The Fish Pond

Going Gentle

My grandfather's retirement community has officially moved him to the nursing home, and he has had a bad week, even before the official decision.  He has been growing weaker and weaker.  Saturday morning he had an unresponsive episode; they got him into bed and he woke up, and then he asked to go to the hospital.  The hospital gave him some percoset and sent him back to the nursing home.  He kept saying "I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to do."  He told us he was ready to go.  Dolts that we are, we finally realized he was asking how to go about leaving.  He's been refusing to eat and take his supplement for about a week now.  We told him all we could do is make him comfortable, and he could stop fighting if he wanted.

Saturday night he refused to take any of his medication, and again this morning.  He'll only take the morphine and the oxygen.  Multiple myeloma is one of the more painful kinds of cancer, and he had been refusing the pain medicine.  The nurse told us that was actually counter productive to his wishes, because then the body is tense and fighting, rather than relaxing into death.  When he was telling us "I don't know what to do" we told him to take the pain medicine and just relax, to rest, and let go.

It won't be long now.

Peace Be With Them

My friend J called to tell me that her mother passed from this earth peacefully this morning.  She said she was there with her and it was "actually quite a beautiful thing."  Her words.  May we all be so blessed.

After the horrible events of yesterday, I'm feeling like I don't know what to do, that my children will never be safe anywhere, and I'm struggling with how to talk to them about it, how to help them process it so that they don't end up not feeling safe ever.  What do I say to them?  How can I even talk to them when my heart is breaking with grief for those parents, when I keep picturing what if it had been one of my kids?  Well, I keep saying them, but mostly it's Trout.  How do I raise her to have the grace and strength to deal with my eventual death (or anyones, for that matter) in such a way that she can see it as a "beautiful thing"?  How, with stuff like what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday coloring her perception of the world?

Peace, and strength, be with all of their families.  J's, too.

Getting By With a Little Help from My Friends (and Family) OR Gratitude

This is an amazingly stressful time for me right now.  Nemo is back to not sleeping through the night again.  Sunny has entered the Age of Destruction and no one can keep up with her efforts to completely dismantle the house.  Little Man is entering kindergarten in the fall and I have to do a mountain of paperwork for the Socialist Bureaocracy of Montgomery County and then take him to school for orientation on Friday.  Trout has been great at picking up a lot of my slack but she needs time with her mom.  I end up spending so much time up with my grandfather or on the phone dealing with that situation that I don't have enough time for them, BigDaddyFish, or me.

Enter friends and family.

Like my in-laws.  Who are quirky and eccentric and unable to do too much but what little they do goes a long way to making my life easier.  They came and watched the kids last weekend and BDF and I got to go out to dinner by ourselves.  My FIL comes on the nights Trout has school of religion and takes her, waits in the parking lot during her class, and brings her home, thus making it so I don't have to shlep all three other kids into the small lobby of the school where SOR is held along with about 200 students plus their parents all at the same time because for some unknown reason we are no longer allowed to pickup outside the classroom like we did last year (this makes it sound so tame but really, this is a weekly disaster).

Like one of the mothers at Little Man's preschool, who takes turns with me watching the little ones in the parking lot while one of us runs in to pick up the bigger kids.

And Uncle Orca, our part-time Manny.  Yup.  You read that right.  Manny.

We've known Uncle Orca forever, it seems.  In fact, Uncle Orca introduced BigDaddyFish and me.  In fact, I dated Uncle Orca first.  Nope, it never gets awkward.  Really.  Much.

Uncle Orca is a professional musician by trade.  He plays a mean trombone, and he sings great, too, but doesn't like to admit it.  Since most work of professional musicians is at night, that makes him available to babysit during the day, if you catch him reasonably ahead of time to make sure he sleeps at night and doesn't keep vampire hours.  If you click the link and check out his blog and aren't a professional musician, then only about a half of what he says on his blog will make sense.  But that's his life.

Anyway, he is a great friend, and a great caregiver to my kids.  I've called on him countless times for various emergencies and he is usually able to come to the rescue.  Emergencies as big as trips to the hospital for various family members or as small as I am losing it and need a shower and need someone to watch the kids to make sure they don't burn down the house or kill each other while I do it.  He watches the kids while BDF and I go on dates.  He moved in here for the weekend for the only trip that BDF and I have taken alone since we've had kids and lived to tell about it.  The kids love him and he loves them.  He is great with them and the kids get the chance to learn that a man can be just as nurturing and caring as a woman, even if he isn't a family member.  I am very grateful that he is in our lives.  This situation with my grandfather is so trying, but it is a blessing that Uncle Orca is able to come be with the kids so I can take care of my grandfather.

Uncle Orca is also a composer and arranger, and he has a CD out, which you can get here.  I think its genre is called something like ambient electronica, but I like to call it bathtub music, as in, this is what you listen to in the bathtub when you are trying to relax and escape it all.  If you are at all musically inclined and you like jazz, it's a lot like Keith Jarrett, only minus the jazz slant and the whole saxophone thing.  The little snippets you can hear on the cafepress site do not do it justice.

Help me pay him back for all the short notice babysitting.  Go, listen, buy his CD, and spread the word.  Also!  I am giving away a free copy of the CD, so if you want one, leave me a comment and I'll pick a winner at random, say on friday.

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This past weekend my grandfather took a turn for the worse.  His oxygen levels dropped again, so now he has to be on oxygen all the time, and he was in enough pain that he finally accepted the morphine he's allowed to have.  This is a huge thing for him because he has always maintained that he doesn't need pain medicine.  He is a whole lot more confused and aggravated with the whole situation.  He doesn't really understand where he is a lot of the time, and this weekend, a couple of times he didn't know who I was.  Today he told me he was going home today, and I asked him where he thought he was, and he said the hospital.  He's not at the hospital, he's in the nursing home portion of his retirement community.  He's probably not ever going home.

I spent a huge chunk of time up there yesterday with him, just talking to him and helping him and trying to show him that we love him and aren't casting him aside.  He kept getting up out of bed and when I asked him what he needed or where he was going he'd say "I don't know, I just don't know."  He'd move to the chair for a while, then get right back in bed and lay down again.  I went with him down to the dining room for dinner; he ate about 5 bites of food and took one sip of milk.  That's all.  They are making him drink a supplement with his medicine because he isn't eating much.  I am uncertain how that fits in with his wishes to not prolong his life beyond its natural course.  I don't know whether or not to fight them on it.

There are a couple of bright spots.  He enjoys seeing Nemo even if he can't remember his name or even hold him much because Nemo weighs too much for my grandfather.  In fact, many of the residents that live there get a kick out of Nemo - it takes me forever to walk anywhere in that place because so many people stop me to exclaim over him and I don't have the heart not to stop and talk to them.  I rarely see other visitors there.  My grandfather has a funny neighbor who is the epitome of the Grumpy Old Man.  The first night I went up to see my grandfather there I was walking down the hall with Nemo in the stroller and this man saw me and says "What kinda of damn junk do you got?"  Another time he was being pushed down the hall by a family member (I think) and I was walking back from the nurses station and he saw me and groused "Whatre you smiling about?"  I shared a look with his caregiver and answered his question, but he continued to grump.  Some people would be put off by him, I think, because he means it, he's grumpy, but I just find him amusing.

I came back home exhaused and emotionally fried.  I called home to ask if they wanted me to pick up carryout for dinner, and while I was on the phone BDF told me that he needed my patience when I got home.  I explained that I was just stretched so thin if plucked I would snap, and he said he understood that and it was a complicated situation but he really needed my help so we could get to bed on time (he had a meeting this morning and had to get up early).  I walked in the door to a Completely.  Clean.  Living room. and all the kids sitting on the couch or in chairs and grinning like cats.

Our life is in the living room (or family room, same thing - we only have the one).  The one TV we own and all the DVDs.  All the kids' toys.  We usually eat in that room.  It usually looks like our house has been ransacked and a pantry emptied into that room.  It is next to impossible to stay on top of the mess when there is an infant in the house - I've been fighting a losing battle with it ever since I've had more than one kid, and it's become worse with each kid we've added.  He marshalled the kids and spent FIVE HOURS taking the room apart and cleaning it.  I asked where all the toys were and they said "We put them away, mommy."   I cried.

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My friend J's mother is in a coma from which she will not return, otherwise known as a persistent vegetative state (a la Terry Schiavo).  She did have a living will.  Today she was transferred to palliative care (hospice) so that her wishes can be carried out.  Please pray for peace and strength for their family.

Pray for Us

A nurse just called from my grandfather's retirement community.  He fell in the bathroom and hit his head.  He may have a head injury, but his oxygen levels are extremely low again.  Like in the 70s%.  I'm headed up as soon as Uncle Orca gets here to watch the kids.

Sigh.

Update:  Well, head injury wise he is fine.  Not even a bump.  However, his heart keeps jumping into an irregular rhythm and he's running a fever, so they are keeping him there.  I, however, am going to bed.  Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

Musings from the Emergency Department

Last night I had everything all planned out - I had a sitter, I was going to take Trout out to deliver the rest of these blasted Girl Scout cookies, Nemo seemed to be feeling better, and Little Man was at my in-laws' house for the weekend, and after the cookies were delivered I was going to have some writing time.  I was ready to walk out the door with Trout when the phone rang.

It was a nurse from my grandfather's retirement community.  He was having shortness of breath and they were taking him to the hospital.  So, since my uncle and aunt were out of town, I was on point as the closest one geographically, and the one with any decision making authority, so I packed up Nemo, since I didn't know how long I'd be, and off we went.

He was admitted to the hospital with high heart rate, and as of right now, the next night, they still don't know exactly what is wrong with him.  Or if they do they aren't telling him or any of the rest of us.  He's on the cardiac floor of the hospital, and this doesn't seem to be directly related to his cancer, though in a roundabout way it could be, i.e., he is receiving radiation for the cancer, radiation lowers his resistance and makes him more prone to infection, infection could cause the heart rate problems.  We don't know how long he is going to be there.  I had spent yesterday morning at my grandfather's house trying to gather materials to do his taxes - he has well over a dozen different investment accounts and my grandmother passed away at the end of January last year, plus he owns a farm, so his taxes are a migraine of aggravation.  He was fine when I left him around noon so I could pick up Little Man from school and he could go to his radiation appointment.

The Emergency Department was packed, so he had to wait quite late to get a room.  I bailed at 11:15 since I had the baby with me, but he said he didn't get his room until well after midnight; he arrived around 6 pm and I arrived about 7:30, thanks to lousy traffic.  So we had about four hours to spend together.

My grandfather has never been much of a deep conversationalist.  We would talk, he'd offer advice, that sort of thing, but never deep conversations about the meaning of life or, heaven forbid, feelings.  In the last 6 months or so I think my grandfather and I have talked on the phone more than all the other years of my life put together.  It has been a nice evolution in our relationship.

And last night, we talked.

He told me stories of his life.  He went to school in a one-room school house with no running water or electricity (think Little House on the Prairie), and he's lived to see satellites and cell phones and computers.  He talked about that.  He talked about his institutions of higher learning (it took five to get him through school due to the air force and WWII and moving around).  He talked about my grandmother, my uncle, my aunt, and best of all my mom.  He talked about when my uncle was born 3 months premature and how he and my grandmother almost died and how the doctor had told him he thought he could only save one of them (he saved them both).  He talked about the limits he placed on his employment so he could have a flexible schedule to be able to be involved in his kids' lives, like coaching little league and swimming.  He talked about where he was when he got the call that my mom had died.  He told me where on his computer he has all the files of all the writing he's done over the last few years - sermons, essays, and stories of his life.  He talked about how he's lived a full life, a good life, and he's ready if the Lord calls him.

He smiled and laughed and cooed at Nemo, and played with him the best he could seeing as how he can't hold him (Nemo's too heavy) and Nemo can't sit up.  He proudly told the nurse that Nemo is his tenth great grandchild (Trout is #1, Little Man is #4, Sunny is #7).

I will always be grateful for having that time with him, no matter what happens.  My cousin went up today to see him - I wanted to go up but he told me that "You did your duty yesterday - stay home and take care of your family."  I wanted to shout to him that he is my family, too, just as much as my kids and husband, but instead I delivered girl scout cookies and went to target and the grocery store and cooked dinner for my family and put the kids to bed.  Just as I think he wanted me to.

Every time I had to step out to make a phone call (because they're ALL long distance so I had to use my cell - why is it that everyone is always long distance from the hospital?  I've had this experience at 3 different "local" hospitals) I took Nemo with me because when I arrived the crash cart was right outside my grandfather's "room" in the ED and I had visions of my grandfather crashing while I was calling a relative to update them and the doctors and nurses rushing in to save my grandfather and flinging aside my sleeping baby in his stroller in the process.  The place was so packed people were lined up three deep in the hallways, so we passed a lot of people each time.  Not a single person didn't smile or comment on Nemo.  I hope he helped a very trying and stressful time weigh a bit lighter for those people - I know their smiles helped me.

I saw a young mother, probably in her early 20's, on a gurney with an oxygen mask strapped to her face being wheeled quickly toward a room.  The techs pushing her were mumbling something about asthma as they rushed down the hall, and a little girl about Sunny's age and an older woman trailed behind, clearly the patient's daugher and mother.  The little girl looked so frightened and the grandmother was telling her that Mommy was going to be fine and she just needed to get some medicine.  I couldn't help but wonder why the grandmother brought the little girl back instead of staying in the kids area in the waiting room - they have a lot of toys out there and it certainly would have been less frightening for a three year old.  If any of my relatives had been there in addition to me I would have offered to watch her in the waiting room until the worst of the crisis was over.  Instead I made my phone calls and went back to my grandfather's stories.

I don't know what the next few days, weeks, or months hold.  I am scared.  I hate seeing him suffer, the shadow of the vigorous man he used to be, unable to roll over in bed without help and without pain.  But part of me is selfish, wanting him to stay, for me.  I've always been close to him, always spending time with him, back as far as I can remember when he used to take me to People's Drug store when I was five to let me pick out a candy bar or a small toy every single time we went to see them.  Back to watching him and my uncle coaching a little league baseball team in my neighborhood when I was in junior high.  Back to when I would spend the night at their house throughout the years and he would always make cheese popcorn on the stove with a long-handled popcorn popper at night and make the best waffles in the world for breakfast (and I now know his secret ingredient - wheat germ).  Back to all the times he showed me his writings over the years to ask me to "fix 'em up for me" because his grammar wasn't what he wanted it to be.  Back to the times he layed on the floor with my babies and played with them, giving them elevator rides and wrestling with them the same he did with me.  In addition to my relationship with him in its own right, he's all I have left of my mother.  I have no idea how I'm going to cope with his passing; I know it won't be pretty.

If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for both of us, that he doesn't suffer and that I don't lose it.

For my Mom

August 2, 1985 was a day a whole like today, except I don't remember it being so hot.  My sister and I went to a recreation department camp, where they had 2-week sessions, just day camp, but on the second Thursday of the session camp had a sleep over.  I was a counselor in training by then, and I remember staying up all night long with a group of younger campers to help out.  My mom picked up my sister and I from the bus stop that morning.  Friday was always her cleaning day, the day where she scrubbed the house from top to bottom.  She said she was feeling tired, and asked for my sister and I to help with the house.  I was 15, a horrid age anyway for a girl and her relationship with her mom, and I HATED to clean house (not much changed there), and I was tired and cranky anyway, so I "resisted," and we had a huge fight.

I told her I hated her.  She made me clean anyway.

She was real tired, said she'd been up with my dad the night before (of this I have no doubt - they didn't have too many kid-free nights, and liked to stay up and drink a lot of wine on the weekends, anyway), so she went upstairs to take a nap in the afternoon.  My grandmother came over, because my grandfather was out of town, and our family always ate out for dinner on Friday nights, to give my mom a break.  My dad got home about oh, 5:15 or so.  He went in to wake my mom up, and soon came out of the room and called down for my grandmother to come up, but for us kids to stay downstairs. 

An ambulance arrived about 15 minutes later.  I had to run up the stairs to grab the dog, who was attacking the paramedics who came to help my mom.  He didn't understand they were trying to help her.  That's how I found out something was wrong.

My mom was blue.  They pulled her off the bed to get her on a hard surface to resume the CPR that my dad and grandmother inexpertly started on her (it wasn't doing any good since the mattress would give with each chest compression).

Mom was loaded in the ambulance, and driven away.

She never came home.  My dad came home a couple of hours later.  He took my sister and I in the bedroom, and told us that our mother was gone.  My sister wailed and punched the wall.  I was just in shock.

She was 37 years old. 

They did an autopsy.  She died of a heart attack.  For years, my father insisted that she had arteriosclerosis, not ATHerosclerosis, and that her death had nothing to do with cholesterol and such.  More than 14 years later, I finally got a copy of her death certificate for myself when I started having heart-related problems.  One of her coronary arteries was 90% blocked, and she got a blood clot in her aorta.  She died peacefully in her sleep, of old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill, clogged arteries.

I internalized my grief; I was the oldest, and my dad fell apart, so I had to step up and make sure we kept running as a household.  I called people to notify them.  I wrote thank you notes after the funeral.  I kept this up for all of high school and much of college, when I started to have completely unrelated issues, and finally got the therapy and help I needed to process my grief.  I had told her I hated her.  I had previously had thoughts of her "going away," though usually through divorce and not death.  I thought I had done this to her.  I hated that she died thinking I hated her.  My therapist, and my father, assured me that she knew I didn't hate her.  I wasn't so sure then.

Now, I am a mother.  I understand.

Now, I miss her more than I ever did in the first 10 years after she died.  Now, I have kids, and wish she could know them, too.  I know how much she would have loved them, and they her.  I hate that they are missing one of their grandparents, and in fact, the only grandparent that could have nurtured them like I do.  Now, I am a grown woman, and I wish I knew what my mom was like as a woman, and not as my mother.  It was too painful for anyone who knew her to keep in touch, and my father's memory isn't reliable, not that he really would have known a lot of the things I want to know about her, anyway.  What made her stay with my dad despite his general crankiness and his mental illness?  How did she feel about staying home?  What other ambitions in life did she have besides raising my sister and me?  How did she cope with the isolation of being a SAHM in a careerist world?  What was I like as a baby?  Why didn't she stop smoking?  Why did she drink so much?  What were her pregnancies like?  What was her favorite food?

I hope that wherever she is now, she knows that I did, in fact, love her.  I love her still.  I miss her.  I hope she is proud of the woman I've become, of who I try to be.

I am now 36 years old.  My mom has been gone 21 of those years.

I love you, Mommy.