[transcription edited for clarity]
Hey, everyone. I am recording this on Monday evening knowing that I'm not going to make my self-imposed posting deadline (8:05 in the morning, Tuesday, Eastern) for an essay tomorrow morning. I have no excuse other than the fact that my ambitions for any given piece of writing sometimes outstrip my actual energy and time.
So I had some ideas to go under THE BODY IS THE SOUL banner and with any luck, I will be able to crank out something by Friday and give you an installment. Then Tuesday will be Valentine's Day and I'll definitely have an interesting installment for you then.
Today, I'm just going to update everyone—since I have been blending personal and political, cultural, and philosophical things all together in this blog—on my mother's condition. A cousin of mine who lives in San Francisco made what he presumes…he decided that it was probably now or never to make a last visit to her.
I warned him that she may not be in great shape. She may not recognize him. He drove down from San Francisco to Yucaipa, a beautiful area, deserts and snow-capped mountains. He took a bunch of pictures. He saw her, checked in. He said he got a really nice vibe from the place which I had, as well. The people who work there are happy and doing their jobs, and gave him a pretty nice full report about how she was doing.
She didn't recognize my cousin. She doesn't seem to be recognizing anybody right now, and this is a woman who did not have full-on Alzheimer's or anything like that. But in these last few weeks, she's had a quickly deteriorating memory.
It seems that she's now at the stage where she really doesn't know anyone. I think she also can't see very well or hear. So he took some pictures. She looks very, very, very old.
The med techs there got her into a wheelchair for him and he rode her out into the sunshine, the garden. But there wasn't anything in the way of conversation.
He felt good about seeing her and, you know, in accordance with his own vibe and his own beliefs, he prayed and spent a little time with her and held her hand and things like that. I was glad to hear that he had done that. He confirmed for me that I had undoubtedly made the right decision—which was a little tough to make back in November and December—that after entering this facility on supposedly a temporary basis just to clear some pneumonia, in the end, she needed to stay there and she needed that round-the-clock medical personnel availability.
My cousin got the full reports from two people I remember meeting there. Some days, she's actually verbal enough to ask for Gabapentin as pain relief. On other days she doesn't take any kind of pain relief. She also seems to be... she's not verbal a lot of the time and she's not really fully responsive and she does seem to be starting to refuse food.
So, anybody who's been through this or is going through this right now, or will go through this, you know these are some of the signs. Definitely, if you read anything in hospice care online, they always will tell you when people start refusing food, when they really have no more appetite, when their body is just not needing those calories anymore...it's the beginning of the end.
And so, you know, I'm here, I'm able to say these things without becoming overly emotional in large part because, oh man, I've done a hell of a lot of emoting and crying and writing and thinking, and sleeplessness, and all that stuff. I did so much of that in the past year-and-a-half. It was July of 2021 the first time that I, here in my [apartment in Baltimore], the first time that I couldn't sleep one night when I knew she had been taken from her assisted living facility by ambulance to an ER and hadn't really heard her condition yet. That night itself, middle of summer, two summers ago, I remember thinking, oh my God, she's going to die tonight, and being profoundly rattled, upset, and angry. A lot of old anger coming up.
And I feel again, as I've said before, privileged and lucky and grateful that I had an entire year and a half to go through an emotional transformation, such that I can arrive at this spot and know that she's well taken care of.
I'm glad that my instincts about the place she is in have been confirmed now by another person. And I don't know if I'm going to go back out there. I might.
Over the weekend, I got a lovely invitation from a woman who is running the CNA program—certified nursing assistant program—there. It happens that I knew her when she was briefly the wellness director at my mother's assisted living facility. I ran into her at this nursing facility in Yucaipa. Of course, she recognized my mother right away at that point.
Out of the blue texted me and said, “You know, if you want to come back out here and save on hotel costs, you can stay with me. It's just me and my daughters now.”
I think her daughters are older. One of them is actually a CNA at the facility. So she doesn't have young kids anymore and I take it she's divorced.
Then she starts to describe in text her community and she says there are walking trails through the desert and there's a beautiful private lake and there's a gym and pool and a jacuzzi. This stranger—a warm person that I've gotten to know—has invited me to have essentially a spa vacation at her place in Southern California, and it's ugly February and actually the day that she invited me was a really really cold day here on the East Coast
So I may take her up on it, maybe at the end of this month. We'll see. It was a lovely, heartwarming, confirming, validating message from a person who doesn't know me that well, but saw me go through some travails and knows a little bit about my struggles with my mother. And the fact that I had to bring myself to a new place emotionally, in order to be her good caretaker and, you know, be in charge of her final days.
I don't know what can I say. I'm unbelievably grateful to this woman, but also, like kind of to the universe, that I can be here and not in some other angry, grievous, terrible unresolved state of mind. I wish all of us to be able to arrive at this state, bo matter what your relationship is with your parents, when the time comes for you.
You'll see me in print on Friday. Scout's Honor.
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To whom it may concern: update on my mother.