petty mishaps. Holding grudges, being mad -- I wont go down those paths. When they misbehave, my grandkids will often ask -- are you mad? And I always say -- you know I'm never ever mad. They press -- are you disappointed? No. At most, thinking how to help you get on a better path, though really, you're doing a pretty good job finding it yourself. If they make a mistake -- I want to be there to tell them it's okay. 

So she taught me what not to say, do, how not to punish, withhold love, she taught me to be more curious about them and worry less about sharing my worldly wisdoms from my own life. She struggled with all of this. I promised myself I would try to do better.

To her credit though, she lead a life that in small ways I admired. She was big on movement, on some modest exercise. She was the one, too, that introduced me to the concept of healthy eating. She went overboard on supplements and I think many of them wrecked her health and upped her blood pressure and destroyed her GI functioning in her senior years but given that she lived so long, arguing with her over the wisdom of popping so many extra pills was was pointless. 

But it's in the eating department that she had a transformative impact on me. As a student at the university, I ate nothing but junk. But as I moved my mom to Madison and listened to her extol the virtues of fruits and veggies, I took note. True, she was diabetic and also secretly gorged on candy (oh, the stacks of candy bars I found hidden in her drawers each time I moved her!), and she hated to cook so once she moved to Madison, she switched to institutional meals and her healthy eating necessarily was diminished. But I learned from her to pay attention to what I ate. She and my grandmother before her were suspicious of the American diet, of meats and fried anything. I got from them both a healthy respect for eating that what you can grow in your own back yard. (I of course cheat and let the local farmers do it for me.)

And like Ed, she never cared about faults in her appearance. Ed is oblivious to how he looks. My mom employed another strategy: make the most of what you have. She was proud of her looks and she walked into a room with confidence about who she was and what she brought to the table. She flashed her straight American white teeth, she showed off her height with high heels and teased hair (even though this made my short father look even shorter than he already was), she sewed her own gowns that showed off a body that she thought was just about perfect.

Her body. I drive one last time to meet my daughter at Oakwood -- her final home, where I am told I can see my mother for one last time. I worry about what I should do with these minutes -- say a few words for sure. Take a picture? Maybe not. Let's see how all this plays out.

At the Hospice nursing care facility, I encounter the staff that has been with her for the last five months. I thank them for putting up with her. The chaplain comes. She tells me -- your mother was loved. Oh those people! They tell you anything you want to hear!

And I ask -- where is she?

Well, not here! She died last night and within hours she was transported to the funeral home. You can see her there, we're sure.

But the person told me...

My mother did a disappearing act. She's gone.

I call the funeral home. Oh, but you have to reserve a time! We have other viewings before hers. They normally take 30 minutes. They cost extra you know. And we have to get her ready for you. Close her eyes, close her mouth...

People, we're talking about five minutes and I've seen her with her mouth open and eyes open and closed. I do not care if you dress her up or not. Can I just see her briefly?

Well no I cannot. They follow procedures. She's being moved to another cremation center on the other side of town. Another day maybe?

I book a slot for tomorrow. Mind you, I never wanted this nor needed it, but again, once offered, it seems disrespectful to refuse it. Tomorrow then.

 

In the meantime, I have work to do. I've cleared out all that I want from my mom's room (almost nothing), but I need to shut down her accounts, figure out how to deal with her finances -- what does she owe now and to whom, to be distributed out of $1000 that she has left in her account. Her total generosity paid off for her. She spent down all her money and had none left in the end, making her eligible for Medicaid and thus a privileged spot at a nursing facility that was otherwise way out of her financial reach. So, I have work to do and, too, daughters are murmuring about the need for a memorial scattering of ashes. I'll let them decide that one. Whatever they need is okay with me. I feel I've done my reckoning, remembering, reflecting, privately, occasionally with them, sometimes with Ed, and lately here, on Ocean. But, if scatting ceremonies is what they want, I'm good with that. I ask at the funeral home -- remind me, did I spring for an urn? You did not. So, how will you package her? In a bag which we give you in a cardboard box. Ah, sort of like an Amazon delivery.

I go to a coffee shop with my computer to write. Not going home yet. Not the familiar comfort of Ed, of the cats, of my fading garden. I just want it to be my computer and me and the rumble of cars going by because the table is outside and the street is noisy.

And then I go home. Ed and I go for a walk.. And it is beautiful.

And at 1:45, as always, I head out to the kids school. I pick up just the girl today. (Her brother is trying out sewing lessons for the first time so it's just her at the farmhouse.) Gaga, I'm glad you picked me up but aren't you mourning today?  I smile at her. I had my morning hours. I'll have the evening too.

 

(He cleaned up my mom's ancient computer, installed her favorite games and gave it to Snowdrop. She is thrilled. My mom would have been pleased.)

 

Toward evening, Snowdrop and I meet her mom who is waiting for Sparrow to finish his lesson. We pause for a drink. Snowdrop loses herself in her book. Her mom and I talk.

 

 

I go home. Ed is biking. I light the candle he hates. Maybe just this once he will forgive me. And I think about how over all these years, I've never given up on my mom, and, too, she never gave up on any of us either. We were her family. The youngest members were always the ones who delighted her the most, but the fact is, in truth -- we all mattered. A lot. Her last sensible words to me? You take care of yourself. No matter what happens, take care of yourself.

Such a handful! I miss her.

with love...

September 10

In many ways, this is a repeat of yesterday. I'm stuck in a pattern of exquisite weather (sunny, high of 80F/26C). I sleep fitfully, get up very early, walk over to feed the animals...

(color comes in the tubs of annuals now...)

... eat breakfast with Ed on the porch, yet again chasing the sun, because in the morning, we're just crossing 60F/15C.

Animals fed, messages answered, time to set out, yet again to spend some time with my mother.

As I drive over I think about how in my older years, she has been such a presence in my life (even as in my younger years, she was not that). Ever since her separation from my father (and that was in 1980, so nearly 45 years ago), I would become the one she'd need as a sounding board for her life's woes.Which were constant and many. One of my daughters commented the other day that dealing with her now, in her final days was easier because she was like a young child, without the ability to push an agenda. And yes, this is true. But I have felt that she was like a child in great need for a long time now. How will it feel to not have to be there to dismiss or take seriously each of her calls for help?

You might wonder why I write so much about my mother now. No, it's not a cathartic process of emotional reckoning.The thing is, I've been writing Ocean posts for twenty years, but at the beginning she slammed into me for doing this. She hated that I had this platform. She let me know solidly that I was wasting my time. But recently, oh about five or six years ago she completely flipped and she read every post carefully every single day. If I was late putting something up, she'd call and ask my why I was late. Her move to Madison coincided with this. Here I was then, responsible for her in her old age, responsible for her well being. The responsible thing to do was to leave our conversations and her story out of Ocean.  And I faced a balancing act: with each post, I had to think about what information I was releasing to the world and to my mother. No one, not me, not the kids, not any of us wanted to agitate her in any way. I suppose now, when it no longer matters (she stopped reading Ocean in June), I'm seeing what it's like to write without that worry.

 

The visit itself today was quiet. She slept through it. I was happy to see that she wasn't thrashing. At peace? Oh, who knows. But not agitated. My daughter took seriously the conventional wisdom (how do they even know this?) that a dying person loses her hearing last, and takes comfort from the familiar spoken word, even if she appears to be sleeping. My girl took her work to my mom's bedside and spent the morning conducting Zoom meetings, then reading papers that she had to read out loud. Me, I checked in, then cleaned out more of my mom's folders and writings. Yes, gems, of sorts. So many folders! Here's one -- another folder of lists! This particular folder contained pages with a detailed enumeration of all greeting cards she had ever sent to anyone, dating back to 1982. Every year, every card. And she was an avid card sender! To distant friends, to all family members.  To my ex. For all holidays, even those invented for the purpose of cards.  The list contained description of each mailing. Santa face with reindeer in the background. A laughing pumpkin with a ghost. Red poinsettia with pine cones. That kind of stuff. It's another record, but of what? Perhaps a document of her Hallmark devotion to the cause of family life and to those she left behind. 

And as I looked at all this, I wondered -- is it genetic? This need to put things down in words. She was not a good writer -- a fact that she acknowledged readily -- and yet she wrote it all down. But aren't I guilty of this too, on Ocean? I tell myself that I paint a picture of a life for someone other than myself. But isn't this what she did? Lists, for others to eventually find and marvel at, because surely not for herself?

 

I bring home her computer and hand it to Ed to clean out. He asks -- are you sure? How about her Word account? You really want it deleted? 

Looking at my mother's detailing of important events -- like her daughter's misdeeds! -- is like walking through a treacherous minefield. Do I really want to see this stuff? What's there? -- I ask him hesitantly.

Well, here's something she calls "a (summary of a) police report." Written in 2018, so just before I moved her from California back to Madison. He reads it for me. Apparently her daily newspaper was missing that morning and she traced its disappearance to her neighbor. When confronted, the neighbor admitted to taking hers because her own copy was gone. She returned my mother's paper, but without one of the sections. My mother got a replacement copy from the newspaper itself and thus she knew that there should be one more section. Incensed, she filed a police report. The officer came (this was in Berkeley -- a place where crime is rampant), took down her story and asked if she was going to take the case to court. Was he serious?? The case of the missing section of a paper?? My mother definitely was serious: not this time, she told him. But the next time -- yes! I have lawyers in my family. 

Yes, my mother liked to leave her problems at my doorstep, oftentimes not expecting a resolution. She just wanted me to know, the world to know, how tough life was for her. And maybe it was. If you think life's a bummer, isn't that a very real assessment of what it is for you?

And yet...

My mom was proud of me. Maybe not for reasons you and I would embrace -- I have good kids, good grandkids. Sure, I think I was a good parent, but like everyone, I made plenty of mistakes. I got better with age! That's nearly everyone's story, no? But still, she was proud. She told all her friends. She had great grandkinds and great great-grandkids. In her eyes, in the end, I did well.

In the afternoon, I pick up the kids at school. 

 

 

 

 

Snowdrop, upon hearing of all this great-grandma stuff, insists she needs to go over and say good-bye. Is this a good idea? My mom wont hear her. She looks like a person who is on her last breath. But Snowdrop is adamant and her parents are letting her make that call, and if Snowdrop wants it, then her brother wants it too, so I take them both to my mom's bedside and I snap a photo, knowing full well that my mother would not have wished for them to see her like this, but oh well, I take care of the psychic needs of the living, mom, especially those who have so many years ahead of them.

 

 

 

They leave behind stuffies for my mom. I asked my daughter if she wants me to bring them back later and she said what any American parent would say these days: no! The more stuffies we offload from this house the better!

I ask the kids -- was it different than you thought it would be? No, they tell me, though they didn't think she'd be snoring!

(ice cream treat)

 

 

We come to the farmhouse and I read yet another book about the Holocaust (Number the Stars by Lois Lowry) with Snowdrop. What is this day, anyway, an exploration of all of life's horror? (In my defense, she chose it from the stack of new and various books I had for her.)

No, all the events of today are stories with good endings. My mom's last days are as we would wish for anyone: late in life, indeed, very late in life, and without pain. The books Snowdrop devours are sad in context, but they show bravery, kindness and strength. And love. Lots of family love. It wins out in the end, always.

My mom died tonight. Peacefully.

with lots of love...

Monday

Back to brilliant sunshine, warm but not hot temperatures -- the kind of weather that makes you feel guilty for not doing something about it! Go wild! Stay outside!

And yet, here I am, inside, catching up on the essentials.

I do go out early enough, when it was still so cool that I need a sweatshirt. And I weed some. Around the sheep shed. Around the courtyard.

And though we have breakfast on the porch, it's barely comfortable. A bit nippy I would say. Again, I chase the sun around the table.

Then I spend the better part of the morning at my mother's place.

She's not coherent today. Yes, she sleeps, but in her half-wakefulness, she cannot formulate whole words. Whatever sounds and gestures she makes are not happy ones and they show no indication of peace. I try giving water, but that only heightens her anxiety. The nurse later tells me that when they gave medicines, she recoiled, being sure that she was being poisoned by the cruel and vengeful staff. We decide to discontinue the meds she has been on for decades, in favor of increasing all that stuff that will lessen her anxiety, though if you are working with an inherently paranoid person who trusts no one except herself (possibly me, but only because she has no choice...), shutting that down is not easy.

As I wait to see if she will regain some awareness (she does not), I look around her room. I've moved her four times now in the last half dozen years. Even early on, when I asked her to list the things she wanted for sure to be moved to a new place and I kept to that list and then some, she'd frown at all that I left behind. Understandably, I suppose. She was a bit of a hoarder and she kept papers, lists and tallies of everything. Notes on every medication she ever swallowed (and there were many), notes on doctors visits, on every blood pressure measurement -- I tossed most of it in the last move. She didn't need it, but she was convinced otherwise.

In my selection of things to bring to the hospice nursing care rooms, I packed her precious notebook that she has had with her, updated each year, since 1954 -- i.e. the year after I was born. I find this notebook today and I leaf through it.

Each page (sometimes more than one page) is filled with titles of books she read that year. 

My mother never got a college degree, but though she lamented over her family's poverty which she claimed stood in the way of her continuing her education, she never thought that this should keep her from joining the "cultured world" (her love of those words!). She did it through reading and listening to classical music. It was enough for her and she was proud of the fact that she always finished every book she ever started. (Only later did I understand that she loved the act of reading, even as so much of the content passed her by.) 

There's much to admire in that list, including the fact that she read a lot when my sister and I were babes, living at my grandma's. In 1955, when I turned two and my sister turned four, my mom read 29 books and they were no lightweight trash. Pushkin, Hemingway, Maugham, Lessing, Hawthorne, Melville. In 1982, the year after I had her move (for a while) to Madison because my father left her, she topped out at 100 books. The break up of her marriage upped her reading hours. And it's all there. In that notebook. I thought about how I never saw her sit back enjoying a book. And yet, she read. Somewhere, somehow she found the time. And recorded her accomplishment. (Six years are left empty. 1961-1966, when she was the ambassador's wife in New York. No reading then. Plenty of sewing, shopping for bargains, ladies lunches and evening receptions. No books.)

But eventually, the music listening stopped (she blamed her hearing -- I could not convince her to keep it going). And then the reading stopped. In 2022, at ages 98 and 99, she read her last four books of her life: To Kill a Mockingbird, Free (a memoir given to her by an assisted living neighbor, about living through the end of communism in the Balkans), Anton the Dove Fancier (a World War 2 collection of stories about the Holocaust), and finally Like a Swallow. She decided that she couldn't read books anymore after that. Her eyesight was too poor, her concentration not there anymore. Was it a sweet ending to her long life of reading? Probably not. She had mixed feelings about LAS. Good story telling, but insufficient recounting of the tragedy of life. Fair point. I never thought that either my life or hers was tragic. She disagreed.

I leave her now, assured once again that her opioids would be upped, her anxiety quelled. I wonder if she will regain her awareness, or if yesterday's questions (mom, testing to see if I'm Nina: what do you call your grandmother? me: Babcia. mom: No! you cannot call her, because she is dead!) will have been the last time we will have talked.

 

At home, Ed suggests we walk the farmette lands and assess the trees he planted. I tell him no -- I have no time! I have to make more calls, get ready for the kids! 

Listening to myself, I recoiled. I sounded panicked. I sounded like my mother. 

Let's go. I changed my mind. I love walking the farmette with you.

He proudly showed me the height of some of the nut trees...

 

And we looked to see which of the pines and firs, planted this spring, needed to be replaced. (Just two!) And we tasted the pears and apples in the new orchard. And I felt happy.

Ready to pick up Snowdrop. Just her today. For the first time, her violin comes to school with her. In fourth grade they start orchestra.

And this is what she talks about. Because, well, orchestra is social. She has been "playing" violin for three years now and she has stuck with it even though it's not her favorite activity, and finally she turns to it with friends and suddenly, it's fun.

(On the way home, I let her get a scoop of Culver's.)

 

 

There's another activity she has stuck with for very many years -- ballet. Monday eve is the scheduled class for the oldest kids (in this particular studio). Off she goes, while my daughter and I use the time to sit down and catch up.

I come home late. Just as the sun is setting on our rural road. It's been such a full day!

 

 

with love....

Sunday

Even colder outside. They used to call it good sleeping weather. Well yeah, if you have a furnace. Ours has been on since Friday night.

(morning walk)

Breakfast. Ed is dozing on the couch, but rousing himself to join me for the morning meal. I say no -- just stay on the couch, we can talk across the room. 

And we do that but when I glance over at him I see he is cheating. His laptop is on his belly! Ed!

 

After breakfast, I go over to my mom's Hospice nursing care facility. 

She is totally discombobulated. Thrashing with regrets, angry words, and as the staff later described it -- remarkably, targeting herself rather than them, which had been her usual modus operendi. I can't get her to focus on the here and now, she can't see me, she refuses to listen.

I talk to the staff: she can't die like this -- I say to them. Dont you guys have some happy meds to make the transition to death easier, like a happy sail into eternity, full of flowers and rainbows or something? Isn't that what you do for people?

They assure me that she will not die like this, that they will adjust her meds and increase the ones that put a stop to these psychotic episodes. That all will be well by this afternoon.

In the meantime she dozes off, I stay.

She wakes up, I try again. She is calm now. Medicine kicked in? Maybe. But, her complete vision loss is a problem and she doesn't fully trust me to be who I say I am. So she tests me on knowledge of family history. It goes something like this:

You are Nina? (pause) Who were my brothers?

Johnny and Chester. She looks doubtful. Alright, Chester was your half brother. She still isn't convinced. She tells me I should have included Lillian. Not a brother, mom.

Huh. What's the name of the place outside Warsaw where you lived?

Gniazdowo. Yes, she nods, I got that right. And the other place in the forest next to it? 

Julin. 

You're smart. You must have done well in school. What was your favorite subject, math?

No mom. Writing. (That's only partly true. No need to explore my rebellious relationship with learning.) 

Yes, of course. Fiction or nonfiction?

Here's this woman who has almost no life left in her, who twenty minutes ago was calling herself a piece of trash, a failure, with no one but the Lord Jesus Christ (whom, in my entire 71 years of life, I have never heard her invoke) understanding her true pain, interviewing me about my life, having never done so before, and finding me just barely adequate at it. A few more questions later, she says -- well, you were good (at knowing family history), but not great. She tightens her lips, shakes her head. My mother, all in that one sentence, in that one facial expression.

 

Seeing all of her in this exchange, I now find it easier to sit and reassure, to hold her hand and prattle my way forward: Ed went sailing for two weeks. 

And who took care of the animals? 

I did. He's a nice guy, mom. 

Of course he's a nice guy. He's from New York. And who took care of the animals when you were away?  

She pauses. She resumes. What do you do with your time? 

Take care of grandkids. And you. 

Aren't you bored? No mom, not bored.  

Well, take care of yourself. Stay healthy. Workin' on it.

It doesn't really matter that she cannot fully embrace me, that I will always be that person who divorced a guy she happened to really like (she wrote a final good bye note that she has inserted into her Box of Important Papers -- I found it today, expressing love for her family and for my ex), that both daughters have wronged her terribly too many times to count -- it doesn't matter anymore. In the end, she could not ever get out of a trap of her own making -- of finding inadequacies and hardship everywhere. A trap that ultimately made her so unhappy with life and now in these last days as well.

Flawed that we were in her eyes, I do understand that she had pity. She had constant worry. She had her own way of feeling love. David Sedaris, on the death of his father wrote that it is possible to profoundly dislike a person and have love for them. There were years when my mom expressed on many written pages her profound dislike of me, of my life, my decisions. Her disappointment was so deep that she couldn't get herself to speak to me for years. But, I know that she couldn't help herself. This was who she was. And it did not take away from the fact that she surely loved the family that she refused to see or be with. Daughters whom she couldn't enjoy, grandchildren whose successes she so lauded and celebrated, at a distance. She made up her own rules and I admire her for that, even though now, in her last weeks of life, those same rules have caused her so much anger and psychic pain.

I leave her in a calm state. This person who has never felt the need to hug or kiss, has that need now, because without vision she cannot otherwise believe that this day still holds people in it who are her family.

*     *     *

In the evening the young family is here for dinner. Here comes Sparrow, with reddish hair, because his sister and her friend offered to paint it for him, and a crisp shirt that he put on especially for dinner at the farmhouse!

You can tell Ed is back -- Snowdrop immediately dives for his computer to play her favorite game on it.

Dinner on the porch. It's warm enough! Sort of.

We linger. Despite the early sunset, despite the need for an early bedtime, because it's a school night, we linger.

With love...

Saturday, of a kind

It is a singularly odd day with many good things going for it. First and foremost -- Ed is home and I have forgotten how grand it is to have him here again. (The forgetting, I suppose, was deliberate: you adjust to change by not thinking too much about the downsides of the new normal.) Then -- another welcome event -- his old pickup truck died and thus it has to go to the junk heap. That truck was held together with scotch tape, I swear. I feel better about it being off the road (absent a miraculous fix, but Ed thinks it is pretty much a gonner). And one more thing: it's cold as anything outside (we wake up to 45F/7C), but the sun is out, which makes it seem like a very warm winter morning! May be odd, but not unpleasant. 

I leave Ed to rest and head out to the farmers market, buying almost nothing. Just these:

It's an excuse really. To take in that crisp winter (haha) air! From there -- to the bakery.

And now we are finally ready for breakfast together. Not you Dance! I mean him and me!

There are many details of his sail across the Great Lakes and I ask about some of them. Basically things went very well except that they got stuck waiting for winds for several days toward the end. Logging in some quality guy time! 

I had suggested a bike ride for this afternoon, but things have been slipping with my mother and so instead, I went over to spend some time at her place, discussing too with the Hospice nurse our options going forward. I remember when I was way younger, when Hospice care first came onto the scene, I thought to myself -- I have to remember about them in the future!  Of course, it then became mainstream and what a relief it is to all of us who have parents in need of that kind of help at the end of their lives! My mother never really accepted her move to Hospice nursing care from her assisted living room. She thought she was being shortchanged in the care department. How wrong she was! The staff has been round the clock helpful. I could not have managed this without them.

Toward evening Ed did prod me out for a ride. It's jacket weather!

We did the loop, using the new bike trail addition to keep us off the busier road. Ed grumbled a little about how it took the hills (and thus the challenge) out of our ride and, too, the newly paved bike trail cut through our beloved prairie in a really unattractive way...

... but, the sun was still out and the breeze was light and so on balance, it was a fabulous ride.

(Pause by Lake Waubesa: no, the photo isn't crooked, the wharf is! Which is why I am not standing on it.)

And guess who didn't have to put away the chickens tonight! Odd to be suddenly free of that chore. Odd, but in the nicest way.

Friday

How cold is it? So cold... Well, not that cold. Tell me it's in the 50sF (so maybe 12C) in January and I'll do a victory dance around the farmhouse. But that same reading, my friends, is too cold for a leisurely breakfast out on the porch. So, after the walk to the barn...

... I take my foods, my flowers, my candle (last day of it!) to the kitchen table.

In the spring and summer I think about my flower fields. In the fall and winter, I think about how to spice up a short and cold day. I float many travel ideas, I consider starting new movement programs (remember last year's ballet? I mean, it did last for a few months before it sputtered to a spring-time halt, to be resurrected, maybe, this winter). I give a lot of attention on creating warmth, whether it be physical or mental. And so over breakfast, I imagined trips, I thought about beefing up my movement (never realizing, for instance, until the NYTimes blasted it all over its front page, that I could be allowing my rear end to develop dead butt syndrome, or gluteal amnesia if I spend too little time in the winter prompting it into action). These are pleasant thoughts (well, maybe not butt movement, which is one of those many things that we ought to attend to but seems so terribly dull as to be easily forgettable). Eventually though, I proceed with the day.

When it warms up just a tad, I bike over to Steffi's house to help keep the plantings there alive, given that we have had no rain in the past week and the forecast calls for no rain and plenty of sunshine for today and then next day and the next week and the one after. Normally, a dry September is like a gift of continued summer sunshine, but I've committed to keeping that place green and so there I am, standing with a hose for several hours, because I refuse to set up sprinkler systems for a lawn that I can't stand by definition. 

And that's how a Friday morning slipped right through my fingers. Kid pick up time came all too quickly, though not without joy. I can count on at least one of them being in a great mood at the end of the week, and quite often the both of them are bubbly and spirited.

And wet!

Guess what happened as I drove to their school? A sudden cloud cover took hold and there was rain! From 5% chance we leapt to 100% certainty. Not a lot of rain, but it would have been enough to save the grasses of Steffi's House. In other words -- I wasted several hours doing something that wasn't needed. Ah well. When I water, I meditate. That's never a waste!

This was to be the day when I promised we could pick at least one of the many melons ripening out back. True, it is raining (briefly, but exactly at the moment we drive up to the farmette). So what. I have umbrellas!

An at once funny and beautiful ending to the first week of back to school.

And here's another beautiful ending -- I get a call from Ed: they've sailed the boat to its proper destination and he is on his way home tonight. For once I'm not the one coming home from a trip. He is. Hi Ed...

with so much love...

a temporary cool-down

September is the month when your blood needs to adjust to cooler temps. That first shock of relatively cool air at night (low 40sF or 6C) will come tomorrow and stay with us through the weekend. And frankly, I'm feeling it a bit of it even now, as I chase the sun around the table again at breakfast time.

I'll get used to this and of course much much colder air currents, but the initial plunge always chills me the most. As I said, my blood hasn't adjusted its own internal thermostat.

The morning walk -- no snipping, no weeding, just animal care and a glance at the fading autumn flower fields.

Then I sat and hoped for rain. My wishes were not granted, which unfortunately dooms me to water Steffi's yard yet again, but I put that off for another day. I'm in a slow mode this morning. My big event was that a guy came back to talk about branch removal of trees that are working their way into the power lines at the side of the road. Madison Gas and Electric does the tree trimming on their tab but he wanted to discuss my options and since Ed was not there, I basically gave him free reign to not only cut down branches, but to take down two trees -- a black walnut and a Russian Olive  -- that have menaced other trees and my flower beds for too long. That's what happens when you go off sailing, leaving the home base in your hands of your sweetie who has long complained about the proliferation of trees on farmette lands!

And now it's time to pick up the kids.

I tell them -- no treats en route to home today! Once or twice a week is more than enough. They beg. I cave. French fries from Culvers it is. (Is it a surprise that the car smells of fries and ketchup?)

(the old pear tree has been raining pears all around my car...)

Evening. I cook fish. The cats are happy. I need the protein! 

I had in mind a quiet set of hours. Maybe a comedy to watch, a couple of pieces of chocolate to munch. Feet up.

And then I hear that telltale meow. If you have an outdoor cat sharing space with you, you'll have heard it too. It's an announcement. That they're bringing you a gift.

Dance has been crazy with her benevolence this past week. She has brought in a chipmunk. A mouse. And today -- a very large and very lively frog.

Do you know how high those amphibians can jump??

Dance always leaves her traumatized gifts squarely in the middle of the living room. Oftentimes they look dead, but it's all merely to fool everyone. You go near them and they suddenly revive and run like crazy. This frog leapt so high and moved so far that I was sure I would be chasing it for the rest of my waking hours today. But I got lucky. Eventually I found an Amazon box within reach and the frog got caught in Prime Time delivery wrapping. 

Now let's go back to the idea that it's a quiet evening, with maybe a comedy streaming and a few chocolates within reach...

and love...