Mom & Me Three Archive

    I smiled at the "spa day" suggestion. Oddly, this is something both my mother and I would love. It's probably out of the question for my birthday, as time is a little tight, but, you know, I'm thinking that this might not be completely out of her jurisdiction, especially if I could find one in The Valley during the winter that takes kindly to Ancient patrons. I'm thinking, this might be something I could arrange for just after the new year. Thank you for suggesting it, Kidneygurl! Hearing from you again reminded me that I never responded properly to your comment on my "bug up the ass" essay some weeks ago. I have to tell you, I much appreciated your "right on" comment. You might be interested to know that a few days after you commented, a friend of mine read it and immediately called me to tell me that I was being "unfair". Slipping ecstatically into post-menopausal liberation as I am, I just laughed. She's never been a caregiver for the health challenged, whether Ancient or not. She'll get it. Hopefully, one day, we'll all get it.
    I discovered something interesting on the Cane Front today from a discussion about the issue with our home health supplier through whom we get our oxygen. It seems that, although Medicare will fund one if they it's prescribed, the fellow I talked to said using the benefit for a cane wasn't wise for the following reason: Of the three devices covered by this Medicare benefit, canes are not rented, they are bought outright. When a cane is bought through Medicare it freezes the benefit for five years. Considering that a single shaft cane can be purchased for around $25 and a claw cane (the type that would work best for my mother) costs around $50, it would be silly to freeze the benefit on behalf of a cane when, considering my mother's age, there is a good possibility that at some time between now and her death we may want to use the benefit to provide a more sophisticated wheel chair or a different style of walker than the ones we have. Freezing the benefit for five years, in my mother's case, may very well freeze it for the rest of her life. So, tomorrow we're going to go cane hunting and purchase one outright. I'm familiar with a couple of places that sell them so I'm sure we'll be able to get a good deal. I'm going to focus on places that will adjust the cane, be willing to replace it for free if it's defective, has a reasonable maintenance policy and provides some instruction on usage. At the same time I'm going to check on the availability of oxygen fanny packs and whether I need her PCP to rewrite her oxygen prescription to include these. If she is at all facile with the cane she may very well want to use it outside as well as inside our home, in which case the fanny pack oxygen would come in handy. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be for both her and me were it necessary for me to cart her oxygen around while she was caning through a shopping trip.

    Today, during one of the times when I was replacing and readjusting her elastic knee brace, Mom mentioned, "I'll probably have to wear this for the rest of my life, won't I."
    "You know, Mom, it wouldn't surprise me if you'll have to use it most of the time, especially when we're out, for the rest of your life. I think, probably, every day there will be periods when you're not moving much and you're sitting in your rocker when you can take it off but it's so much easier for you, even moving around the house, when you have it on that, yeah, it's probably a pretty permanent thing."
    We both sat and contemplated the brace on her knee for a few moments.
    "You're not getting any younger, you know, Mom," I said.
    She flashed me a comic sneer and said, "Well thank goodness for that!"
    We both laughed. It is this spirit in her that I not only love but regularly marvel at. Even at her age, with her aches and pains, her phasing and its attendant confusion and her occasional admonitions to me to "never get old", when she's experiencing the worst that Ancienthood has to offer her she continues to cherish the advantages of aging in the same way someone in their middle years does. She has absolutely no desire to go backward in time.
    You just gotta love a woman like that.

    This afternoon for no reason I can think of it suddenly hit me how much I'm going to miss her after she dies. I'd never before thought of it. Up to that moment, every time I've thought of my life after her death I've thought about it in terms of how I'll survive, what hopes, wishes and dreams I might consider fulfilling, etc. Today I realized that she and I have become such a crucial part of each other's lives that the absence of the necessity for all the observational and caring routines I've constructed around her presence will make it seem, initially, I think, as though I'm standing in the middle of a deep, dark hole. I was blown away by this realization. Curiously, instead of causing me to cringe at the possibility of her death, realizing this created, instead, a hunger in me to redouble my efforts to enjoy the hell out of her while she's alive, a sort of minor epiphany, I guess. Not that I hadn't previously considered that this is The Way To Do It, but, you know, I flashed back on all the times when I've felt overwhelmed by the lack of Me Time and suddenly realized there will again come a time when I'll have all the Me Time I can handle. Best not to waste this opportunity to appreciate and participate intimately in Her Time.
    I remember her telling me, after my father died, that, more than anything she felt relief at his passing. I know this is not an uncommon feeling when someone for whom you've been intensely caring and who has had critical and extremely uncomfortable health problems for a long time is released from their agony (which my father was experiencing prior to his death) and you're released from the helplessness of caring for someone in such a state. Although I have no way of knowing if my mother will suffer such agony before her death or simply check out with no baggage, somehow I think that, for me, because of the long journey I will have taken with her, that, even if a certain amount of relief is involved, my overwhelming reaction will be temporary bewilderment at her definitive absence.

    She continues, by the way, in ruddy, energetic (for her) good health. Early this evening when she laid down for her nap she asked me to awaken her in an hour.
    "I'll do that if you want," I said, "but you've been doing really well, lately, lots of moving around. If you decide to catch a little more sleep time, I think it'll be okay."
    "No, I don't want to miss anything," she said.
    She did, in fact, come to immediately when I awoke her exactly an hour later. "I'm ready for the evening, now," she said.
    "We don't have anything spectacular planned, Mom, just dinner, trimming your nails and maybe some hot games of Sorry."
    "That's enough," she said.

    Tonight she spoke of my father as though I hadn't known him as my father but only as her husband. We were watching some minor program on television and one of the actors pronounced the word "either" with an initial long "i" sound: "Eye-ther".
    "[Her husband] heard that pronounciation once on TV, picked it up and nearly drove me crazy pronouncing it like that from them on."
    Since Mom also has a grandson who's named after my father I wasn't immediately sure who she was talking about. "You mean your husband?" I asked.
    She looked at me as though I was losing my mind. "Of course. I know you've met him."
    "I dare say I have, Mom," I said, chuckling, "considering that he fathered me."
    She did a double take. I watched her expression kaleidoscope as she silently reoriented herself regarding who I was and how she and I were related. Finally she said, "Oh, yes, that's right. You're mine."
    I continued the discussion, recalling for her the time, decades ago, when all of us were gathered at a table at our temporary home in Spearfish one evening while my father read to us descriptions of Guam, to which we were shortly to relocate. My father had spent even more years previous meticulously divesting himself of his thick North Carolina accent but there were a few dialetical idiosyncracies he never dropped: One was pronouncing "can't" as "cain't". Throughout his oral presentation I continually interrupted him, wanting to ask him a question. He put me off until, finally, in a frustrated attempt to silence me, he asked me what I wanted.
    "Why do you say 'cain't', Dad?"
    Mom and I both laughed recalling his exasperated, silent reaction and talked for several minutes about his life-long battle to keep from being recognized as a Poor White Trash Southerner.
    Throughout the entire discussion my mother's words of recognition to me, "You're mine," echoed through my head. When we finished with Dad and sat back satisfied with this particular memory, I couldn't help but smile broadly and think, "Yes, Mom, I'm yours. How lucky I am."
    Mom noticed me smiling and said, "You really enjoyed catching him on that, didn't you?"
    "Well, yes, but not just that..." I reached out and patted her arm.
    She put her hand on mine and said, looking simultaneously far away and close up, "I know what you mean..."
    We had a very good night tonight. I think its aura will enhance the rest of our days together. How truly lucky I am.
    Later.