Sunday

Still warm. Still sunny. Still dry.

 

Still not sleeping well, or rather -- waking up too early, then settling into thoughts rather than another round of sleep.

And so you get one more day of more serious posting as a result. But just one more.

I had gone through a folder of letters from my mom yesterday. I hadn't exactly kept those letters in the years she'd written them (these were from just prior to my divorce), but she made copies of them all, maybe anticipating that I would have tossed the originals, and she handed these copies to me, along with my brief and indifferent responses a few years ago. She wasn't cleaning out her stuff. So was this for emphasis? In case I missed her insults the first time around?

As you know, recently I had wondered whether I should have pushed back against her wild darts directed at me, though watching the recent American political scene, I'm pretty sure I was right to just stay silent. You cannot tell people who believe their stories that what they hold as gospel truth is one big fabrication. You cannot fact check for them, you cannot bring witnesses, evidence. It doesn't work and just raises the temperature in the room.

Ed and I have breakfast. Tentatively I bring up the subject again. Of her. Ed is quiet this morning. Maybe he's had enough. I ask him -- what would you have done if your mom had got it into her head that you were a terrible person and insisted on telling you this?  Hung up on her.  

I see that this was the wrong question. My mother didn't say this, she wrote it. And I did trash it, which is the equivalent of hanging up, but then, as if on repeat dial, she put it all in that folder and sent it to me again. I kept it this time. Why, you ask? To remind myself that this is who I'm dealing with -- a person who makes up stories about those who do not give her what she thinks ought to be hers.

My mom never retracted any of the stuff she wrote about me (pages and pages of it!). I'm quite sure she never wavered in her belief that I was totally crazy to want to end my marriage. It drove her nuts that I did not want to talk to her about it and so she walked out, then dug in her heals. Talk about the elephant in the room! But, as her needs increased and her calls to me for help multiplied each day, I became the "angel child" and we became her "beloved family," "the most important thing in life," -- this is the idea she wanted to leave behind. And with this directive to me:   you have to stay well! We all need you!  Lucky break for her, I outlived her.

In between breakfast and bagging tomatoes for the freezer -- both with Ed by my side -- I read the essays of David Sedaris once again. Now that my mother is gone, I can smile overtime at his brand of humor,  with double compassion for his swirl of emotion as he navigated the last days of his father's life.

A week has passed since I had my last half sensible conversation with my mom. Six days since her death. Papers sorted, phone calls made, emails written, clothing donated to Goodwill. All that remains is a family memorial meeting which the kids want and I'm willing to facilitate. I suppose to the great grandkids, it would be strange not to have some form of remembrance. When their cat died, the young family held a funeral for him. Weird not to do something for someone who, after all, gave life to us all. In a few weeks we'll gather. Words will be spoken, ashes will be scattered. (Unlike in Poland, it's not illegal to do this in America on public lands.) I have a small gift for each daughter, we'll eat a meal together and I'm hoping I'll return to sleeping well thereafter. No more elephants in the room. 

And no more reflection on this! I've filled in the backstory, I've explained the difficulties. Time to really hang up the phone finally and return to the tranquility and warmth of my farmette days.

 

This afternoon, Ed and I go for a brief walk.  It's amazingly lovely out by the turtle pond in our county park. The colors are muted of course, the grasses are drying up quickly, the water level in the pond is terribly low, and yet...

 

Ed reminds me that there is no better place to be right now and I do agree. On this day, at this time, in this place. But I know I'll be itching to travel again soon. The author Habib suggests in her book on "...an irreverent history of travel" that we should go places with wonder, not with opinion, expectation, not to view with our biased eyes, to pat ourselves at our superior ways of avoiding the appearance of tourism, not to test ourselves, or to measure their way against our way, but simply to experience wonder. 

I love that image, even though I agree with Ed that wonder comes at you with equal strength even if you just stay home. Our walk in the county park this afternoon is filled with moments of wonder! Look around you! In Flushing Meadows Park (see yesterday's post), in Farm Lake Park (where we walk today) there are people filling the place with their joyous presence. Amidst fields of prairie flowers and sprawling canopies of oaks. Out on the waters of the lake...

Travel has to deliver more to make it worth my while, my resources, my getting on that plane that I know does our planet no favors. And travel does deliver more: it opens up closed spaces within you. And it brings you down to size. There is so much more to life than just your petty grumbles and self indulgent whimpers and cravings. So much more... Entering that other world keeps you humble. And happy to be alive. And very happy to come back to the turtle pond, the prairie grasses, and of course all the beloved people here.

Speaking of beloved people here, guess who comes over for dinner on the porch! 

And it is the perfect evening for it.

(play first, eat later!)

September really does have the best weather for being out there, around a table as the dusk sets in. Fills you with wonder indeed!

 

 

 

and love...

Saturday

In working through a backlog of my mom bills, accounts and payments, I notice that in recent days her FICA score (in other words her credit worthiness) has shot up to way over 800. In other words -- exceptional! In death, she is finally a terrific credit risk. She would be proud.

This is my day then -- not an emotional catch up, but a realistic one, where I do the math, tick off lists, leaf through papers. 

I'm a broken record here, but it really is another beautiful day! 

Morning walk...

And then I go straight to the downtown market... 

 

 

 

... where I pick up flowers (they are having a great run this late summer -- for those growers who have the ability to irrigate their fields. It's been beastly dry!), arugula, and more corn (several farmers have late season corn). 

And bakery treats from Madison Sourdough.

 

 

On the way home, I listen to a story about immigrants on NPRadio. Read it here, why don't you -- it's even better online, because there are photos appended to it. And it is beautiful. 

My family on my mother's side is one big immigrant mess (Like A swallow describes it well, I think), even as my mother liked to talk about it as a straight line ascent: she very much saw herself as part of another, older generation of immigrants, glorified now in the retelling, as if they paused no threats to the "American fabric" and worked their way up without the opposition of other low income groups. I always thought my own immigrant story was so weirdly out of step with what you read about in the press (about Poles coming to America) that I sometimes hesitate to even call myself an immigrant, because, well, I came here to finish my studies and then stayed and married and applied for citizenship, and got my green card and then lo, it turned out that I need not continue with my paperwork because as it happened, I already was an American (due to my mom's ancient citizenship status)! Who knew... I certainly didn't.

Still, I've always had an eye out for that word -- immigrant. And immigrant communities. I track their stories attentively and listen to the current immigration debates with a mix of horror and sympathy. And I ask Ed at breakfast today -- when did things become this bad? Why have we lost stories such as the one on NPR (read it, above!) and focused on some mythical dog eating whatever?

He gives me one of those sympathetic gazes, the one that means -- you are so not from here, you don't know anything, you poor dear, about who we really are... And he launches into his recount of American history. One he's told me many times before. About the fighting between the newcomers and the ones already here. About internment camps and McCarthy trials. About southern Italians and the Irish in New York. About the Mexicans and El Salvadorians now. It's always been like this! It's how we work out the tensions between people of different backgrounds.

Oh, you mean we throw the new arrivals into a den of angry wolves and see who survives? Says you from your white privileged position?

He reminds me that his family -- Jews from Europe, lower east side of Manhattan -- weren't exactly the white and privileged of New York. Still, he for one doesn't see any significant change in this country -- for the better or for worse. People fighting among themselves over whose culture defines this moment. We're always fighting here, pointing fingers at others -- he says, and this time with a note of exasperated resignation.

Nonetheless, the morning story stays with me, because guess what, I am still in the throes of processing my mother's death. The last time I had any semblance of a sensible conversation with her was Sunday -- less than a week ago. And I know that my mother in her own articulation of where she fit in here, saw herself very much as a young immigrant from Poland, who went back to Poland as an adult in part because she fell in love with this Polish guy (my father), but also because she was afraid of being persecuted here for her political beliefs at the time (which were then, like her father's and her future husband's, some version of Bernie Sanders type democratic-socialist).

I think about immigrants like me -- those who didn't speak the language when they came here, those who are questioned by kids in school about their awful home countries (is it true that in Poland...) and I think about Ed's words now as he tells me -- those communities that have made room for new immigrants? They will be the places of the greatest amount of growth in America. Just wait and see ten years from now.

We go back to look at the pictures in the NPR piece -- Flushing Meadows Park. Both he and I were there in 1964, at the time of the World's Fair. And at the end of the day he would go back to his home on 68th and I to mine on 46th. Mine is a life of coincidences and lucky breaks. (My mother's too, only she didn't see it that way.)

We go for a bike ride, pausing as we always do, along Lake Waubesa, where an immigrant family speaking no English, spreads out a picnic. Sharing a weekend afternoon with close ones, feeling safe, I hope...

And here's a novel way to end a September Saturday: after the ride, I go to Kopke's Greenhouses. I'd seen their truck at the market and I've been thinking for a while now that my winter plantings (for the windowsill) ought to include succulents. Kopke's had tiny ones that I thought would be far more perfect than what I usually strive to overwinter from the usual annual collection of spindly flowers.

Of course, no one shops at a greenhouse at 4 pm on a September Saturday. Their cash-cow now is the mum plant -- people love them, I don't. They remind me of the perfect green lawn: they seem somehow fake. And when they wilt or lose their blooms, it's one big throwaway. At the greenhouse, I see few people but lots of mums. What else... Oh! A few left over pansies. These little guys began my own growing season back in spring. They can fill a pot left bare after the spring ones finished their thing. So I add those to the cart. And of course the small pots of succulents. 

And as I walk the deserted aisles, I think how quickly everything changed since my visit here in late April when I filled my car twith a plethora of annuals for the tubs. The store was crowded and people were so excited, so happy about all that would happen as spring exploded on us. April. The season was changing fast. Oh yeah. That was when my mom changed as well -- from unhappy but maybe somewhat happy, and definitely independent (sort of kind of), to... well, this: her rapid decline in September. Loss of vision one day, loss of life the next. 

But, even though I am only five days past her death, the shock elements have receded (and why was I shocked anyway -- everyone expected her to die, me most of all!) and I am thinking increasingly about the months ahead, stripped of responsibility now for her care, which, honestly, is a big exhale. Because, you know, she was a handful. Connected to me more than to anyone else in her final decade. Good thing she decided to like me again (most of the time). "Beloved angel of a child" is a good spot to inhabit when you have to track, fix, make good, every step and mistep your mom makes in the last years of her life. Much better than "cruel despicable human being" -- words she'd used on me just a few years before I moved her here so that I could look after her. What can I say, I learned to live with her drama. But it was never, ever easy.

Here are my succulents:

Pretty, no?

with love...

end of the week

This was the week that was! (You're probably too young to remember a TV show from the early 1960s by a similar name...) Can we please return to normal now? Oh, but what exactly is the new normal? Let me mull that one for a bit...

The Hospice team calls me in the morning. Oh-oh, did I forget something? Do they want me to come back and pick up a missed item that I should have known to take with me? Missed a paper to sign (even as I signed so many!)?  I've never walked that path from Hospice to death before. But, they merely say to me -- we're here for you. Are you alright? How good they are to have no expectations! Just concern. (And to have a staff person charged with looking after the ones left behind. I'm not in need of help. No, not at all. Maybe a sleeping pill next time I try to get a good night's rest, but that's it. But I surely know that a family death can leave behind shattered lives. Hospice is there for them. How good is that!)

I get up, I walk through the drying garden, feed the animals..

Eat breakfast with Ed. We have this argument going: how do you best eat a frozen croissant. I say you have to reheat it in the oven for twelve minutes. He says in the microwave for 50 seconds. I am so tired of making decisions this morning that I tell him -- oh, go ahead and wave it! And it is just fine. Different, but fine.

I suppose this is the way I would describe my day today -- different, but fine.

I talk to my sister then. Poor thing -- it's her mother too and she has to process it all at a distance. In a way, that's harder. You're left not with things to do, affairs to put in order, but with your own thoughts and memories. Our mother, strong personality that she was, had an impact, even on those who lived far from her. An indirect influence is still an influence. My mom was an enduring subject of our conversations, even in our senior years. You have to shuffle things around a bit now. She is no longer here. All that was her is in the past. You are free, unburdened, but also alone. You're not reacting, you are forging ahead without the barricades, if not necessarily the guardrails of her oversight. But wide open paths can feel uncomfortably strange, too.

So we talk about all that, about these last months. I walk her through the events once again and eventually that's done, and I hang up, and I have an hour, (or is it two?) to stand there with a hose to water the tubs. That's how you move to regular old life: you notice on your morning walk that some annual plants are drooping, you go out and stand with a hose over each one and that takes up the rest of your morning.

And still,  it's all so fresh. I think about how strange it is to be suddenly without the daily emails, the clockwork phone calls, nearly every one ending with me saying -- I'm sorry you had such a rotten day. I used to think -- I sound like that kid book, "Alexander and the Terrible Rotten Horrible No Good Very Bad Day," on repeat! A steady stream of mostly unsolvable issues that my mother generated as regularly as a machine throwing out tennis balls at you. Her life's burdens haunted me since before Covid. Five years of intense mothering of my mother. Done now. So weird... 

But I also accept now what I could not accept before -- that perhaps all these years, she was okay. Ed always claimed she thrived on discontent. She got places that way. So maybe she was okay all these last years, with her illicit candy bars, her solo meals in the dining room (she did not want to listen to "other people's problems"), her puzzle doing in the lounge, even as nasty others messed things up there. She was a city girl (Detroit, D.C., New York, Warsaw, New York again) and plant life in the village where we, her kids lived, and then summered with her parents, did not interest her much, but in her assisted living room, she would look out the window and admired the tubs of flowers planted in the courtyard. She developed a theoretical love of nature then. I say theoretical, because really, it was all out the window. (Besides, she disliked Wisconsin. Both my parents did. My dad on his last visit here in maybe 1983 or 1985 -- he died in 2013 -- took a walk with me in the suburbs where I lived and asked -- you really want to spend the rest of your life in this town?)  My mom, city girl, telling me now in her late nineties -- it's good that you touch the dirt and bring yourself closer to the earth out there on the farmette. (But not so good that she ever wanted to visit me at the farmhouse. Freshly moved from California, she resisted getting too close to my life with Ed. She lived fifteen minutes away and still she came here just once. To show a friend where I lived.)

 

I put the hose down. It's time for the kids.

The two older ones had "picture day" today in school. I smile at how important this is, even now, in the days of so many cameras, phones, taking videos and pics daily! Both chose their outfits with care, Sparrow upset yesterday because he couldn't find a bracelet he wanted for picture day (Sparrow, the camera wont catch your wrist! I dont care! It's for good luck!), Snowdrop, frustrated with the directive to please comb your hair with more care today. I get them of course in the hours after, when the hair is once again tussled and bracelets are misplaced, but still, this was the day and this is how they looked, in September of 2024, he in 1st grade, she in 4th, on picture day!

(with the water bottle carrier he sewed yesterday in sewing class)

Snowdrop has her violin lesson later this afternoon, so we adjust our schedules for that and I drop them off at the new Friday drop off point and now I have just the quiet of farmette life, on a beautiful evening of mid September. 

Ed is out examining an old truck somewhere. I go for a walk. If I learned anything at all in the last months it is that sitting on your butt is a surefire way to melancholy and physical decline. My mother's sudden rapid downturn is absolutely linked to her stubborn refusal to move out of her recliner once I transferred her to the nursing care facility. However content she was in her discontent before, it all collapsed for her once she refused to get up and out of her chair. So tonight, I resume my walks. A bike ride tomorrow? Sounds nice...

Prairie grasses, drying landscapes, sounds of birds. So beautiful, all of it....

with so much love...

 

next September day

And the great September weather continues. 

 

 

 

Even in this most unusual month for all of you and especially for all of us, in my family, the good weather just drifts right in, here in south-central Wisconsin, day after day, same sunshine, same comforting warmth. It's like we are standing still while spinning in a storm of events. There was a debate, and in the thick of words flying across a split screen, I got the call that my mother died. Yeah, her death was like a shudder underneath the earth's crust: it had an impact, on me, and, too, on all members of our family, even those who had little contact with her in the past decade or two or three. She had one of those outsized personalities that left you wondering what just happened when she touched your life. Her smile, but too, her scowl were legendary! I remember when she was hospitalized this April and the staff complained that she berated them and wouldn't cooperate. A new doc came in and he reported to me, grinning through his words -- she was great with me! Smiled and called me her guardian angel! Lovely woman! Next day he called again -- never mind. Didn't like my suggestions. Totally hostile. Told me she wouldn't treat her worst enemy the way I treat her. 

Her death means that all this is shut down now. Legends of the past. We move through the day, with memories which make us laugh, because so many of the more dramatic ones are a lot more fun in the retelling always. In my everyday, her exaggerations and dramatizations always left me depleted. Ed couldn't understand why I let them get to me so much. It's on you to shrug it off and move on -- he'd always say. And I did always move on, but it took a while. Because, shouldn't I be able to do better by my mother? To turn things around for her (and therefore for the both of us)?  Every once in a while there would be a glimmer of hope. She would say -- I read your blog post about your problems with flights cancelled and travel plans unraveling. I can't believe you were so upbeat about it! I should be so unbothered by everything and everyone! But the next day she would be back in the same tailspin of bother. All those perfectly straight white teeth of hers, ten times better than mine, ready to smile? Pffft! Retired now, saved exclusively for the very rare kid visit. (She discouraged them all from coming. I think just seeing their energy levels exhausted her. How do you manage at your age? -- she'd often ask me. Your grandmother was twenty years younger when she took care of you. I was ten years younger when I looked after your girls. You're old! In there was a compliment and a warning: I am dangerously close to being over the hill. Hold on to these days while they last! -- she'd say. Sigh...)

So on this splendid September morning, I feed the animals and I have a beautifully long breakfast on the warmed porch, no chasing of the sun needed...

 

And then I drive over to pick up my daughter and once again we head out in search of... my mom's body -- now presumably at the funeral home way at the edge of town.

They have put her "on display" for us. The funeral person hovers in the room while my daughter and I get closer. I'm thinking  -- can't you leave? I'm not about to steal anything! Still, the funeral person hovers. My daughter asks -- you want to be alone with grandma? No.... it would be me and the funeral person with your grandma.

Everyone says this -- they look so peaceful in death. Well sure. The empty body does not move, talk, smell, sing, cry, love. What gave life to all those feelings and emotions has left. Stardust and souls meandering in ways none of us understand. Or are they meandering? Maybe she, my mother, just left that body and found a home within those whom she loved. That's what I would do. Get rid of that wrecked ship that carried me along for a lifetime. Let me float now carefree in the hearts of those I adore.

I have one last good look at the face I knew so well, lifeless, but very much hers, standing in for the essence of the person that was my mother. How many of us get to know a face so well, to study another for 71 years of our lives? To have felt both so sad and so hopeful at its sight, to grow old, okay -- older! -- next to it?

So I look at it before it disappears for me, even as I know, like my grandma's face -- it will never really disappear for me. That face is stuck with permanent adhesive to my soul.

 

And now it's time to pick up Sparrow. His sister is home sick today so it's just him.

 

 

 

And because it's Thursday and a mid-September Thursday at that, we go to the local market... 

 

 

 

... so that I can pick up some local honey and, importantly, another box of tomatoes for freezing. I had already gotten one earlier this week and we have some ten freezer bags of tomatoes prepped and ready for our winter chilis, but ten bags are not nearly enough. We stock up on more.

Sparrow likes having his sister around, but he also likes the occasional day where he can take the lead at the farmhouse. We have a quiet afternoon of favorite Sparrow games and stories.

I drop him off, I return home. 

And let me just say a big thanks to all of you who wrote, who sent flowers and messages of love. Each one was savored and held close. You're all wonderful.

with so much love...

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....