By Suzanna Leigh
Mom is on hospice now. A lot of what I have been doing this month is spending time with her daily, working to keep her house and finances in order, and communicating with her caregivers. It is, as Carol Spangler says, a sacred time.
Mom’s energy and strength are ebbing. Sometimes getting in and out of bed, to transfer to her wheelchair or to the commode, is scary for her even with help. A few days ago, as my brother Steve was helping her to get from her wheelchair to her bed, her legs gave out and she slipped down onto her knees.
And then she will surprise us! Just when we had resigned ourselves to mom being bedridden, Steve woke up at 4:00 a.m. to find her in the hall, in her wheelchair, on the way back from the dining room. She got from her bed to her wheelchair, unlocked the brake, wheeled herself down the long hall to the dining room, turned on the light, and was on her way back to bed. Perhaps she had even read some of the books waiting for her on the table before deciding to retire to her bedroom.
How is it that even as she becomes more feeble, her spirit still fills the room?
Mom really enjoys visits from musician friends. Rich Osborne, from Music Mends Minds brings his guitar and we sing songs she remembers from decades ago. Although she has trouble hearing when we speak to her, she could hear the words to the songs. She laughs at the funny ones, and mouths the words while her toes dance. The Episcopal Church Choir came to sing some of her favorite hymns, and she sang with them. When Jane Valencia brought her harp, the look of bliss on Mom’s face was touching. The Threshold Choir comes regularly now, which delights and amazes her. She claps her hands and invites the singers to come “any time.”
Mom’s favorite comfort hold-on is a stuffed kitty with coloring a bit like Bunny, her cat that died a few months ago.
Words come hard; she struggles to tell even simple stories or share memories, stuttering, repeating, searching for the words that won’t come. And yet, tell stories she does. One day she told us that her father named her after a movie star. My brother Steve looked up movie stars named Marjorie about the time mom was born and found three! Some stories may or may not be a confusion of different memories. Some stories she makes up entirely.
I asked mom if she was ever bored. She said no. She has all these people to talk to. She pointed at the wall of portraits she has painted over the years. There’s her mom at about 70, my sister Jeannie as a teenager, Steve at age 13, and another of him at age three. There’s my brother John at age four or five, and one of me at maybe 40. There’s the Okinawan lady who came to the door to sell mom things, and a girl whose portrait she painted years ago and cannot now remember. It’s not a bad thing, not remembering; mom makes up elaborate stories about her. “She has seven brothers,” mom told me. “She is angry with her father because he pays attention to her brothers but not to her. She doesn’t have a mother, so I took her in.” Mom pointed to her closet. “I have plenty.”
Still, Mom enjoys the company of live people most of all. When we celebrated my birthday in late August, Jeannie, Steve, and I visited with mom in the bedroom until she said she was ready for a nap. About half an hour later, after the rest of the family arrived, and we were chatting as we sat down to eat the birthday feast. Jeannie glanced at the monitor in mom’s room and noticed that she seemed to be getting up. By the time Jeannie got there to help her up, she was in her wheelchair on her way to join the party!
