Regrets

This was at the bottom of the steps as I left work yesterday, and my first cursory glance had me grabbing my phone to call a haz-mat team for a clean-up and wondering what kind of animal had gotten into the stairwell.

But then I looked closer and realized the "deposit" was actually a bite-sized Snickers bar, and oh, the regret.

Regret over the wasted bite of deliciousness. Regret that even though I was the only person in the stairwell the toddler side of my brain wasn't strong enough to wrestle my adult reasonableness to the ground so I could pop that baby right in my mouth. (You'll appreciate the strength of my toddler brain when I admit I did briefly consider that. BRIEFLY.)

Regret that apparently the Easter Bunny's trainee is not working out so well, if this was delivered to wrong place (the base of a stairwell) at the wrong time (four days before Easter). My cynical Boy#2 would say that this Bunny obviously was being trained by FedEx.

Sigh. So, so much regret. 

I Raised Smart-Aleck Kids

Between tax season and impending graduations and especially my mother-in-law's decline, I've been giving God an earful the past few weeks.  Today I wrote about why I pray on The Train of His Robe, the shamefully neglected corner of the internet that I staked out so I could look as if I know what I'm talking about when I talk about God.

The very second he saw the post, Boy#1 instant messaged me.

"Ooooh! Is your religion blog rising from the dead in honor of Easter week?"

Pfffft.  How did I get such smart-aleck kids?

Herkiquat and the Twilight Cruise

I've worked with words for so long that I don't often come across one I don't know.

"Huh--herkiquat," I might say. "I've never seen the word 'herkiquat' before. I wonder what it means?"

And if I can't figure out herkiquat's meaning from its context, I look it up and am delighted that I have learned a new word.

Then, without fail, herkiquat will be EVERYWHERE I LOOK for the next week. It will appear in the book I'm reading, it will be in the hymn lyrics in church, I will hear a Ted Talk that delves into the aspects of herkiquat I had known instinctively but had never heard spelled out.

I had never really had aging parents in crisis before the last few weeks. My mother died suddenly, my father is still hale and hearty at 86. This was the life stage equivalent of herkiquat--it's been out there all the time, but I never had come into contact with it. But as we deal with my mother-in-law's steep decline, suddenly I seem to have friends and family all around me who are dealing with those same issues in their own lives. My sister. My best friend from high school. Friends at church.

In my working group of six, three of us are at this very minute wondering every time the phone rings if this will be The Call. A mother, a father, and a mother-in-law are at different stations as they near the end of the line but all are on the train. This morning we stood around commiserating.

"The thing that bothers me most isn't that she might be terminal, it's that she's in pain but the painkillers are dangerous for her, and this is so degrading and so opposite of how she's lived her life," I told my co-workers. "When I get to that stage, I want someone to put me on a cruise, then at a certain point in the ocean, the porthole flies open and whoosh!" I made a flying-out-the-window motion. By now I was really getting into this idea. "We could call it the Twilight Cruise!"

At that point, for some reason my co-workers suddenly realized they had a LOT OF WORK TO DO and went back to their desks, but that's okay. My generation is going to be encountering herkiquat a lot during the next few years, and we might as well laugh.


*Herkiquat is not really a word. I made it up, but now you're going to be seeing it everywhere.  I will define it as the uncertainty that accompanies transition in life stages, which can provoke laughter or tears, or both at the same time. You read it here first.

Living Day to Day

When I left for the Peace Corps in January 1979, my 86-year-old grandmother pulled me aside.

"I'm not in very good health and I doubt if I'll be around much longer," she said, "so I just want you to know that I don't expect you to come back for my funeral."

I served my two-year term in Costa Rica, extended my service for another year and a half to finish up a project I'd started, came home, got a job, met Husband, fell in love, got married, had Boy#1, moved to Small Town, had Boy#2, enjoyed my time as a stay-at-home mom, and had Boy#3.

When Boy#3 was 19 days old, we got the phone call from my father that Grandma had passed away. That was 11 years and some odd months after she had informed me her days were limited.

I tell that story because it illustrates the suspended animation in which we are caring for Husband's mother right now. At 91, she probably doesn't have another decade left in her, but certainly my grandmother did not think she would live to be 97.

We do know that my mother-in-law is discombobulated and confused, in pain (she reacts badly to narcotics so she's limited to heavy doses of over-the-counter drugs), and needs help for every single aspect of her life down to guiding each spoonful of Jello into her mouth. She doesn't understand why she must wear the cervical collar that supports her broken neck or why she must not get out of her chair by herself.

Maybe in the next few days she will begin to feel better and her head will on longer ache from the whack on the corner of her bedside table that opened up her scalp. Perhaps the healing of this brain trauma will ease the confusion and we'll be able to get her out again for a chicken wrap and fruit parfait at McDonald's. Or perhaps she will slip away tomorrow, or even today.

All of our days are numbered, but my grandmother did not know the number of hers and we do not know the number of my mother-in-law's.

Only God knows.

We're Not Competing

I had texted my friends and co-workers Monday, letting them know about my mother-in-law's fall and injuries so that they wouldn't think I was taking this "spring break" (ha, ha, ha!) too seriously by jetting off to Cancun.

It wasn't an hour later that I got a text back.

****! FIL barricaded himself in his room.

And that's when I proved that I am a terrible person because I laughed for the first time that day. This friend is in much the same situation as we are, with an aging parent who doesn't always behave rationally. In her case, it's a father-in-law who is causing the assisted living staff to tear their hair. He, too, is not thinking clearly but unlike my frail mother-in-law he is burly and strong and had shifted all of the movable furniture in front of his door then lay down to take a nap. Eventually staff walked around to the outside of his room and tapped on his window until he woke up, then convinced him to unblock the entrance. Then they moved everything except the bed out of the room.

I tell you this story because it is one more reminder (as if we needed one) that there are very few in my age bracket who are not dealing with at least some issues of this type. And if they aren't dealing with the issues at this very moment, then they already have dealt with them, or they will deal with them soon.

Unless you were orphaned at an early age and eventually made your way to the forest where you were raised by wolves, you are going to be making decisions about aging parents. You are one of us.

Yesterday I wrote about how painful it is to be unable to prevent my mother-in-law from falling and hurting herself, and you, my lovely readers, made me cry with your outpouring of support. You are wonderful and I felt each virtual hug and prayer. Thank you so, so much.

But this is a reminder that all of us have (or will have, or have had) someone, so we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking we're the guest of honor at this pity party. Some will be lucky, and their parents will slip away quietly with their mental and physical facilities intact. Some will not be lucky and the end-of-life transition will be a nightmare of increasing loss spread out over years. Between these two extremes lie every degree of variation along the scale.

So please hear me when I say this: We're not in competition.

As I commiserated with my barricaded-father-in-law friend she mentioned she had just been on the phone with a vendor who supplies college T-shirts. This vendor has a father with Alzheimer's and a mother with debilitating physical issues, and she's trying to care for both of these loved ones as well as her own family while working full-time and trying to be a decent human being.

"Oh, wow," I said. "She wins." My wise friend reminded me that the pain Olympics are only a made-up internet thing, and that no one wins.

All of us just do our best to run the race set before us.

Same Song, Same Verse Repeated

We settled my mother-in-law into her chair yesterday with a copy of Women's World and her walker right in front of her. The cord to the call button was wrapped around a stuffed bear so that the signaling device couldn't  fall on the floor out of her reach.

Before we left the room Husband and I took turns stooping down so she could look straight into our faces. Her hearing aids were hidden under the cervical collar and we wanted to make sure she heard us.

"You cannot get up without help," we said with as much intensity as we could muster. "If you need something, push the call button. You cannot get up by yourself. Do you understand this?"

She told us she understood, but as we walked toward the door she was trying to push herself up to walk out with us so we rushed back into the room.

"No, no! You can't get up without help!" This time Husband knelt beside the chair and held her right hand, the one not bruised and swollen. "Mom, you just can't."

Then we hugged her gingerly and kissed her softly on the left side of her head, the side away from the 17 staples in her scalp, and told her we loved her, and in spite of her confusion and exhaustion, she replied that she loved us, too.

She had fallen three times in three days and we don't know what to do.

By law, we cannot put rails on her bed, or any kind of restraints that would keep her from getting up. If we move the walker out of reach she tries to get around without it. She has learned to disconnect the alarm that sounds if she leaves her chair, and in any case the alarm can only signal she's left the chair; it can't reverse the weakness in her legs or the unsteadiness that topples her. I understand this law against rails and restraints, really, I do. But still...

We don't know what to do.

Sunday's fall was the worst, with a day spent in the emergency room for repair of the ugly C-shaped gash on her scalp and more scans and X-rays that revealed a hairline fracture in her neck as well as the bruised but unbroken hand and thigh. She spent the night in the hospital, but she's eating and sleeping and her pain is manageable, so that's not the place for her to recuperate. She will recuperate, or not, in her own room.

She is confused and sad and inutterably exhausted, and so are we, so we hold her hand and sit next to her and pray that the next fall is less painful.

It's the only thing we can do.

Friday Orts and Blurb

1. All who know that I am a lifetime aficionado of barbershop music will not be surprised to see that I'm leading with a video clip that's making the rounds these days. Although saying that I am a "lifetime" fan is an exaggeration--during my youth I was not such a fan when my father's Sunday evening quartet practices at our house meant that we had to HOLD IT DOWN, KIDS and were banished from any of the areas of the house where we might disturb those good ol' harmonies so as a teenager I was not so crazy about men's quartet singing. Now if Justin Timberlake had been in my father's quartet, I probably would developed my taste for SPEBSQSA a lot earlier. (Little known fact: One of our earliest disagreements about how our dream wedding would unfold was when Husband put his foot down about my father's quartet singing "Till There Was You" during the ceremony. I huffily agreed they could sing it during the reception instead, but that was only a little tasting sample of the dozens of ways in which two people in love could disagree about what their dream wedding should be.)

2. And speaking of dream weddings...guess who arrived late last night at the House on the Corner? Lovely Girl! I felt like Mama Bear eating my breakfast this morning, knowing that Goldilocks was asleep upstairs. It felt juuuuuuust right.

3. Oh, also Boy#4 arrived late last night. We are definitely in the new normal, when two Boys are still away at school and the house feels full. (Come home, Boy#2 and Boy#3!)

4. Despite last week's snow, two days of warm weather make me feel spring is here. Tra la la! I can't wait to plant some tomatoes, even though I know that is the path that leads to heartbreak. And blossom rot. And hornworms, which surely are one of Mother Nature's mistakes. But tomatoes!

5. And finally, the product placement of the week: The first night Boy#1 was home on spring break he talked to me while I made supper. We chatted about all sorts of things but when I started to prepare the fruit he stopped mid-chatter for an accusation. "We're only having pineapple so you can show off that gizmo, right?"

Thank you, Amazon.com, for loaning me this image

He knows me too well. Those aren't my hands, but that's my pineapple slicer/corer/peeler, and it ROCKS. Zip, zip, zip, done. Four stars.

(I believe it is UNICEF that requires bloggers to add a disclaimer when we are compensated for product endorsements, to which I reply "Ha! Ha! If only!")