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First Published Here May 1, 2000 |
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Time alone with Mother:
Warmth--and sadness
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Murry Frymer's mother, Sylvia, died on July 11, 2000, about two months after this column was written. She had turned 93 a week earlier. This column depicts the last time Murry saw her. We reprint it today for its eternal message of the love between a mother and her son. |
of TheColumnists.com
I didn't recognize my mother in the nursing home. She didn't recognize me.
And so began four days at a home that isn't a home, where nursing is not nursing, where helplessness overwhelms the senses, where tears come too easily and where, on occasion, a smile erupts like a sunrise.
My mother is nearing 93 now, suffering from dementia. For the last year and a half she has been living in a nursing home in a Cleveland suburb. Until she was 90, she lived in her own home, but her days consisted of sitting on her customary chair in the living room, staring out at the traffic that whizzed by. She had her cup of coffee and a piece of bread.
My sister, who lived nearby, visited as often as she could, but my sister has a full-time job and family responsibilities to her own children. My mother resisted any intrusion in her home from a visiting care-giver of any sort. My mother feared the visitor, who might steal from her, though, of course, there was little in the house to take. But, nevertheless, she fought all assistance.
An "assisted living center" became her next home, but she was expelled after a year as needing far more care than that. And, indeed, we could see from week to week how helpless she was becoming, yet fighting, resisting the haze that was overcoming her.
"What is happening to me?" she would say, over and over. "You're getting older," I would respond, though the words would not register. Deafness, dementia, age were winning this battle.
Now she has been in a nursing home for a year and a half. First, it was a relatively good ward where the residents talked to one another, comforted one another, responded, occasionally laughed.
But then she was moved to a "lower functioning" ward and then again to the "lowest functioning ward." Welcome to the non-functioning ward.
I had not seen my mother in more than six months at my last visit. That, I suppose is unconscionable. Yes. But the visits are increasingly fruitless. Though, of course, necessary and important.
When I arrived one recent morning, I half expected to be welcomed as the long-lost son. Just a year ago, I was still a star in my mother's life, shown off to the other residents. But this time, it had changed dramatically. I could not find my mother, not recognizing her as she slept with her mouth open, her false teeth missing, slumped in a chair. Everyone was slumped in chairs.
When I sat down next to her and brushed her cheek, she pushed my hand away and mumbled something intended for an orderly. Something that meant: leave me alone.
I sat and waited for her to awaken. But even awake she did not know who I was and continued to brush me away. I told her who I was. I am your son. She could not fathom it. You are my mother. The word "mother" is the most important in her lexicon but even it is losing its recognition.
As she recovered from her slumber, she began to focus better and perhaps, perhaps knew me. She tends to pretend to know people now so as not to affront them. I thought perhaps she was playing that game to me. "You are a fine man," she said, which is not what she would say to her son. I sat and waited.
Over four days of visits the struggle for recognition continued. My mother complained of a serious pain in her side. The head nurse said she had been complaining for weeks about that pain and it was believed to be something associated with a lung. But it seemed more severe than that to me so I called for a doctor. The doctor determined that she had broken a rib once again. Her bones are brittle. She does not need to fall to break a rib.
I was upset. Why did no one inspect her pain before? Because the old all sit around and complain. The nursing home officials are on the telephone all the time or doing paperwork. The low-paid orderlies are overwhelmed, even the kind ones. Few stay on the jobs more than a few months. They are turned off by the needs of residents.
Lunchtime comes and few of the residents touch their food before the trays are taken away. My mother has lost 50-60 per cent of her weight. She does not like the taste of food. I put a few bites into her mouth. She takes some of the food out.
It is a sad scene between a mother and a son, but sadder yet are the husbands who come daily to sit with their unknowing wives, the victims of Alzheimer's. I watch one man nuzzle his wife, trying to give her some spousal love, trying, perhaps, to receive some for his own needs. It is useless. She hangs her head and does not look up. The man sits and sits and sits.
Ah, but life is not totally grim. After a couple of days I am able to hear and see things that make me smile. The staff has provided a spelling bee. Silly stuff. Even in their condition, a resident can make a remark that is pithy. These people do have personalities. It just takes time to know them. Some have achieved something proud in their lives. It just takes time to appreciate them.
I leave my mother one day, saying again who I am. My mother disagrees. She says she knows her son and I am not he. "I want my life back," she says, almost angrily and I am stunned by the perception the remark carries. I want it back, too, I say.
I feel my next trip to Cleveland will lack even this much communication. And there is some fear in my heart. I am too old now to take comfort in my own invulnerability to such an outcome.
I hang around the home for a while longer but my mother does not notice me next to her. Her meal is late in coming. She complains of pain. She is not hungry. I slip out finally nodding to the other residents whose names I now know, whose husbands I now recognize, whose stories are now real. I am able to leave and for the moment, through my tears, I revel in that.
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Murry writes: "(Moher) died alone, accompanied by an overworked nursing home doctor--a Russian immigrant woman who did not know know her-- and an African American woman orderly who did. My sister and I were elsewhere, as were all the grandchildren. The orderly, one of many my mother always greeted as, "Honey dear I love you," had grown fond of my mother over the months. She sat with her at the end and gave her comfort. By the time I got to the nursing home two days later, my mother's few belongings had been stored in the basement and another old woman was living in her room. |
©2000 by Murry Frymer. The illustration is from the IMSI Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
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