Nonagenarians and a Tween

Sandwiched Between Nonagenarians and a Tween

December 28, 2009: Fifty-three years ago tomorrow, 41-year-old Nels Balestri married 33-year-old Betty Brown. These two started dating in June of 1956, were engaged in August, and on December 29, 1956, family and friends gathered to witness their wedding vows.
Whether Nels ever had any trepidation about marrying Betty, I do not know. However, Betty, my mother, told me many years ago that she did get cold feet. My dad had been briefly married 20 years before they began dating. Therefore, he was divorced, a status less acceptable in the late 1950s. Besides that, he was Italian, and in Rockford, the Italians were discriminated against. (The Rockford Country Club would not allow Italians to be members, so the Italians started their own country club.) However, my mother's pastor and several friends assured her that there was no finer man, no man more honest, than Nels Balestri. Reassured, she married him during Christmas break - she was a teacher - and the smiles on her face in the wedding photos reveal her happiness.
I wonder, today, whether they had any other trepidation. Did they look into the future? Did they wonder where they would be 25 years from their wedding day? 40 years? 50 years? Did they wonder how many children they would have? (My mother wanted six, so maybe they did consider this.) Could they foresee that getting married late in life, having four children, who also married late in life, would sandwich said children between two vastly different generations?
Probably not. But, that is where I sit: sandwiched between my very aged parents and my 11-year-old daughter. My daughter needs my love and attention and care. My parents need my love and attention, and though they won't admit it, care. Because they both need so much, neither gets fully what they need.
What follows are my experiences of being the 'peanut butter' of this sandwich.
June 2009: Corrin and I travel to Rockford to visit Grandma and Grandpa. The previous winter, I had cleaned out two of my mother's closets. I thought that was it; after all, who needs more than two closets? My mother, apparently. For the next six months, each time I talked with my parents, my dad asked if I was going to clean out the closet in the boys' old bedroom, where she still had clothes. I assured him that I would. So, this was the visit for, among other things, cleaning out the third closet. (As one who had to wear hand-me-downs, and clothes sewn either by my mother or grandmother, it was mind boggling to discover how many clothes she had. Granted, it appeared she hadn't cleaned out her closets in 20 years. Even so, she had a lot of clothes!)
A broken hip, a heart attack and increasing dementia have turned my mother into someone other than who she used to be. She doesn't need dresses or skirts any more. She needs easy to pull on pants, and easy to wear tops. I hauled lots of suits, skirts, dresses and 20-year-old blouses to my car. At one point, I dropped a box with jackets in it. Now, at the young age of 51, I'm fully capable of picking it up, yet I heard my dad yell, "Corrin, where are you? Come and help your mother!"
The irony hit me immediately: I have spent the last five years trying to help my own mother. I have begged my dad to get more Home Instead help for my mother. He refused. I begged him to have their laundry done through a company that picks it up, launders it, and returns it to your home. He refused. I begged them to move to independent living, so that home maintenance would not be a problem. He pretended to be interested, just to appease my brothers and me. On this clean-out-the-closet day, he's telling my daughter to help her mother, while he has been a stumbling block to me helping my own mother.
October 2009: Since that visit, much changed. My mother fell, hurting her knee bad enough to be hospitalized, but not so bad as to break any bones. After a few days in the hospital, she was transferred to a nursing care facility - I am relieved. It is where she needs to be. My father, as good intentioned as he has been, really cannot take care of her the way she needs to be cared for.
With her move, my brothers and I were able to strong-arm our dad into moving to the independent facility where he's been on the waiting list for five years. He has just moved in, and I am visiting with him, tying up the loose ends of the move that my brothers did this past weekend.
My daughter is staying with her father. She does not find him helpful for doing homework. It's often the case that when she is at his house, she calls me with homework questions. Usually, I'm at home, in my den, and this is not an inconvenience. This night is different. This night, I'm in Illinois, 450 miles from my daughter. I'm at my father's table, writing change of address cards to as many of his magazines, investment brokers, credit card companies and friends as I can find addresses for. As I'm doing this, my dad is asking questions that scare me a bit, questions that he should know the answers to, questions that we've already discussed. I'm wondering how well he will adapt to a new apartment, a new living arrangement, a new life. He's 94-years-old. Did he make this move too late? Have we bought ourselves three months or two years?
As I worry and wonder, my daughter calls on my cell phone. The homework tonight is decimal division. She's struggled with this a little, but has just begun to catch on. I'm a visual person - I need to see the problem. But, over the phone, the best we can do is for her to read them to me. I write them down as she reads them, and then help her solve the problems.
While she and I talk, my dad asks more questions. His hearing is bad, and he keeps forgetting to put batteries in his hearing aids. I'm sandwiched between the needs of a nonagenarian and the homework of an 11-year-old. The homework eventually gets done, after five or six phone calls. The change of address cards do get completed. I say good night to my dad and go to my room. Exhausted.
November 2009: It occurs to me: my dad is a nonagenarian. The prefix 'nona' means ninth. My dad is in his ninth decade. Yet, 'non,' which this word also begins with, means 'not, without, the opposite of.' I think of the many ways in which my dad is not the man that he used to be. He knows this, too, and it is hard on him, yet we do not talk about it.
The year my dad could no longer step the mast of their sailboat was a hard year. It may have been the first sign that he was becoming not the man he used to be. It was a sign that his strength was weakening. This was the man that in his youth had been a bit of a body builder. My brothers had a photo of my dad: he was holding another man horizontally above his head, a big smile on his face. My brothers could tell you what my dad used to bench press. He played football in high school, when the helmets were more like stocking hats, than the plastic hard hats football players use now. This man of strength could no longer step the mast of a 16' sailboat. He is not a man of arm strength any more.
A few years later, he had to give up golf. When we were kids, my dad rarely played golf. But, in retirement, he was a regular player. He was fairly good, too. He didn't bother with a cart; my dad walked. He was also able to keep everyone's score in his head. My brothers often laughed among themselves. My dad was the scorekeeper, and at each hole, when he asked how many strokes of the other players, he occasionally questioned one of them. "I counted 4 strokes, not 3," he would say. And, according to my brothers he was right. Now, in the autumn of his life, his hip was often sore after a round of nine. I can't tell you which year, but I do remember the sorrow it caused him to give up golf. He is not a golfer any more.
My dad used to be so good-humored. He liked a good joke - even ethnic jokes about Italians made him laugh. It was easy to joke with him and tease, and he joked and teased back. These days, the humor doesn't come very easily. His hearing is so bad, that a quick one-liner that years ago would have made him chuckle, is left unheard. To repeat oneself, well, it losses something. He doesn't joke either. He is not a man of humor any more.
I keep looking for the man of strength, who I could always rely upon, the one who was wise and made good decisions. I see less and less and less of him, and it saddens me deeply.
December 21, 2009: School is out, and my daughter is at home for the week. I'm working half days so that she is not alone all day at home. A nurse from my mom's facility calls me at the office. My mother has been increasingly depressed the past few weeks. She's not willing to get out of bed in the morning. The nurse wants her on an anti-depressant, but my dad's resisting. I get teary talking with her. Someday my mom will die. My hope is that it is sooner rather than later. The nurse says that her health is such that if she gives up now, it will be a long time of dying. Thinking about my depressed mother, I head home to a lively daughter, filled with energy. I live between the two of them.
December 23, 2009: I've made plans to go to Illinois to visit my parents on December 30 through January 1. To make it easier for Corrin, who I want to come with me, I've made hotel reservations at a hotel with a pool and wireless internet access. I'm a little worried how it will go. We'll eat at least one dinner with my dad, and a lunch with my mom. They can't hear Corrin; Corrin wearies of speaking loudly, trying to make herself heard. Frustration tends to mount when all of us are together. I'm worried about the potential frustration. Hanging around a nursing home won't be fun for Corrin, so we'll spend one night with my cousin and her family. I keep telling myself it will be okay.
An email arrives, inviting Corrin to a birthday/slumber party on December 31. New Year's Eve. The night that we are going to be with my cousin and her family. My first thought is, "Too bad. Corrin's going to Rockford." But, the more I think about it, the more I realize that she will have more fun at a slumber party. I talk with her - she wants to see Kathi, Mark and Reid and she wants to go to the slumber party. I talk with her dad. He's willing to make changes on nights that she's with him. In the end, we decide that Corrin will stay in Omaha, and I'll go to Rockford alone. The better decision has been made, even though it is not easy.
Again, I'm sad. Visiting my Grandma Brown was fun. My cousin, Kathi, and I often slept over night at her home, and enjoyed cream of wheat for breakfast at her house. When we were tweens, she was in her 70s, and still filled with lots of energy. My mother is 10 years older than this, with no energy, no memory, no strength in her legs. How I wish my daughter could have known the woman my mother used to be. How I wish that the three of us could easily be together, the way my mother, grandmother and I used to play Scrabble on Sunday afternoons. But, things are different. This sandwich is hard to swallow.
December 24, 2009: An email comes from Vinni, the marketing director at my dad's facility. She delicately tells me that the smell of urine was somewhat strong around my dad today. My brothers and I have known about my dad's incontinence for a couple years. We thought he was taking care of it. I get to be the one who writes to him about this issue.
What does one say to their father about the smell of urine? I use part of Vinni's email which includes that he's a man of dignity. I suggest to him that he has to change the pads before going to the dining room - at least three times a day. I ask him to put pants in the laundry, any time there's an accident. It occurs to me that these are the things that we do with babies. Babies who are cute and cuddly, whose diapers are a snap to change. The joke is that we come into this world in diapers and we leave this world in diapers. It's not such a funny joke.
I end my letter, hopefully not too harshly. I plead with my dad to do what I'm asking - because I don't want another email from Vinni, because I don't want to write another letter like this, and because I don't want him to have to be the recipient of this kind of news. It's one more way in which my dad is not the man that he used to be. He used to be a man that hardly used the bathroom at all, largely because he drank so few liquids. Now he can't control his bladder.
I don't like being in this spot.
December 28, 2009: As my daughter plays a Wii game in our den, I'm checking email at the computer. Seeing Vinni's name in the 'from' column raises my anxiety a tad. This note says that my dad asked her to help him with a bill from the first nursing home where my mom stayed. She can't do that. She says that he also had questions about his Siena invoice, and that he didn't remember paying his December bill. She ends by saying that she still thinks Siena is the best place for him.
My dad had a memory like an elephant. Now it's beginning to fail him. And, I'm sad for him, and I realize, increasingly burdened by all of it. I've become the point person for the staff at both my mom's and my dad's facilities. As a single working mom, I'm not sure how much more I can bear.
After a while, I email my brothers, sharing both Vinni's email and my response and sharing with them that I'm feeling the burden of all this. I ask for a conference call after the visit. Only one brother responds, and obviously, doesn't read the pain I'm feeling. Ray replies, "Three responses: 1. Why is Dad asking Vinni for help with his Alma Nelson bill? 2. I would recommend Jack Daniels over wine for these purposes. (I had made a comment about needing a lot of wine at the end of this visit.) 3. I agree that we should have a conference call and try to divide responsibilities."
Ray has accepted next to zero responsibilities during the last five years. I wonder what responsibilities he's willing to take on. Several years ago, long before my parents were anywhere near this debilitated, my brothers suggested that they would pay me to do what I was doing. With righteous indignation, I replied that I didn't need to be paid to take care of my own parents.
Me and my big mouth and my self-righteousness. Now it occurs to me that I'd be willing to keep being the point person, for the right price. In my less than optimum financial position, extra income from those unwilling to do the dirty work would be welcomed. Today, I'm curious as to how this will unfold.
December 31, 2009: I'm in Rockford, sort of a Christmas visit. However, it is also a checking in visit, a do-some-errands visit, a once-a-quarter visit, too. My father and I have gone to Kohl's in hopes of getting some new pants that David wants him to have. Mission accomplished, we are driving back to his apartment building when he sees a big green billboard that says something about 'going green.'
My dad asks, "What do they mean, going green?" I explain to him that many companies want to email billing statements to clients to save on paper and therefore save a bunch of trees. It's an ecological thing.
My dad replies, "If they go completely that direction, what happens to people like me who don't have a computer?" I reply that clearly companies are going to have to continue sending paper bills for a long time.
Internally, though, I also think to myself that the number of 94-year-olds is declining, and that many elderly people manage with email very well. (The evidence is in my junk mail box where I send all those bad jokes that the senior members of my congregation forward to me - I mean, Fw: Fw: Fw: to me.) I also think about my daughter, who has been clicking away at a computer since she was two years old. As her generation grows up, they will wonder why paper invoices were ever used. And, as a reminder of her high-tech world, I receive a text message from her about what she's doing at the moment.
I'm sandwiched between a father who keeps all the paper that is mailed to him, in stacks on his desk and dining room table, and a daughter who prefers texting me, rather than calling me on the phone. Does this make me bi-lingual?