Speaking life

Have you seen the commercial with "Negative Nancy"?  Honestly, one of the biggest challenges for me in caring for my mom is the daily losses we have to deal with.  She's still aware enough to know what's changing and she will voice her dismay and, sometimes, her anger about this.  And I get it.  I know I value my independence and love my connections with friends and family.  Slowly losing that is hard.  But meeting that day after day has stretched me.  I haven't wanted to be dishonest or just offer empty clichés, and sympathetic hand-patting seems inadequate.  Thankfully, I have stumbled across a couple of ways to meet this challenge that have been a blessing for both my mom and me.

  One thing I've tried to do each day is initiate a distraction early in the day - a distraction of beauty with an expression of gratitude.  Mom loves birds and flowers, so we're putting seed on the handrail of the deck steps so she can sit on the porch and watch the birds.  She's spending a lot of time doing that and taking great joy in their antics.  With her memory issues, each day is like a first time seeing them!  We also have put a pot of mums on the table and she's paying close attention to them.  I originally planted them in the yard so they'd become part of the garden, but she went out and pulled them back up because she liked them on the table.  So I had to repot them.

  Yesterday she was pretty discouraged and overwhelmed by her awareness of all the help she needs now - meals, cleaning, even personal care.  We were on our way back from the grocery store and she commented on the fact that she couldn't do anything any more and how worthless she felt.  She thanked me for what I was doing and I said, "Mom, every single thing I'm doing I've learned from you.  I watched you do it for us and I watched you do it for your mom.  In a way, you are still doing things."  To my surprise, her face just lit up! 

  I know we'll have to repeat this conversation again many times, and there will come a time when even that connection will go, but I'm so very thankful that I can be here for these moments and keep her connected for as long as possible. 

Just Be

One of the most difficult lessons to learn during my young mom years was to slow down and enter my child's world.  As a task-oriented personality, I was often dragging my little ones through my to-do list, especially when I had to run errands out of my home.  Occasionally, I would give in to their excitement over flowers or rocks and stop and admire with them.  As I matured, I learned to organize more with their needs in mind.  But, when push came to shove, I could always pack a snack, pick them up, put them in their car seats, and take off to do what I needed to do.

I'm once again being challenged to slow down and orient to the needs of another.  This time, though, it's not little people.  It is my mother and my sister.  Both are challenged with declining cognitive abilities as well as physical struggles.  To walk to the end of the driveway with either of them is a s-l-o-w process.  For my sister, it's primarily the physical challenge of muscular dystrophy.  We have to stop, rebalance, and take very small steps. She looks at the ground at her feet and is unable to see and process the rest of her environment. For my mom, it's partly physical and partly the distraction of the world around her - flowers, birds, the car across the street that's always parked there but that she thinks is new (every single day).  Unlike earlier years, though, I can't just pick them up and put them in the car to pursue my tasks.  I must orient myself completely to the world as they experience it, and I'm learning how to anticipate and flex with daily changes in abilities and behaviors.

The most important lesson of these past few months for me is this - while the body and brain may deteriorate, the soul of a person stays until the last breath.  Mom needs me to look right at her when I speak.  If I'm not right beside her, she will come and stand in front of me to tell me something so she can see my eyes.  That's such an important connection.  It is more significant for her (and for my sister) to know that I am there for them, not just doing tasks but simply being there.  For me, this means far more sitting and T.V. time than I would ever choose for myself, but for them it communicates that I value and love them.  Yes, I still feel restless in this season.  I'm praying, though, that I'll learn to rest and enjoy those moments with them, because, like childhood, I won't have them here forever.

Dignity and Beauty

This past week I took my mom to see a new doctor.  As we entered the office, we heard unusual sounds coming from the waiting room.  An elderly woman in a wheelchair was making, for want of a better description, animal sounds - growling, yelping, screeching.  As unnerved as my mom was, she took my arm and went on in to be seated and wait for her appointment.  It was clear that the woman in the waiting room was a stroke victim.  As the next few minutes went by, I gained an appreciation for the power of love and devotion in action.

There were two other women with her - a relative and a caregiver.  They were engaging her in conversation, checking with her to make sure they were correctly interpreting her sounds.  The caregiver was carefully feeding her bits of soft banana (she had no teeth) and cleaning her mouth as she finished chewing each bite.  She would say, "That's good, isn't it?"  and "I'm glad you like this banana."  In many ways, it was reminiscent of a mother with a child - articulating and interpreting an experience for someone who was non-verbal.  After a bit, the old lady waved at my mom and "spoke" to her as well, and mom, always a people person, greeted her with a "good morning!" 

I had time to observe these ladies closely in the few minutes we had together in that waiting room.  The caregiver and the relative had taken time to prepare her for this appointment.  She was in clean clothes, and her grey hair had been pulled back and a tidy hair-piece (bun) placed on top.  She didn't have much hair anymore, but I guessed that they had tried to arrange it in the way she used to wear it.  She had real shoes on - not slippers.  Most impressive to me, though, was her confidence.  Even though she couldn't talk anymore, she was still mentally active and wanted to be engaged with those around her.  More outstanding than that, though, was the dignity that she had, even as an incapacitated person.  The careful attention to the details of her care helped convey that.

 A quick glance through that waiting room that morning would not have revealed anything particularly outstanding, but witnessing the love and care extended to this old woman was like witnessing an unexpected rainbow - delightful and beautiful.  She will be in my mind for a long time.