Traveling light

After a day of snow flurries and House Oversight Committee testimony, I'm ready for spring. Mom and I agree, it's time for winter to move on. My little space heater chugs nonstop all day, grinding out tepid warmth. It never really gets warm at the Love Shack. I thaw my toes with microwaved rice-filled socks and take hot baths before bed so I can sleep. My kitchen windows are covered with plastic and still the east wind blows in. It's not really all that cold outside, compared to someplace like Michigan or Minnesota or Spokane. Still, it's not great. Portland gets a special kind of damp cold that chills you to the bone but leaves you ashamed to complain because it's not forty below.

I'm glad the old smoking buddies (Mom and Jane) don't go outside to smoke anymore. They both have the Patch. But they would be outside in a heartbeat if they could coerce me into taking them out. Weather does not stop these old addicts. If they could get outside on their own, they would. The only thing stopping them is the knowledge they wouldn't be able to get back in.

It's a smoker's COPD dilemma: What do you do when the thing you love more than anything else in the world will kill you if you do it? If Mom could put a sentence together, she would say that she's going to die anyway so she might as well enjoy the time she has left. I can't fault the logic. I understand addiction. I don't want to be her enabler but neither do I want to deprive her of one of her few remaining pleasures. If Make-a-Wish called me to tell me my mother's last wish is to smoke a pack on her deathbed, I guess I would comply. My only excuse is she's not in her right mind. Actually, if she were in her right mind, whatever that is, she would say, get out of my way, let me die my way.

Tonight we walked over to Jane's room to say hello.

These days she leaves her door open to help her cope with claustrophobia and anxiety. Mom and I stood in the doorway. “Hi, how are you doing?” I asked. Jane came over, looking thinner than ever in her cutoff gray sweatpants and tiny velour jacket. Her hair was in pin curls. I noticed she had on footwear I hadn't seen before: fuzzy lavender ballet slippers with bows on top. She said she was doing much better. No more oxygen tank burbling in the corner.

“I sure miss going outside,” she said. “I can hardly stand it. I'm going to do something about it.”

“You know smoking again could kill you,” I said.

“I've about had it. I talked to all my doctors,” she said. “Two or three puffs, they said would be okay.”

I noticed my mother looking interested. I turned to her. “You had one cigarette and it almost killed you,” I said.

“Really?” She sounded skeptical. She didn't remember gasping on the couch. I shrugged. I know when a battle can't be won.

“Would you like to walk down to check your mailbox?” I asked Jane.

“Yeah, let's do that,” Mom said. Jane found her mailbox key.

“Should I close my door?” she frowned, hovering in the hallway. She worries that people (staff) go inside when she's not there and look through her stuff. Mom was already shuffling down the hall with her walker. Jane decided to leave the door open. We strolled past the front door, down the hall, past Mom's room to the mailboxes. “Here we are!”

Jane opened her box: two letters from Kaiser. I opened Mom's box: empty.

We walked Jane back to her room. Mom decided it was time to walk me down the long hall to the back door to see me off. We passed her room, where M.A.S.H. was blaring. We sang When the Saints go Marching In as we walked, a pleasant alternative to our usual She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain. By the back door, I kissed her forehead. We exchanged peace signs. I told her I loved her. She smiled. I went outside in the frigid air and got into my car. She waved the peace sign at me through the window. I turned on the overhead courtesy light so she could see me return the peace sign. I started the car, pulled forward, and waved my hand out the window. She waved back. Over her shoulder I could see a fuzzy moving image on the big screen TV that the old folks use to play wii bowling. I waved back and drove away down the hill.

I begin to see that memory occurs on a continuum, and people's capacity and willingness to remember varies. Just because she can't answer when I ask her what she had for dinner doesn't mean she doesn't remember. If I prompt her by saying, “Remember when you had potato chips for dinner?” she'll say yes with some certainty. Potato chips for dinner is a memorable meal.

Who cares whether we remember what we had for dinner? I can remember what I had for dinner because I have the same damn dinner everyday. Mom's menu varies and she's fed frequently in large amounts. Who could possibly keep track? And why should it matter?

Dementia strips out the nonessentials. Everything we don't need sloughs off like dead skin, leaving us with just the core, the white hot essence, burning bright. Memories of events, people, places, meals . . . it's all just mental clutter. It's not that there is no longer room for those memories. It's more like we don't need them anymore and the goal for the next adventure is to travel light, as light as we can, as light as light.

The end of a life is not like the movies

We all know how the story ends. In the movies, the hero's loved one declares faith in the hero's capacity to overcome obstacles and then quietly dies. People die quickly in the movies. If you blink, you'll miss it, it happens that fast. The spirit eases out the window in a flurry of fireflies, ascending to heaven where all good characters go (I'm thinking of Gena Rowland's character in Hope Floats). One moment ago she was here, gazing with love at her daughter, and the next, she's dropped her teacup.

First, when it comes to witnessing the end of a life, there are no heroes. Either that or we are all heroes, flailing valiantly to cope with life on life's terms. Just because sorrow is imminent and overwhelming doesn't make us special. Everyone has sorrow. We're either all heroes or none of us heroes. Movies have to have a hero or we won't watch. Preferably one who isn't dead when the credits roll. I can't stand Nicholas Sparks movies.

Second, I suspect in real life the end of a life usually happens in slow motion . . . really drawn out, excruciatingly tedious slooooooow motion. What they don't show us in the movies are the grinding weeks and months leading up to that transcendent moment when the hero's mother dies. They can't make an entire movie about that process—who could stand it? It would be like My Dinner with Andre. Yeesh. Still, some verisimilitude might be welcome for those of us who could use a dose of reality to stay grounded.

I don't know what I expected this process to be like. Did I think she would be herself up to the very end? Did I imagine she would keel over in the middle of a sentence or cease to be while snoozing on the couch? Somehow I didn't think it would (a) be so excruciating (for me) or (b) take so long.

Once again I show my uncanny ability to take my mother's life and death and make it mine. I'm not the one who is coming to the end of the runway, but it feels like it. Hey, maybe I am, who knows? The big one could hit tomorrow and pancake me into the basement. We all know how our stories will end. We just don't when, where, and how.

Snowmageddon or something not really that spectacular

Winter finally arrived, only a month late. Snow is on the way! Yesterday, in anticipation of Snowmageddon, Portlanders swarmed the grocery stores to stock up. I am proud to say I was among them. That means I can write with firsthand knowledge about how it feels when you are twentieth in a line of overflowing shopping baskets, gazing at the faraway checkout stand from the meat department at the back of the store. In some parts of town, I heard there was a run on kale. Not in my part of town. As far as I could tell, people were stockpiling beer and ice cream. I bought next week's fresh veggies, fruit, eggs, and yogurt a few days early, hoping I won't have to go Donner party on my cat before the Snowpocalypse melts.

I woke to two inches of snow today feeling optimistic about the state of my pantry and relieved that braving the crowds at the grocery store wasn't a total waste of time.

Today I had occasion to attend a workshop at a nearby church. My car was buried under a couple inches of snow and more snow was on the way, so I decided to walk. I have snow boots, how bad could it be? I put on tights, sweatpants, and rain pants, two pair of socks, two t-shirts, a fleece pullover, and a fleece cardigan. Over that I wore my fleece hooded jacket, topped by a lightweight windbreaker. I had a hat, a scarf, fingerless mittens, and gloves. I loaded my backpack with my gear and left the Love Shack for my half-mile hike.

The first thing I noticed was the wind. The temperature was above freezing but it felt colder. As I clomped past my buried car, it began to snow. Just little spit balls blowing in all directions, nothing like the big fat flakes that came down overnight. I thought, how bad could it get in half a mile? The bus was still running. . . I could always hop on the bus if I got too cold.

The sidewalks were an unpredictable mix of uncleared, shoveled, trampled, and salted pavement. I had to watch my feet, which was sort of fun because they looked so big and wide. I never wear snow boots. I got these mid-calf high, lace-up boots after the last huge snowstorm took us all (well, me) by surprise. After shoveling snow in my soggy Merrels, I swore I would get some serious snow boots, and I did. They have cluttered my closet for eleven years, until today. 

Feeling like Bigfoot, I arrived at the church, clomped up some steps, then down some steps, and found the workshop room. There was no one there. I peeled off a few layers and replaced the snow boots with some indoor shoes. I optimistically arranged a few chairs in a circle and sat down to wait. Pretty soon another person arrived. Yay, I thought. A kindred spirit. We can commiserate about the weather.

“I'm from New York,” she declared. “This is nothing.”

I pretended like the pile of outerwear in the corner belonged to someone else. We exchanged a few stilted statements, mostly about how crappy Portland is and how great New York is. I drew bug-eyed yeti in my notebook, thinking, well, if New York is so great . . .  and prayed for more attendees to rescue me. Pretty soon the woman gathered her things and stood up.

“I'm going to look for some coffee,” she said. “See you later.” She did not return.

After a while a friend arrived.

“The buses can't go faster than 25 mph when they are chained,” she explained as she peeled off her layers. Outside the sky had cleared and a brittle sun illuminated the snow in the churchyard.

We talked about footwear and bus travel as we waited for more attendees. And waited. And waited. Finally after an hour we decided nobody was coming. Snowmageddon had apparently frightened everyone off. Or they simply weren't interested in the topic. Who knows. My friend and I donned our outwear and parted ways on the street, she heading downhill and me pointing uphill into the east wind. It took almost thirty minutes but I made it to the Love Shack intact. As my glasses steamed up, I congratulated myself on my intrepidness: only one blister. Time to eat lunch and blog!

The evening stretches before me, a rare luxury of time and no deadlines. I don't have to be anywhere but here. The temperature is expected to plummet to 20°F at sunset, which means all the roads and sidewalks will become ice rinks. Bones are brittle, and cars are hard to stop on ice. I'm staying home. Tonight will be my first night off from daughter duty. I'm not sure if I feel relieved or anxious.

Last May I began to visit my mother nightly in anticipation of her looming demise. As you know, she didn't die. I kept visiting daily, thinking this could be the last time I see her alive, and she kept on living. Just goes to show, you never know. You could claim that my visits are keeping her alive. It's like feeding a feral cat. Once you start, you can't really stop. On the other hand, you could claim that visiting her daily gives me a purpose. Both claims could be true.

It's almost six o'clock. In three minutes, the alarm on my phone is going to go off, notifying me it is time to put on my shoes and head out the door. But I'm not going. I am suddenly feeling sick, like I'm failing. I should be there. I know it's not safe to drive but I feel terribly sad to miss our evening visit, even if all we do these days is watch M.A.S.H. reruns. What if she dies tonight? Argh.

She won't. She too is intrepid. Like the Energizer Bunny, she carries on. She probably won't even notice I'm not there.