Compare the Momma’s

Do we ever? Have you noticed friends to friends when discussing the conditions of the parent in casual conversation that we rarely get egotistical and practice the art of one-ups-man-ship when discussing them comparatively. Camaraderie, is more the key word here. Somewhere in the social mix of life, we seem to grant compassion to each other for the different and separate situations we individually face. The conversation tends to be more of fact-finding missions, suggestions for conflict resolution, suggestive in nature and always with an open stance to the interpersonal communications. Opportunistic availability lends a learning forum for all to exchange in. That’s friend-to-friend, stranger on the street to another stranger.
Yet in complete opposition is our own conversations with our own sibling family members. Some of which may have matured in body and stature, yet maturity and confidence sorely lags behind. Within the family matrix, the ego thrives, striving laboriously to make it’s will known. Perhaps deriving it’s ceaseless energy from unresolved fights of youth, conjuring up more intense intended torment via means of persecution of the ego as it rears its ugly head. The competition begins to compare what was, to now what is. Who in the sibling pecking order has the right to make the sole decision to impact the end may only have the greatest of robust egos. The wording changes, vision of the outcome disappears and it is no long about the parent, but about each individual.
What can occur between siblings, cannot ever truly be discussed without a therapist in the same room. It is history, living in the moment and taking all the air, water and breeze and whipping it into a tornado of emotional confusion and terror.
That’s why family’s have a medical doctor overseeing the best for the parent. Discuss your position with him, and things might be well decided based on norms, science and repeatability. Elvis has left the building.

Hygiene -Sad Scent

Lost between two women, somewhere in the shopping day, it was time to stop by my friends parents house and say hello.
If a candy bar wrapper has special messages inside for you, ‘to escape your world’ after reading them and eating the chocolate, this was the time to test it out.
It is to assume the purpose of ‘escaping your world’ so that one can see and assess themselves better by stepping out of the norm. With some intent to reflect back on the qualities left behind. As if those qualities could be changed somehow upon the return.
What if no amount of candy wrappers changed the individuals repose? All the wise words packaged to make things pretty and perfect that just didn’t work were piled up in one place to rot.
Hard words for hard thoughts, and a great deal of embarrassment for my friend whose parents couldn’t seem to clean their home. The pungent lingering of the usual kitchen trash turned ripe would be a phase in the day of any homemaker living in a warm climate. Which this was – a warm summer day, with an air conditioned house that just plain reeked of the very, very bad stuff of life.
Nancy had told me, that she had tried to get a housekeeper in for her mother. But her mother wouldn’t have a stranger in her home. So adamant were her parents about not hiring a cleaning woman, that Nancy saw her comments to clean up the living space much like a teenagers revenge.
“You tell me to clean up. So I am gonna leave it a mess.”
Yet, that was far from the case. Her mother had the burden of seriously over-weight self, and more alone with her husband, a recovering triple by-pass patient newly returned home from hospital.
Mother is the caregiver, round the clock, with no car, dependant on her gay son and his partner living a mile away for transportation. Nancy tells me that the reverse mortgage was being spent before the bi-pass surgery at the Casino, gambling. The van from the Casino picks them up, takes them to the casino for as long as they like and then drops them off at the door to this home.
Nancy looks at me in disgust, “Hey, mom! We’re leaving.” And escorts me out the door towards the car.
It’s a thing, the sad scent, no one speaks of when it’s their own parents to any stranger. Yet in the company of the oldest of friends no topic is off limits. Who else will hear each other out about our thoughts and feelings on the subject of ‘house-a-tosis’.
“What are we gonna be like when we get old?” she warped the words with melancholy memories of when this wasn’t the way it is. “They need to be in assisted living.”
“What got you this time?” I asked with an open deck and a few of the cards to listen to the distressed adult-child in the game of ‘Go Fish’.
It’s the self-respect, the environment not of the planet, or the world, or the country or the state, or even this urban city they live in. It’s their own environment, that was tragically upsetting Nancy.
Topics rolled out her mouth, as licensed beautician, she knows the rules of proper sanitation. She knew chemicals and stench. She knew rot. She lived on her own ranch. And it wasn’t pretty to hear her speak of how much, how long and how helpless she felt about the stench.

“It’s somewhere in the rot of just plain trash and urine.” She paused to know, “and my brother won’t help her take out the trash, but she could take out the trash. It’s the urine, I can’t understand how they live with that stench of urine. It like a foreign language of scent. They could fix it, but I don’t’ think they can smell it. They are living in it all day and all night, and can’t even smell it now.”
Exasperated and demanding, “Clean it up, wash it out, and she won’t and he won’t care to tell her to clean him up, wash the clothes right away. No the pissy laundry sits in the hamper to reek. I would put gloves on to touch any of their clothes to put them in the wash. I would. I would have to put on plastic gloves and an apron just to move them from where they are to the wash. And you know, they would still have a stink in them after they were even dried. I would just bag them and throw them out. It was never like this before. It only got worse since he came home from the hospital and she’s caretaking him all day and night with no rest for herself. And now she stinks, too! I can’t do anything about it. I spoken to her about getting in some help, but it has gone too far. They just can’t be in that house by themselves. I won’t go back there for another few months. Even if I took them out of the house, they would smell. I just can’t see them. I’ll call her once a week on the phone, but I just can not go there again. And my brother, he won’t help, he and his partner can’t do anything. Or won’t do anything. They need to be in assisted living, and no one will listen to me.”
The statement inside the candy wrapper most definitely wasn’t working now. ‘Escape your world’ the given command of advertising and the images we should seek. As the daughter, the child who couldn’t bring themselves to recover from this worsening condition of their parents accepted living condition. Turning to authorities wouldn’t hurt, but right now it wasn’t going to help Nancy cope with helplessness. Turning away for this moment was coping. Turning on the acknowledgment of her own helplessness to help them created a burden, a tinged photograph to a clear life of her own. A chip on lense, a scratch on the mirror that couldn’t be rubbed out.

Shoes - Snow Shoes

Somewhere in the 40’s, 50’s, or early sixties, there was a mom who got divorced with children. We, maybe you or me is the product that former union, with a single mother as head of the household – which was not socially acceptable. The mom had one of two professions; nurse or teacher. The mom worked full-time, and the kids ran wild. There was trouble to be had in those days and single moms were taken to task for it. The mom had enough or not enough money to feed, clothe, and heat the house. Usually it was less money, and if there was money, the mom bought her kids stuff like bikes, skateboards and more skis, with poles, warm clothes, and boots.
The mom just didn’t manage to get the new furnace, the new stove, the kitchen sink she needed and wanted in her home. It never came to pass. Now that the mom’s retirement kicked in along with social security, the mom still has the same house, now paid for in full. The stove was replaced but not the water heater, or the TV which was still on rabbit ears antennae, the floor furnace is original, and the fireplace seemed to work quite well, accept for the ash toting routing. Energy star appliances escaped the radar in this house.
The twenty-first century common luxuries such as cable TV, forced air heat, a non-leaking roof, dead bolt locks, a double well kitchen sink and tile over linoleum floors never seemed to have reached this mom’s house.
Still, on a winters day, this mom is splitting wood in the back yard for the fireplace. Same boots as twenty-five years ago, since they never seem to wear out. The wood basket is slightly worse for wear, but it will do these days. And no one ever got this mom an answering machine with a ring loud enough for her to hear, or buttons large enough for dialing the telephone that she could see. So she rarely answered the telephone, rarely put on the other pair of glasses for dialing the telephone numbers to her adult children, and just re-adjusted the rabbit ears to watch the world events on the five p.m. news not CNN or MSNBC.
When the kids came to visit in their new cars with all the bells and whistles. Making calls back to their homes on their cell phones. Taking notes on their PDA’s or connected their laptops in bakery coffee shop down the street did they ever think to speak to their mother about cable TV, a dishwasher, let alone central heat or air.
One day on a visit, they missed their cable news program. And they really put up a stink about it, that their mom didn’t have it. And so the story goes, the mom put up a fight for a moment and then told them, you buy it for me, and then I’ll have it.
By the next Christmas visit, there was cable TV, cordless telephones in three rooms, a new furnace, and not one of adult children had a newer car than before. The mom even got a new washer-dryer and very nice pair of winter boots.
I guess, all you have to do, is inconvenience them and they wake up.

Death of a Loved One - Anniversary Day

You don’t often remember, or maybe you do. My mom definitely remembers the birth as well as the day of passing of her close family members. Parents, husband and some of her sisters, which when I was younger I thought it quite strange. Yet, the more I lived, the more I also lost friends, and special loved ones, even public persons, and became more like my parent in this way.
It’s not that I am more like the parent; I am more like my culture, my tribe, my community. The elders are there before us, so it appears that we are taking on their traditions. When more likely, the human being marks time and events with age or the passing of time. Like great individual corporations, we each have our milestones to meet and greet annually, whether we like it or not.
In the face of these benchmarks, their appears to be a possible window, with the memory of the passing of a loved one. My mom notices a specific month, when many passed out of her life. The parent often has a connection with the deceased, in dreams, feelings, or the memory of those individuals during the entire month.
I am not sure if she feels the aloneness, the one left behind, with little common ground in the present to express herself. I wonder, yet I also know and work to forget the number of years since my father has passed. Now the benchmark is over thirty years with a single parent. Something to consider a success, sometimes my loss of my own life, while tending to her retirement, relocating, health plans and problems, pensions and all the rest.
Often I wonder what my own life would have been like, if my other – male parent, my father had lived longer into my mother’s retirement years. I wonder what would that freedom may have or not have done for and to my own life. Yet, there is no going back, no changing what the psychic palm reader told me about this time for my life.
So it is written. Nevertheless, can someone tell the persons on the other side of this life, ‘I think you are not forgotten to those who have known you.’

Communication - The Hairy Replacement

You may find it easier to watch the soap opera of the hour, but when it’s your life that you displaced for living arrangements, and then are replaced by a dog is a smile with friendly relations still okay?
This House Daughter didn’t know whether she was right or wrong to move back in with her aging mother. She moved back in with her mom with the understanding that she would have the peace and solitude to finish her dissertation writing section for her PhD. Yet after months and months of nit-picking by her mother she just had to move out. Yet, she remained in the same town that her mother lived in.
Close enough, but far away made the goal even harder financially. She would have to work part-time, help her mother part-time, then write and research the other twelve hours in a day. Already in-debt with student loans over $100,000.00, from working toward this task, the light at the end of the tunnel was dashed. Now she was turned on her ear with limited funding even for food.
Low and behold a month after departing her mothers house, the old family dog died. This House Daughter grieved and petted her cat, knowing everything is terminal to begin with.
Then, out of nowhere, her mother gets a puppy. Not an elder dog that is calm, trained, and well mannered. This is a demanding, infantile black lab puppy. Her mother has to wean, feed, walk, dissuade from chewing, biting, and pooping anything in her 5,000 square foot home.
Now that This House Daughter’s mother carries on about how alone with the responsibilities of a puppy. How it limits her foreign travel, and how she must take the puppy with her to the office and how much attention
the new puppy dog needs.
This House Daughter looks over to her mother and says, "it’s someone for you to bitch at; who can't bitch back." So there.

Exercise - Gramma Gets A Puppy

The grandson wanted to travel over the Christmas – New Year’s holiday, so he asked his grandma to watch over his new medium sized, pound retrieved puppy for the holiday. His cunning was very good, with the reasoning that she – ‘Brigitte’ would keep Gram company and protect her. The grandson didn’t know quite enough at age nineteen about sex and the seasons. You recall those seasons of physical evolution that are different from male and female. Similar though between dog or human. It had slipped Grandson’s young mind, that Brigitte wasn’t spayed at the pound. So with all the Christmas colors available, Brigitte was suddenly spotting red. Here and there, amidst the holiday green. It took Gramma a moment, and then she set about curing the matter in the way only a lady could. Undergarments were augmented for tails, a Christmas pin for tightening and an absorbing paper product was hidden in Brigitte’s dual-purpose animal-human panties. Lest we say, the short walks in the backyard in the winter air was good for Gram. Brigitte was a bit crampy, but came around to bond. Holiday joy had returned now that the woman-to-woman thing had been resolved and where fresh baked holiday cookies were good from the table or the floor now. Her Grandson would have an ‘it’ when he returned.

Pharmacology - Unexpected Events

Independence suddenly reins, and you no longer go into the room with the parent at the doctors office. Nothing better you think than being cut-out. You think less responsibility, more of the parent taking on the responsibility of themselves and breathe a sigh of extra freedom. And, nobody says that that is a bad thing for either party. Wrong!

Suddenly the medication – the pharmacology prescribed by the MD, that you pick up at the pharmacy, only has the Pharmacist to ask questions of. You – yourself, have used this drug, and know that’s it’s a serious one in the categories of weak to serious. You do list the current medication, and they tell you the computer looks out for interactions. Ok. You ask about their age, and their current drugs and any known side effects. None, but take with food, and minor items. Ok.

Not okay. Next morning, you have side effects to clean up after. There an incontinence mess, or vomiting mess, or a dementia mess, or an arguably factor that has arisen. The parent won’t eat and suddenly you know that independence you were hoping would pan out, just went flat.

The work is now yours; the mess is not serious enough to call the MD or is it? Thinking alone, as you clean-up the parent, clean up the floor, the bed, the kitchen. Make food that gets only nasty comments. Run the washer and the dryer, and miss a day of work – again. The head scratching continues to think, ‘this is medicine? This re-action will make someone better?” As the work begins all over again.

Communication - Karnack the Telepathic

Bring home pink instead of brown? Square instead of oblong, and hear all the commentary and endless criticism from the parent on your purchase or decision?

The easy thing, the parent forgets is that you really don’t know them like their spouse or partner did/does. You are not privy to what they usually purchase, get, have, or use. You like myself, never really
wanted to know that much, or didn’t care to know if the brand name was better than the generic store brand in their taste pallet for breakfast cereal. Each of us stands in wonderment of what we have to do next. Return the bad product and get the right one. This is where the feeling of being treated negligently enters in. We make the effort – which most often never gets any credit, since we did the wrong thing to begin with. Therefore, in the parent’s efforts toward the house daughter or son, we don’t deserve acknowledgement. We did the wrong thing. We really did what we could, but we are not mind readers. Yet the generation who’s entertainer, Johnny Carson had a character, Karnack the Magnificent, who was a comic mind reader on this late night television show might have originated with a wife or an elder’s shopping adventure in Mr. Carson's personal home.

It pleases me relate the Karnack character to my own misfortunate experiences and lack of telepathy in such situations. Although I will give up my after hours of work, drive in traffic, deal with store return policies, hunt down the correct product or model, purchase it, drive back to the house, and pull up so hard on my bootstraps to present the replacement item – that I’d really rather not do anything at all.
Yet, I try, with amour mounted on my chest, my heart, my ego – deliver the replacement goods. For better or worse, in sickness or health, I have done my duty to my god and my country, all over a piece of
merchandise that wasn’t quite right.Allow me to remember this when I get old. I can forget my address, my own old age telephone number,but this lesson, I must keep. And that is: I speak, I must describe the good and the bad, and I must give a range of options in sizes, shapes, colors, and state why, to the annoyance of the person tasked to achieve this product, about why I need it and want it.

Savings? A lifetime of woe and self-doubt. Priceless because I can fire Karnack the Telepathic!

Postal Services - Byte This

In the land before bits and bytes, the postal service delivered all the mail, the magazines, communications with the outside personal world of wee-human beings. Now, I don't receive very much mail,
and I did sign up for the 'No More Junk' mail blocking service to save a tree. Yet, when I look at my parent's mail, she gets much more paper than I do. In the form of companies requesting donating dollars for little trinkets have a market with the elderly and their non-mobile disposable
income:

Political groups
Environmental groups
Humanitarian groups
Ethnically underserved groups
Elderly Associations
Religious Associations
Health Awareness Associations
And more....

The most important part of getting money, giving some trinket to the donor. A pin, a sticker, a photo, a calendar - large and small, a rosary, a pack of Holiday Greeting cards with envelopes, book markers, maps, ethnic related cultural items such as dream catcher, a chain with medallion and more.
My mom opened a drawer of trinkets filled with things she couldn't really toss out in the trash, as many were useful, cute, and very different. Moreover, what could she say but, 'they sent it to me.'
Then, my mom felt compelled to send them something in return, in the form of a check. And, I just got her off the publisher's sweepstakes buy-to-win jag.

TV - The Idiot Box

The idiot box phrase began somewhere between color tv without a remote when 'Lost in Space' was a date weekly not to be missed and PBS was just starting their kiddy programming in the mornings. One with the alphabet and number learning I already knew, so I was bored and stared at something else. This is all when it was really still safe to play outside, with anyone or be outside alone and wandering with the dog. The idiot box was her consternation about abandoning real life and its experiential learning. The idiot box phrase entered my mother's mind and came out her mouth to me as a child and as a teenager. Now, I wanted to say it to her. "Turn off that Idiot Box and get a life!" Yet, she had the full tilt, news to sports, music to history channel cable tv on most of the daytime. Radio reception was moderate for variety, but the TV was always on. And my mom began to parked in front of it each waking hour. Fully outfitted for leisure with the telephone nearby, cup holder, side coffee table and the remote control. Entranced by the cooking, home-making shows it became our conversation sharing touchstone. It was a place to wave our flag of commentary how they were doing, just like she did before they invented that new fangled machine. Then I caught myself, and didn't say, 'turn off the idiot box,' because she already knew she should. Yet couldn't get out for real experiential living. It was her window to travel, health, mechanics, absurd people and lifestyles, psychology and coaching, movies and news. I would watch my mother absorb the terrorism, the natural disasters, the financial debacles and ask her about the latest news when I got home from work - in summary form. "What happened while I was working?" And I would be brought up to speed on the world I missed while I was out in the world living. I wondered who had the better in this life?

Hearing Aids - Say What?

Somewhere along the way, when the hearing aids became a fixture in the life of a maturing human, they do omit to clean their ears of wax after a shower or bath. They get stuck, not necessarily in their ears, but stuck up with wax. Or a different way to say, ‘plugged’. And they do, they simply stop the hearing aid from working like it should. I started my mom using Q-tips again, somewhere along the way that part of good hygiene had gotten lost for her. Sort of a dumb thing to write about, yet when the TV volume looms larger than the voice of a baseball park announcer when passing by on the sidewalk, and when they don’t hear the telephone ring, it’s a sign to reach for the box of Q-tip’s to control the volume.
Then there is cleaning the wax from the actual hearing aid appliance. I find maturity brings more appliances into our lives, ever notice that. Dental, hearing, other ones also – but back to appliance wax impeding hearing aids.
Today was the appointed day to take this very expensive and required appliance back to the seller for a tune-up. The warranty was still in-force, so this visit was free. The former visits had been tune-ups via adjusting tone qualities and range of pick-up of sounds. This was quite fun to observe the tester and my mother. High end squelch, and lower pitches and the resulting facial expressions of pain or pleasure.
This visit was an exploratory mission for me to learn – why the volume on the TV was back to the loudest possible setting. Viewing the problematic – baseball park announcer situation was quickly solved by this tooth pick like tool, inserting and removing one filter of the hearing aid – of course it was filled with wax. Then replacing the same itty-bitty, teeny-weeny little white round filter with another from the opposite end of the toothpick-like apparatus.
Now she hears. No tuning required. Wax is gone. New filter is in place, and the toothpick tool filter replacer thing, comes in a box set. Who knew? And the baseball park announcer, he’s on hiatus!

Dentures - Fit for a Foreigner

Do I sound like a foreigner to you? I no longer have to imagine having a foreign object in my mouth, that makes the words coming out sound like a foreign language, it's now real. I have pre-empted the denture experience with an oral appliance for my own TMJ problem - (joint over by the ear that pops when I speak). Suddenly I understand the care and handling of oral appliances, and the new found effort it takes to pronounce words.
Eating, well with my own new fangled TMJ appliance, either in or out of my mouth, the orientation of my jaw with my teeth were not coordinated to work smoothly. I lost weight because chewing food was a great and concentrated effort with each and every bite, and it took time to eat. Then the facial and neck pain that floated through during the night and days was so unexpected that I stopped adjust my head and neck constantly.
Then I thought about dentures at the prompting of my mother who grinningly said, 'so now you have some.'
'Funny, smart-ass," I remarked to myself quietly, yet she was right. I was in the "primer" stage of dentures with my TMJ appliance. So I started asking my mother all the questions I never thought I would ask about dentures?

• Eat with them in? Yes.
• Does food get stuck under the plate on the roof of your mouth? Yes.
• Do you clean them at least once per day? Yes.
• Do you still brush your teeth like before? Yes.
• Do you notice them? Yes.
• Do your facial bones or jaw ever hurt? Yes.
• Do you have difficulty speaking? Yes, in the beginning and then you figure it out.
• Would you rather not have them? No, I can chew better with them in.
• How long have you had them? Decades.
• Better now versus then - the model you're wearing? Depends on the dentist, the price and what they are made of.

That about did for my first "primer" stage of questions, and she liked being asked and answering. Outside of personal appearance and vanity, for now I will just keep flossing and shop for a water pick. Loaded with empathy, foreigners either will think I am deaf, with my current rounded speech or prone to lisping through life. What an education in dentures.

Advocate Advocates - Advanced Directive

It a document that gives you the authority to call, ask and do for the parent the things that are on the list
of health care providers.
There's a link for all states that have documentation regarding Advanced Directives: http://www.noah-
health.org/en/rights/endoflife/adforms.html

• Execute in writing one original for the parent and a second original for you to have to walk with.
• Execute one for yourself and share it with a special friend - caregivers get sicker faster than normal.

Here's a link for patient rights and resources: http://www.noah-health.org/en/rights/
Or google search up your own with the keywords, "Advanced Directives"

I used the NY ones, just because they look like they did their footwork, I am not from NY State or
advise your use of this site alone. It's a general information start that appears well built.

Look for:

• Where - which state does what in each situation will / or not be different
• Who - is listed in this document
• What - is covered in this document
• Advisement - get a lawyer/attorney and ask them, ask the Dept. of Aging in your state

Department of Aging in your state may have online resource, or an office that you may contact for more
information. Do it... you will have more peace of mind if something should happen.
Support your parent's right to know and understand what they are completing by signing/designating and let
them ask the questions to the attorney or the Department of Aging personnel in your location.
Don't wait - start now, and get the parent while they able, capable, and present to learn and accept these issues
over time if that's what it takes and you are the house daughter or son.

Advocate Advocates - The List of Numbers

You don't need these, the parent has all these. Flip a coin ten times! What are the odds?
What do I need these for...(sniveling brat in denial - grow up!) Even though you are the person others
will call should something happen. But it never does! You say, naw, not me, I don't need this. So why are you
reading this? Flip the coin! Start counting...
You - the house daughter or son - DOES NEED THEM.
Then out of nowhere, after dinner, an outing; the parent gets ill - do you have the document? The
document that gives you, since you are the one present, stepping and fetching - the authority to at least contact
the parent's insurance company, seek out new medical care providers and all the rest.
Got the parents social security number? Do you?

• Call the medical insurance company providers with the parent in the room, because they will need to speak to
• customer service representative and give them the okay for you to have authority.
• Get online and set up the log in name and password so that you can look at the scheduled benefits and other
• medical and health providers available to call upon. Also get yourself set up with Medicare in the same way.

Keep in mind that you will need to have a FILE Folder for each section of the health care. Keep the account
numbers, log in names and passwords - on the inside of the file jacket.

One for each:

1. Medicare
2. Medicare Part B Insurance Provider
3. Eye Doctor
4. Hearing Aid
5. Physical Therapist

And any other Provider

Put the name of the Service on the File Folder Tab, on the inside Jacket -
Copy in the:

1. Insurance numbers
2. Account Numbers
3. Contact Numbers and Address of the Service Care Provider
4. Name of the Specific Person that was your Provider at that Business
5. Start Date of Care
6. Add the end Date of Care
7. Warranties - Expiration Date

And Contact Information on that Warranty should you need to use it.

Run it like a business, and KEEP A SHORT LIST OF CONTACT MEDICAL NUMBERS ON THE
REFRIGERATOR and in your own cell phone when possible. Toss a coin! Otherwise, just wait and let
someone else do it. What are you there for? Then leave.

Exercise - Rolling Thunder

I once wrote that the Wal-mart shopping cart was my exercise training replacement for the future, and
getting my mom 'off my arm' when walking long distances or shopping. Well, the day finally came, it was her
idea, but I did see it advertised for a lesser price just a month before. Yet, I didn't have the guts to buy it and
introduce it to her home front.
It's got four wheels with a little seat, and hand brakes. The basket is optional, but it's not a ride but a
walker-stroller. The joy when she saw it in the advertising pages of the newspaper is just like the four year old
gets who their first baby doll and needs a carriage to tote the baby doll around. Well this is that same thought,
re-worked, and as I said the basket is optional. The price is just around one hundred dollars. Compare that to
the price of the chiropractor with or without a massage, the money for the four-wheeled walker is so very
possible without too, too much pain.
I got the orders that the mom wanted one. Then being shoppers and this had wheels, so it's like an
automobile, so it was a prerequisite to 'test drive' a few models. In my neighborhood, there's a couple of well
outfitted drugstores specific for appliances like this. The mission was on, to hit as many of these types of places
as possible in one day. I really wanted my arm back, full-time, so I was up for the intermittent arm work for the
effort.
There were hummer size stroller-walkers; there were mega-basket walkers. There was the shinbone to
consider, as it would bash into this lower cross bar. So we downsized. Then, 'test walked' with the stroller
with limited testing space. The places were small, well filled with canes, crutches, metal unknowns and plenty
to bump into on these 'test walks'. The mom's stress mounted, based on her navigation versus learning skills.
Now the give figure started with the hand brakes - with the quizzical look from a woman who hadn't
ridden a bicycle in several decades. I looked, and pushed and pulled, and dragged the stroller - voila! The pull
down mechanism at the end of the handles, locked the brakes.
Next...
Then there was the 'test sits', for different butt sizes. Roll and lock the brake and sit and rise, and feel.
Mini, normal and mega behinds, with cushioned and non-cushioned seats, all the while I knew I was saving my
arm and we left, with no purchase to go home and sleep on it.
The next day, with the intention and the money to purchase one walker-stroller with seat and brakes in
hand, I made it to the local drug store to spend a cool C-note, $100 bill. The walker-stroller came out to the car
with me in a box! I have no husband, no gear-head boyfriend. I saw plenty of working models, yet I never
thought to read the advertisement, "assembly required" was not in the ad.
The drive home, in my mind, I thought of all the tools, screwdrivers, screws, and assembly required. I
blocked out a solid hour of time in my mind to complete this project, remembering the saving of my arm for the
effort.
The box came open, it slid out easily. The sum of the parts had no screws, no tools required. The
wheels where wired inside the tubing, and they popped in with pre-set plug-pins. Then I popped the hand
brakes in the same way. Five minutes and I unfolded the stroller to the operating position. A stroller! Then the
seat just flopped down into place on the baby blue roller-stroller. Wow!
Adjust the pin-plugs for height, and we were off down the street. Rolling Thunder! Ya! My arms are
all mine again! Wahoooo!

Hair Cuts - Color Gone Bad

We're back! And, it only took a few return visits, as I sat in the chemical world of the practicing beauty
operator's waiting room at the beauty college. The experience for me could be summed up as an acid trip of
1964. I watched a bunch of old broads getting their rat'n tease, the quazi bleach blond bouffant poof in the
practice chairs. Oh, but it was the outcome of the last visit that made me know this would be our last.
Mom did not take to the color that was put on her hair. Her aspirations of apricot-blond didn't come out.
No, instead she had uniquely shaded colors of a vegetable garden that even the hair-coloring instructor couldn't
fix.
This became an opera of soap, namely shampoo, that took over the mom. It began leading her into the
bitch-to-bitch discussion of abhorrence of what she had to 'look in the mirror everyday, every moment, and
every hour."
Scary in a very authentic - 'somebody screwed up' sense of fact as there was no holding back the
mom's expressions of emotions about her current state of hair and style. The reaming took epic proportions as
the words flew from the mom over to the entire room of student hairdressers.
Out of steam, once settled down from the roar, the options of resolution reigned in two:

1. Strip and tip,
2. Cut up.

The latter was an acceptable cut up - very short. That, per the instructor, would take it back down to
allow the natural shade to 'show and grow'.
Bald eagle, easy to keep, a little gay, but I wasn't going to say that to my mom. Oh no!
Besides, I had no dog in this fight, and really didn't want to come back to the Beauty College again after
those words.
Before acting, mom and I conversed in the corner as if it were the war room. Both of us pointing out
that a return visit for any future strip and tip might mean an even slower death to her false thoughts of youth.
"Give 'em one last round, and let's buy a trim comb," was my positional advice.
On the drive home mom and I had a long discussion about the market's current hair products. Things
named, 'goo, gack, gummy stuff and bed head' that she could use to give the new shorter-short style some
shape and form.
Weeks later, my mom's hair was flat; she hadn't been using the products. Finally, my mom confessed
that she couldn't lift her arm up high enough to apply the sculpting goo to her own hair.

Ah, don't let your parents grow up to be cowgirls.

Trash - The Garbage Gyre

Where there's an island of garbage - The Garbage Gyre can easily be found at my mother's home. Her
thoughts of recycling each product's packaging overwhelm my mother now, who was used to separating her
trash throughout her life in rural living situations.

The process was:
* One for the burn barrel in the backyard,
* The other for the real garbage man to take away - cans, glass, un-burnables such as plastic.

How times have not changed. However, when one considers the trash gyre (a swirling vortex caused by
wind and water that created a floating island the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean made up of plastic), one
must consider that the human being made-up in some way of that same water and air.

I stand in my mother's kitchen watching her in the same similar reaction, that of the same circulatory
pattern-walking pattern in a swirling, torquing motion - away from the trash and into the recycle bin spin the
plastic goes.

It must be addictive, or religious, that a soul would venture the intention that this sorted trash won't end
up in the Ocean Gyre of trash. There is belief underlying all of my mom's movements to sort, wash, and
separate the metal lid from the glass that is founded in the faith in the local government. More specifically, that
when they say they are 'recycling,' they are actually hiring one hundred little fellows with hands and eyes to
part the confusion and carry on the duties of great responsibility given to them to separate the plastic, the metals
and the glass.

Sadly, the local news story making headlines today stated, 'that much of the sorted recycling was off
loaded at the general dump with all the other trash'. I never saw my mother look so sad, even with the passing
of a newborn kitten. She reflected back to her wasted efforts so easily disregarded by the city trash people. My
mom was a Gyre unto herself.

Sickness - Broken Bones

The son is wondering what to think of the hired caregivers that are to replace him while he goes out for
money as work, instead of remaining available to assist his mother.
The wonderful thing about a man and his mother is the separation of personal powers and privacy. In
opposition daughters share with their mothers the commonality of physiology. Between women it is a lifelong
discussion of private parts, acts, and outcomes. Yet, mother to son, or better son to mother is matter of a
different social beast.
A little accident can slide into broker ribs and limits for the female parent. The care-giving son
wonders about the limits, the unspoken rules of assistance in these matters. The son's gray hairs sprout up in
worry, not wisdom. The stress of compliance with all of the new demands and duties builds. Often the result is
stagnation of action on the son's part when it occurs to him to meet the hired help meant to fill the spaces and
social protocols of his limitations.
There is guilt, guile and gutless rage that walks out the door in worrisome wonder of the state of events
the son never thought he would be placed in.
Moreover, he is wondering about....
* What part damns the sister, commands the son to be present?
* What part seeks advice is shamed to ask?
* What skills are amiss that may become honed by query about private subjects with son to his
mother?
* What values that were unseen are now present?
* What is to be done will be handled, managed by the son, and alternatively by the hired help?
* Can the house son wait for healing and restored health to return, before loosing his patience with his
mother as well as his mind?

So, in service beyond the norm, the house son becomes impatience with soul-filled doubt lingering
underneath each daily activity. A son that was once possessed by the aspirations of the purpose and place in the
conquest of riches in the larger world of man, now can only to surrender to life as it is. Uncontrolled,
unprofitable, unfriendly, and needed.
Which comes first, the man or his shadow?

Outings - The Sunday Drive

It's probably the only time, the mom gets to pretend that you are the husband from the past life. The
Mom can yell at your driving skills better than anyone else, and she did it to Dad, now she's doing it to you.
Slowing down on a 'Sunday afternoon drive' is the paramount phrase no one thinks to use in this new
millennium. Youth, has more to do with speed in their mind, and therefore, the mom says, "You should slow
down."
My own comment, "That there are lots of folks behind my car." That only creates an argument from the
mom worth life itself.
This is the difference between 25 mph and 40 mph when the speed limit is 35 mph on a country road,
everybody else wants to go at least 40 mph on a two lane road.
Yet, the driver - me or possibly you, is never really sure of the need for slowing down. We dearly
hesitate to ask the senior parent why they wish us to slow down.

• Is it to take in the view?
• Is the motion and speed creating too much movement in your mind?
• Are you getting nauseous?

The mom never was a great driver and has not been out of her home in a more than a week. So, I
understand the value in this excursion into the world outside the home. The driver, me is wondering if she what
she is really feeling about the view and the 'Sunday Drive' process. Memories perhaps or just the vacation with
a chauffeur?
I never ask. I never ponder anything other than a place to pull over to let the guy who is on our bumper
pass.

Exercise - Not My Arm

Not my arm. Hanging on the left or right arm of the able individual is hell. It's hell for the parent, when
they can't stand-up solidly and move about without having another person for stability. I understand, it's not
their fault, and I send out report cards with A+'s, gold and silver stars just for the guts and courage for
attempting to take a longer walk. I've done it for two years, since I did notice the body lilt-tilt what leaned to
the left a bit more than level, mostly from being hung on to out of pride and companionship. Nevertheless, not
hang on my arm, anymore.
Therefore, I supplanted my arm in Wal-Mart and other stores that have shopping carts. I find the
shopping cart to be the perfect trainer for the next move up in freedom and mobility for myself as much as the
mom. Now this thought has a good deal of self-preservation in it as I now can roam away, while she reads the
labels. I can be back in a second or two to pull down from the top shelf a product, or lift the heavy canned
foods into those low, way down places in the shopping cart.
I'd really like to know, if there are enough cute, little double stacker mini shopping carts available for
the maturing population in my future? Someone ought to give the heads up to the massive package stores that
not all cart sizes suit the shopping efforts of the seniors or even the middle-agers. It's truly hard to bend over
and lift all those products in the shopping basket out at the check out.
It's my arm again; one-handed lift out, swing and park on the moving belt for the check out. What
happened to those high carts with end that opens up for the checker to pull all the items out of the cart while
they ring them up? I would like those back please!

Listening - Fireside Tales

Now it just depends on which group you belong to:

1. I remember watching black and white TV - only
2. I remember having a color TV without a remote control
3. I remember have a color TV with a remote control
4. I only have had cable/satellite TV my entire life

This locks you into how you will listen when the elder tells their childhood stories of growing up,
dating, mating for life, and all the rest of their young, and mid-life experiences.
Why how? #1 = Black & White Only persons, have a more vivid imagination. The color the tale with
their own memories of that era, because they still can remember things like street cars, the corner grocery and
party line telephones.
#2 - Color TV without a remote recall the hey-day of canned hair spray, kitchen blenders, toaster ovens
and asbestos flooring in the home kitchen with a wall phone.
#3 & #4's will have trouble with words alone.

Did you ever notice how, where and why you listen to the parents tales of their past? If you can get
them to open up, note the situation, the room color, the place outdoors, the other persons present, the holiday
event that allows the elder to open up. Also, notice most of all how much patience you have with their
storytelling.
Feel entranced, angry, impatient, comparative, longing for those options?
I watched President Kennedy's funeral on a black and white tube TV that was in a well-crafted cabinet
with a 78 & 33 r.p.m record player and speaker built-in. Quite the 'entertainment center' of its era.

Nutrition - Who's Got the Stuff

It's in the can. It comes in a bottle. Over ice or straight. Sometimes in the tube, a feeding tube. It's
food, with vitamins. Read the can. It's helpful to you and me, and you know you can drink it too.
They must of scouted the phrase for vegetable-tomato juice with a fair amount of investigative
advertising to sell it to the public. Yet, the parents don't seem to jump for a blend of twenty-five juices in a can
most of the time. I think it's the acid in the tomato flavor that doesn't seem to fly for them.
I tried a couple of different vitamin and protein ideas as smoothies:

• Frozen fruit with water or juice and protein powder
• Baby formula with blended fruit and ice
• Liquid Orange Flavored Vitamins in water like orange juice
• Vegemite
• Knox gelatin with frozen fruit in the blender with water

It all turned out just fine, when I made them. My mom drank them out of pity for my bright idea, like a
kind person. Yet, she wouldn't make them herself. And, I asked her why she didn't make them herself. With
the effort, the lifting of the heavy glass blender top while managing to wash it in the sink presented another
problem.
I soon gave up and went back to buying her the can. In strawberry, vanilla or chocolate, as I went home
with all the other stuff I tried.
Who's got the stuff? Ya me, but one day she asked for some of it back in the summer months! Cool.

House Rules - Coming Over to Visit

One day, my sister rang the door bell, and my mom refused to answer it. There were two women at the
door, and my mom thought they were 'those holy people coming to chat,' and she wanted none of that. So, my
mom didn't answer the door.
Far be it from anyone close to the family to know that my mom, had a good case of pneumonia at this
time, and was order to play 'hospital at home' with day and oxygen and lots of antibiotics to keep her down in
her favorite chair in her flannel pajamas in the middle of summer. My mom was right at home, healing up
great, slowly but better everyday.
The telephone rings at my mom's house. It's her daughter from Europe with her daughter ringing my
moms door bell, that mom thought was the 'holy people'. Surprise, surprise.
My mom invites them in at 1:45 pm and calls me. She tells me who would like to take her to lunch.
And I listen, and I ask my mom, "Do you want to go to lunch with them?"
I hear my question becoming her questions back to me, and my mom answering her own questions since
her unexpected guests are in the same room within listening distance to 'my' but actually her decision - not to
go out with them to lunch.
This is quite quizzical, I think to myself. Then I know, she's still pulling around and oxygen tubing, in
her pajamas and hasn't showered in a couple of days. What is this guest thinking? That an old sick person, let
alone just an old person, can just change clothes and put on make-up in two minutes and run out the door with
them. Only because they are so special, they can come visit, unannounced, unexpected and their mom who is
their grandmother is suppose to just change her life because they appeared.
I am thinking, what is this? I knew, I can't leave the office to run home and see this sibling of mine.
Why do they want to take mom out for lunch all of a sudden? And if they did, would they bring her back?
Who knew what was really going on in their minds? It seemed like my mom knew better than to just
leave with them, sans the oxygen, the still-present illness such as lack of breathing capabilities. Not to mention
the effort to change clothes.
I asked a friend from another office, if her errands were taking her near my mother's house, and if she
would stop by, since I had couldn't get away from the office. My friend did stop by and see mom, calling first
before coming by.
My unexpected sister and niece departed, decrying their hunger for lunch at this late hour, from my
mother's house.

Job Title - PN - The Patient Navigator

If no one understands the term House Son or House Daughter, try "P-N" for Patient Navigator.

I just read an article in this weeks Sunday Parade insert, "Helping You Through The Medical Maze".
Article: http://www.parade.com/health/2009/03/patient-navigator.html and read who else you might work for
related to your current services to your parent. Ya never know - if you get the job done well, it may be a future
venue for employment.

On the community organizing level check out: Beacon Hill Village at
http://www.beaconhillvillage.org/index.html with details on set up and fees. It's another idea that's an
extension of the PN - Patient Navigator job. There's a manual for setting one of these services up in your
community.

Ya just never know.

Complaints - Broken Unspoken Rules

On the cable TV commentary news where there four persons commenting to the moderator of the
program, and they all yelling at once - don't you just want to turn it OFF. It's like that with listening to the complaints of maturing. Who gets more air time? You may need to decide, and let it run on for hours and then repeat at 3:00, 6:00, and 10:00. Alternatively, you can meander through the concept of making rules. This can be scary. Rules usually need to be agreed to. In addition, if the complaints aren't heard first, you might not make any headway.
Rules come with resistance. Then there the sense of urgency. If the time is not taken to listen, or if you wish to impose a portion of the rule book, they clam up. The parent clams up and never speaks again, until it's too late with one issue or another. Paybacks are the utilities being turned off. You find the telephone disconnected or some form of insurance has lapsed. Aha, you say to yourself, as the drama increases with more and discoveries. Then you
know, your rules are not working.
The parent's rule is this, "The rule that begins with, 'I don't follow your rules.'
Then you say to yourself, "Okay." You have seen how well or how poorly, your well devised "rules of complaining" work and have now chooses to give up your rules. Submitting yourself to their rule. They complain and you listen. So begins your analysis phase:
1.) Internally, your task list begins with a rating system, in order of importance.
2.) Which item spoken has weight bearing towards health and safety, socialization, communication, tasks to do or look-up, and things to add to the go-do list.

I find it helps to have a little, I mean little notebook for jotting down:

Tasks To-Do - Calendar Events Scheduled such as MD visits, On-Line - Order Products
Look-Up - Get more background or information about Go-Do - The Grocery List, Pick-Up
Alterations in Mental Status - Health Problems, or Acting Depressed, Confused - jot it down and date it.

As for the rest, consider it good conversation and preparation for your own communications with your co-workers, spouse, children, sports team you coach.... It's great training, that is - listening to someone complain as a style of communication.
Time for a change? I don't think it's going to be them either.

Pharmacology – Outside of the Institution

Don’t leave home without them. I’m talking about the drugs. You took your rolling papers to high
school in the hope of a high life. And a beer had that – ‘high life’ as slogan we all bought into. Imagine this for
minute; if you don’t take your drugs you get high. We worked all our young lives in search of a great high. And
what wasn’t told to us is that when you get old, if you don’t take your drugs you get high.
Ever seen Great-Uncle Bob talking to himself at the bus stop? Great-auntie Bess mixed the paprika and
the red chili up in the dinner recipe. And, oh how good that didn’t taste? How about that spacey, stoner look on
dads’ face after one beer and some pharmacology? Looks a little stoned doesn’t he? And he probably is.
Alternatively, is not, if he didn’t take his drugs.
We need to know for those day trips, just what is in those little cases of pills. Does the pharmacology
mixed with a little too much caffeine on that day trip with mom getting talking all together too, too much? Like
speed or amphetamines? What food interacts with the magic pills? Look them up, make a little mental list.
Only, because the parent isn’t going to be able to tell you, if they forgot or never knew.
Then there is always the, 'I forgot them at home', oh, no I didn’t, and they take more pharmacology. The
listless look, of an overdose begins to absorb them. However, you don’t notice. You believe it’s just old age,
when two hours ago, the parent was totally, and completely different in energy, vitality and alertness. On the
other hand, an overdose to be taken to the emergency room? Or wait, like a thick soup, just add more water.
Not working, add some more and get them back home to sleep it off. Oops!

Finances - Running Money

As if their money was a secret macro world of the utility bills, insurances and taxes that no one should ever know about. Then you have to figure it out.
What’s the big secret? It’s about privacy regarding privacy. If you may have one area under your total control, would you choose the arena of money? For yourself to keep so sacred, no one would know anything about your money.
Now it’s payback time, it’s the moms’ private area too. My friend Cammy’s mom has her realm. We know it’s made up of a few things. Pension, social security, and then there’s incoming rental property funds, the ex-boyfriend who some how suddenly had a new-used truck. The gifted money, before Cammy moved back to mom’s home town, that Cammy received annually at Christmas.
Once her mom got ill, Cammy became the sleuth of the private part of her mom’s life. Cammy looked, and stacked and confronted, and argued and toiled to let go of her inheritance now gone with her mom’s last lover. Then realized, Cammy screamed, “what was my mother being so ‘trippy’ about. There’s nothing new here. So she gave money away. It’s too late now, to get it back. And she’s fine. It’s all her, in her checkbook the monthly bills and incomes. What – why was she hostile about her money?”
Cammy paused to think about her own money. It’s her money, and again let me repeat it’s also - her money. The individuation of a buck allows each of us to keep it or run away, if we have any.

Communication - Whipping Boy

Have you noticed, as the house daughter or son, in a care-taking, or a care-giving situation in the family, you notice that you are the object of verbal abuse perpetrated in yelling, screaming, or elder judgmental or rude and divisive comments? This is mental abuse of you and your self-esteem by the elder, the elder’s dear friends who have now adopted you, or sometimes your own siblings.

You become their, “Whipping Boy”.

It’s going to happen. You are the target for their practice that has:

• More time to live than they do – jealousy
• More knowledge about the world – frustration
  
• More economic, or less economic means – worry
• More opportunities than they had

And more… All or anything that can create a tension in conversation suddenly, and unexpected explodes on to you. Who happens to be the closest person who they have some degree of intimacy with, and out of left field, whammo – the comments rip out of the elders mouth.
What’s important here is your reaction. Your own degree of thinking inside THEIR box, and the understanding found there, is what will have effect on the outcome experience for all parties involved.
Your consideration for allowing the venting of old issues to come out and to be resolved or retrenched in old patterns. Even though you are being whipped with words of anger, frustration, worry or jealousy grab hold of yourself and stop to decide what degree do you now need to protect yourself, and just walk away; saying nothing and leave.
We get to decide, to ponder, but initially you will have a reaction that must be controlled to the situation, the person, and the environmental factors of the conditions.
To what degree is the root related to medications, ill-health, lack of stimulation – and more are all up for your consideration when this arises.
The whipping of the house daughter or son caregiver will take you by surprise. It will challenge you in ways unthinkable, and you can’t run away. You must grow up, evolve, and manage with grace, charm, and self-preserving dignity for all parties the relationship. It doesn’t mean you have to accept it, you have to manage yourself and let the parent just spin off, spit it out and you are the target. Like you never took the same hell for money before, well this is where the bank account in heaven starts to fill-up.
How’s that for a job description? "My Last Job: Collecting Brownie Points for Heaven". Try getting a future employer to understand what and how you do what you do or did for House Daughter or Son in the ‘duties’ section of your next job application.

Yard and Gardening -Tiptoe Through the Tacos

It pays really well to have an elder parent with a garden. They have all the time in the world to dig, dote, and water - if they wish. All you have to do is pick up the stuff they need to make this garden grow.
There’s this sitting and watching they do from their perched chair, looking out over it - daily. The patience extended to being older is fact. They aren’t going to move too fast, since they know they might fall. And, once set into a motion or an action, much like the rest of us, they get stuck in a position. Remember the garden demands bending over and it becomes a quite useful stuck position to be in for planting, weeding and chatting up the plants. And, they work that way for longer than I can, and only complain once, when they become upright. Since you or I would attempt to stand upright and relieve ourselves of pain by using stretching, drugs or miracle prayers to higher power.
The elder parent gardeners know, there is no relief, so they live with it, with their eye on the prize, fresh food from the garden in a short period of time. Possibly shorter than if they attempted to get to grocery store or fruit market on their own, so it works well for them.
Imagine if we all just, lived with it. The tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce along with the corn would still grow. Someone, even the sky above (weather or the birds) would still water, fertilize, and pick them when ripe to eat them. What if we just put up the aches and pain and sought no solution the discomfort. What if we all got used to the discomfort, recognized it and then ‘went on’ and made a great summer meal into the fall. All that’s missing is the meat.

Driving - Reverse Jets

No one wants to say they dinged their own car, a cute little VW Golf with less than 40,000 miles on it. No one admits to that, but when the dings add up and the car appears to be a dirt track derby car, I, this adult -child begins to wonder about my mom that drives the Golf.
I took my last vacation, but I didn’t know it was my last vacation. Have you ever had that feeling? Like passing a kidney stone, who wants to remember that. Well, I had five days of either bizarre hotel rooms or camp stops in state parks. Returning home, only to see the carport with the moms cute little VW Golf with dings turned into a rather large dent on the back end. Relaxation was now over and done. I had started back to work with my luggage rolling up the driveway on first view of this feat of her car.
It only took a few minutes after unpacking for me to ask, “What happened to your car, mom?”
Then it took about four cups of coffee to figure out the whole, real story and what to do about it. Since it wasn’t safe to drive with the back end bashed in and no taillights on the cute little VW Golf, it fell to me to call the insurance company. Then, make a list of the possible repair shops, call the towing company, and believe that once was enough.
Only a few months passed in time, and I took another long weekend away. Mom could drive, and walk at this time, and things were looking good with guy I was dating. Maybe, I could move out and be in love. The weekend was sweet. Not so fast.
As the luggage rolled up the driveway, it was revealed. Moms cute little VW Golf happened again to be crunched in the same place.
It turned out that backing out of the driveway was not her forte. This was the second time, she backed out of the driveway and hit a car passing by. This was second senior citizen who was driving at or below the speed limit of twenty-five mph, that mom didn’t see backing out of the drive way. Everybody was okay, except for their automobile damage, which included the not-so cute anymore, little VW Golf.
The car was repaired and, “salvage” was stamped on the title. Mom got the repair plus $800.00 US dollars for the salvage stamp from the auto insurance company.
Later, she sold the cute little VW Golf for an additional thousand dollars to my nephew, who still drives it today. In addition, he’s tweaked it himself at least twice backing out.
Reverse karma?

Food - Keeping It Hot

Ask about the benefits of a hot meal, and you may hear comments such as a tummy warmer, a homecoming feeling, a good hot mea, first hot meal I’ve eaten since…
One thing I often forget about is my capable ability to move about the kitchen with heavy pots filled with liquid, knives, tools, and washing up afterward. My parent doesn’t have the energy to run the chicken from the barnyard, let alone from the grocery store, through its paces even into the soup pot.
Managing the shopping, to the car, then carting the groceries into the house is a huge chore for her. And just putting away the goods is enough for that days’ activities of daily living. Let alone all the washing, peeling, dicing, slicing, cooking and containerizing more than one portion.
When this house daughter has the urge to cook, I have lots of shapes and sizes of plastic wear for storage. I freeze, refrigerate, and then parse out the extras to the parent.

Miracles of the microwave: Food in a Plastic Package or Box
* No knives, no cutting required
* Unbreakable plastic container
* Serves a Hot Meal
* Is reasonably priced for the product
* Can be frozen and cooked whenever
* And expect comments, all kinds of comments, usually not so positive about your own cooking from the parent. Wait to hear, ‘it needs salt’. Then you’re doing fine. The parent can add salt and all the herbs they wish.
* But do what you can, when you can and stash it.

PS: You can forget those bisphenals. Remind them to warm it up on the plate or in a bowl, not in the plastic container!

Hair Cuts - Color Me Perfect

I wanted to say, but I didn’t. So I am writing it here, “Why is your hair that hideous shade of orange? She came in with hair as white as a blank piece of paper?”
We are at the Beauty College, mom and me. And that weird word, “Beauty College”, should be renamed as “the experimental chemical lab for future stomach and bladder cancer patients”, in my opinion. Which is what they will be if the young ones keep using all these chemicals on their heads.
I just wanted to scream, “Read the research on the chemistry and technology please. This beauty thing, coloring your hair is all for the American woman’s’ ego to fight aging!” Color me perfect is the dream not the reality.
It doesn’t work well in any of the shades of brown with so very many wrinkles. Who are we kidding? The higher power over all of us; that being biology, created a trend-setting world of grey turning white. In addition, that’s a good thing, to follow nature’s cues to the passages of life.
Well the white hair looked good on mom for a few years, and then she said it depressed her. That she wanted to be the apricot blond of her middle years. She would have it back on the top of her head – apricot blond, and that should have lifted her spirits.
Well here it is and we are done with coloring mom’s hair apricot blond here at the Beauty College. I hope someone can tell her that, ‘they love it’. Now, we will be back each month, adding another task to my good-daughter duty list, to service the roots and support the denial of time in the mirror.
Then I reminded mom on the drive home, that it’s a real cut-up and I mean short, when you decide to divorce Lady Clairol and go back to natural white.

Walkers – New Knees - Step Light - Nightlights

You never bought a night light before in your life? Why should I? They’re excellent to have all over the parent’s house. Note that there are different wattage bulbs to consider, and they burn out too, yet are replaceable, some are point-able, on all the time, or they come on in the dark automatically. It may seem like a trivial thing, but try it you’ll like it.
Nightlights give independence to the parent. If there is knee replacement as part of the picture, success can be greater or lesser part of falling waters if you get my drift. Imagine their situation: often two, three, four times in one night they need to use the loo in the dark of the night, it can be worse than a new born infant crying every two hours to be fed. Before they unfold the walker, using it for support to rise up from the bed, once risen the move forward can be lit gently for them. The nightlights help orient them to any ‘stuff’ left in the pathway too.
As the tending House Daughter or Son, you awake in the night to this same request. The chair you have been sleeping in has caught you off-guard. It’s not your house, not your normal surroundings. And who is sensible in their footstep when sleep deprived? Oh sure, you may have stashed a few bonus points in heaven but remember your own toes cracking on their furniture as you make a path to the bathroom. Then there’s avoiding the pet, the parents slipper, and the blanket that fell off the bed, you hope you do not to trip over anything else, or you might need new knees. Spend the money and buy lots and lots of nightlights (and replacement bulbs).

Advocate Advocates - Doctor – Do –Done

10- Advocate Advocates - Doctor – Do –Done

There is a slight hill at the entrance to the medical doctor’s office and for the life of me; it’s even more fun to have the mom on my arm when it snows. Those days are meant for strangers, and dogs with no tails. Sounds quite harsh, but it’s a great way to judge what the incline will be like in the exam room.
Now when the senior mom is more than eighty-five years old, and I’m sitting in the room, when the young, male doctor asks the mom for a gynecological exam. Now, the incline just got steep. She looked at him, and then looked at me, and I had to say, “Hey doc, I don’t think so.” And my mom agreed.
She advocated for herself in this arena. And I was quite proud that she had the same take on this part of the exam as me.
My thinking was, ‘what are you going to look for? Cancer? She’s already closer to death than fixing?’ And I certainly wasn’t going to stay in the room if the doctor forced the issue.
Walking down the incline towards the car my mom said, “I don’t think I could even spread my legs that far apart anymore.”

Conduct in Relationships – Hands Down

Who’s got that elder parent who can’t speak without their hands flying through the air? My friends mom who can’t help herself especially in the car, close quarters, small kitchens, and even seated in a living room.
Things seem to always spill, fall or fall and break whenever she speaks. And it’s not a disease, or illness, it’s a very bad habit to avoid. The actions of arms and hands flailing into my face towards my eyes.
Sometimes you would that think the generation of men who didn’t let women speak freely were the ones who created this mother’s expressive habit. Why? Only through her overt efforts of over-speaking could she be heard. Else the hidden hostilities of marriage and failed dreams could lead to this accentuation in senior.
We all know that certain illnesses may cause severe lack of body movement control, but in the senior citizen, who at first appears normal and safe - beware. Striking up the conversation in the grocery store could be a serious mistake.
I watched jars of pickles fall and crash, creating a further mess of unsafety to slip and slide through the broken glass. The stranger was stunned as the exasperated hand motions of the first activity created another action of more and different products from the other side of the isle to submit to gravity.
A picturesque scene of music-ish shopping was halted by her conversation alone. On the drive home her flying hands and arms made driving quite quizzical.
My bruised arms from her expressions of apologies in the car made me wish that I had a straight jacket instead of a seat belt.
Please inform Detroit of another safety issue, the need for nets between driver and passenger seats.

Water - Hold That Thought

8- Water - Hold That Thought

How many prescriptions am I drinking? The water in a city’s service is filtered for certain things, but living downhill from a mountain river that has a city or two up river can be quite vexing. Wondering what heart, thyroid, sexual enhancement drugs you may have taken today?
Know they neighbor has a completely new meaning.
Visit an elder’s medicine cabinet and know, that like food, what goes in must come out. Makes a younger wonder why the frogs are looking like fish, why the fish are both male and female and songbirds are singing disco in the dark.
So, ya take a gander at the dosage on the jar, and look it up on the web, under Adult and then begin to worry. Grandma’s been a little daft, maybe she’s overdosed. Aging plays ‘a slowing game’ on the liver and kidneys and doesn’t pass it out all that fast like the Adult Dosage is meant to.
In addition, she’s only taking twenty pills three times per day. And Grandma’s only getting worse; sort of make me wonder – why?
Yet, soon enough I may turn from a woman into a man with gills and snout, and they’ll just call me elderly.

Toilet Adjustments-Training Pants

7- Toilet Adjustments-Training Pants

Shopping for size and shape is historical, yet if you are the first time buyer for another – it depends. It gets a bit tricky. It’s not like there’s a sample of each brand laying around to check out the quality, how it’s made. Then, it’s quantity of desired ultimate use. If you notice, the label doesn’t give total volume content. It’s not like a can or a jar. Written out, 16 oz., 7.5 ounces volume liquid, one-quart liquid. Yet, isn’t that what this paper container is use for? Depends.
I know the advertisement portion is states, “Keeps you dry!” But this is an adult diaper. It’s a hygiene product, and well, dry depends on the volume. What’s the volume of this or the other product?
Now I haven’t check the baby diaper volume content levels either for comparison of product use. However, if they do, I would buy them if the cut and size worked for skinny person.
So manufacturers and users of take note, this may be a greater point of advertising dollars. State, please on your packaging:
• This brand holds one liter, while this brand holds a gallon.
• This brand holds a 16 ounces of solids and this brands holds 32 ounces?

What am I suppose to look for in comparison? Besides the size and the stretchy shape which they all seem to have to one degree or another? Some guidelines on this fashion in addition to living-form-fitting would be very helpful, since I am the proxy. I’ve seen the television advertisement, but I’ve seen a baby’s bundle a thousand times too, and never waited for the baby to compliment the structural design or shape, since the next change came faster than the verdict.
In addition, there is no worse way to loose your chances of meeting someone to date, then by being seen reading the packages of incontinence products in the Walgreens drug store. Do you concur

I can scare you too.

Are you the one taking the parent to the hospital for some outpatient care? I was, after years of attending to this parent with me, as power of attorney for her medical affairs, we arrived at the out patient reception at the direction of the primary physician. But, I could have been at the auto dealership for a car repair and they would have been nicer, more organized and a touch more compassionate.
The local hospital was recently renamed and as I could now see the effects of 'under new management'. We quickly learned that upon inquiry we were lower than low on the human being scale. The medical orders were not present. And how dare we not have the MD’s telephone number to call up for these items. 'Oh yes, we heard you were coming for this procedure, but Your Doctor never sent the paperwork. So what are you doing here - kind of treatment. How stupid could we be? How much more intrusive and demanding could we be, since we were present but not complete - how dare we?
So what do we do now? Sign papers, no. And it was such a struggle for them to find the telephone number for the physician. And it was such a trouble that, ‘You can’t wait here, you need to go back there, down that long hallway. Wait there. Now. Because this is all too much work for us to do.”
Old people don't move that fast, turning around alone, is six separate and slow movements, so we're going...
“We’ll just come back tomorrow, no, no I don’t want to trouble your staff,” and was heading for the exit door to the car.
Then a patient advocate arrived, and stroked us out during the long hallway walk back to the reception area. Now, the papers were ready to be signed as the receptionist placed an identity band on the parent's wrist. By the time I looked around for the parent, she’s rolling back down the hallway alone.
We arrive back at outpatient services where we were just sent away from. Directed by nurse this time, back to a room, and since we didn’t have paperwork, the RN was exasperated, that she had another task, she departed annoyed. Only to return with the same papers I had just signed, blank, taxing the sick and confused parent with signing documents she could not read nor were verbally explained to her. Initial here, sign there and date it. The parent could barely hold the signing ink pen, so that was too slow for the RN.
Even the first ID wrist band was removed, and she began to replace it, when the parent asked a question, which was just one thing too much for the RN who replaced the next, second ID wrist band and departed without a word and hostile to find another RN. I was sorry I noticed that the allergy section of the wrist band was blank, and the parent-patient did have a couple of drug allergies that you should know about, can I tell you?
The outpatient area was completely empty. Maybe one other patient, and one outpatient receptionist – the one who cycled us out the first time. The parent was pretty nervous with all impatience delivered and ready to make the effort to leave. The parent had brought her own book, lunch and other entertainment and was simply scared at the hospital management of her case.
“Who knows if they know what they doing for the rest of the day? And they just might kill me,: the parent verbally rationalized to me about the experience so far. “Since now they are angry that I’m here. Maybe we should go?”
Then the lab technician arrived, forthcoming and confident to take a blood sample, and a new RN arrived, who looked familiar to the parent and myself. Suddenly the anxiety left, and the entire tone of business changed. The new RN explained easily what was going to happen, how long it would take, and then the next step.
Whew! Nothing like being scared by the person and institution that suppose to help you! Next time, like the airlines, the auto repair shop, we’ll call and confirm before arrival that all the parts are present for the work to get done.
I still stopped in to visit the Administrative Offices, and let them know before I left the parent there. I wouldn’t give them my parent’s name – jokingly, “I still don’t want you to kill her.”

Don't Loose That Thought

Heck, it comes up in my house every Holiday season, the history of the holiday. It’s the dreaded memory passed on to each generation. Be it July 4th, Labor Day, Memorial Day there’s always a tradition to behold. And since I am care giving another – alone - by myself, it’s a lot.
The stories get expanded, it’s like a one snapshot memory with a movie loop. Repeated, so it’s not forgotten what tid-bits happened before I was born. Now, with more than fifty years of living under my belt, it’s not really going to shape my life with the lessons expressed in the tale.
Why do I take it? Proximity. My siblings seem to think it’s okay to ignore each holiday with a phone call. Those calls last only long enough to remain in the moment, and what they don’t understand and won’t give up their lives to know their mom with dad’s old stories.
I videoed my mother talking over the slide projector, flipping through the ages and phases of their lives, wondering if anyone cared about my own life. Later, I converted that video tape to DVD, and made ten copies. One for each of the second, third and fourth generations was mailed out each of them.
Since they couldn't show up for their share of the thoughts and spoken words, I thought they could view them at their lesisure. Since they couldn't remember - I didn't want them to loose that thought.

So You’re Moving Closer

The tricks of the trade; proximity, familiarity makes atoms attach-detach and move on. I was in anatomy class when this theory came up in the learning section on chemistry. Then I also remembered proximity and familiarity from psychology classes, denoting communication and exchanges between the parties.
This theory also works for dating and most all other human relationships that work, since chemistry, is the basis of human life on this planet. Yet, maybe the hydrogen atom speeded up before spinning off to link up with some other group of attracting molecules.
Still, what part of moving near the parent do you find attractive? Especially when the parents didn’t care about you that much when you were young child and vulnerable like Cammy was. Now, as a little molecule that has attracted another atom to you (like marriage, partnership or out-of-wedlock children), what part of moving near the parent do you find attractive?
It took two visits; each of them five plus days, by Cammy to my house while plotting her relocation. That’s an awful lot of words to express in numerous on-going conversations about her feelings on her duty to serve her mother.
Soldiers have to rationalize to others their personal feelings of duty and service to their country. I was watching Cammy attempt to fit the uniform of a soldier. Duty - must order itself, from specific web address, only to ship out courage.
Although this daughter knew little of all of the great facets courage it would take in the future. She expensed directions to higher power and demanded divine intervention to make the end happen fast.
Cammy wished for:
• No lingering,
• No long discussion because they would end in hardheaded arguments.
Helpless acts of surrender wouldn’t come easy to Cammy’s mother. That character flaw didn’t exist in the gene pool of mother or daughter. Both parties had intolerant temperaments. One thrived on driving drama hard and fast only to make the other drive away from drama.
Cammy’s mom had some bad, bad habits in her day. Not sure exactly her day had ended yet in her mind, it just tilted a tad. A maturing body was not going to stop her alone. So she physically tore down walls, put up walls, built rooms, added bathrooms and was now tearing out her den and kitchen including the floors.
For company, Cammy’s mom had the plumber, Zack who did everything. The licensed handyman extraordinaire, electrician, and carpenter-tile layer who cohabitated with his own girlfriend with their child in his own home. Cammy’s mom paid his wages out her inherited trust fund.
Then another Mexican handyman extraordinaire who was all hot air and another love of Cammy’s mom being the Mexican handyman who took over eighteen years of their most unpurposeful relationship to beat on her, breaking a few bones, dousing her with paint on the front porch a few times and who knows what else went unreported to the cops.
Now, all that is the work the plumber had come to fix nearly thirty years later. In addition, by the checkbook, buy the checkbook - to the tune in his pocket for labor and materials of more than fifty-thousand dollars. That was just for the rental unit. Now he was working in the main house. Ever so slowly he worked first on the water heater, then on front bathroom, then on second bathroom, now on floors in the den into the kitchen. All without receipts for the work completed, just a check from the big checkbook.
This got Cammy going toward her former and now her current mother’s home to live nearby. The speed of the plow, the prod, that hydrogen atom spinning off to be closer and closer to her mother, since her Brother didn’t do the job of moving their momma into a box apartment in So-Cal down the street from him.
As an adult married woman, Cammy understood the underlying principles of this endless act of spinning insanity her mother’s life, called excitement. Cammy felt her life was like a bowl of popcorn in the bright lights. You can pick with your eyes the shape of which one you want. Not so easy getting those perfectly rounded, brain-shaped pieces that melt into your mouth without picking it first with your eyes.
You can spin like an atom towards the perfect goal with all your hope and desires, but sometimes, most times it’s more like knocking two pieces together that bends and cracks apart with a little pressure when you are picking the right one for the dream. And, then it goes spinning way from your fingertips in all directions to collide out there with the unexpected. Still, you knowingly know - you’re moving closer.

Siblings as Sons

Cammy and I each have a brother. Oh, what brothers they are too. In the food chain they are each moms favorite. The mom gleans, smiles, perks up, and nearly parades the food and comforts of home for their sons. We daughters on the other hand, sit back and watch this fountain of youth bubble. We daughters don’t’ achieve that treatment, moreover, more than often we are closer to dirt than the ground once our brothers come around.
Yet ask that brother to help you with mom, her infirmities, insanities and suddenly our brothers, our male siblings are dumber than dirt – if they have been trained well by their girlfriends or wives. How they can pull it off? With the look – the deer in the headlights stare, the incapable incapacitated dullard dunce with the “I dunno know” rapier displayed. Therefore, easy to shoot dead between the eyes, it’s sinful.
The Brother will either take the mom and decide it’s best if she’s just down the street from him, living in an apartment sized box, with no civil concerns about what she will do with her time. The Brother will extract the mother from her life, her sewing machine, her garden, her automobile, her familiar driving neighborhood, her doctors, her surviving friends and basic life to leave her down the street in other state, a strange city but it is close to him. Yes, just down the street from his life and his friends and leave it all up to his wife to take care of HIS mother.
When the wife disagrees with her husband’s (the Brother) plans watch out! Hell hath no furry like a woman stuck with another woman. When the wife is forced into hand maiden services such as driving, shopping and more because her mother-in-law, truly doesn’t know this new location where she will be living. See the wife rationalize why the mother-in-law would be put out by her son (the Brother) to live out her life where she currently is. Oh, yes but they will visit often.
Why does only another woman recognize this? Like the daughter or female friends of the family? Or are the Brothers or sons just afraid to speak up on their idea of calling “a park job” – that of planting their mothers where it’s close but not comfortable or familiar to relive their guilt.
Brothers will show up on the home turf for traumas and tragedies but not for the day-to-day duties. It’s pretty much a fact. In addition, if the Brother is doing it, odds are his own wife is doing more.
Ask the brother to give up his job to move? Nope. Ask the daughter to relocate, oh especially if she is single or childless. It is her duty and we are crucified if we don’t. The Christmas gifts no longer come from the siblings, if the single, the childless female sibling, and we do not attend to the duties as THEE caregiver for the parent.
Ask only the youngest daughter of the tribe – because it is in the genetic pool that only the baby should tend the elder. Moreover, it will not be the baby boy; it will only be the baby girl.
Big Brother is off the hook – for both of us. We girls do have that added chromosome, right?

Peers – Jumping the Girdle

When the best friend of thirty plus years decides to move back, friends have to get one thing very clear with each other. Not privacy, not sharing clothes, not fighting, not ignoring each other tastes but a much practiced fact - that we are not kids ratting around and nineteen years old anymore. The physicality of watching each other age is different from the practice of actively sharing in each others aging process. In as much as we both have one parent to look out for, we have each other to look out for too.
Much like bra burning of 1966, the act of jumping the out of the girdle was a major effort to tackle, even in these times. Now to know the back support it might give each of us house daughters and sons in the garden. It makes us thankful to wear the girdles with or out stays, known as the back brace. Moreover, for this effort of care giving we would need an excellent model of bracing our backs.
Maturity is not a clever game. It does sneak up on the caregiver and it seems never the parent. At first you compare, then feel good about being better at life skills than the parent is. Then when standing, walking or picking something up next to a member of your own peer group, you begin to notice the difference that age as affected each of the two best friends. Our aching backs.
The lean is not as limber, the lumber is not as quick, and the mind is made up faster because the sense of taste and style has been defined separately. Although, within the relationship of friends, navigating the history of home - we each must give adequate room for allowing changing to be accepted by the other in different frames of time. It may take more than one parent with more than one experience to know how much room is required.
Cammy was visiting the Adobe Disneyland to look for her new house when Gina, my mother took a slide. Not an exactly fall, just a slide down when her slipper got stuck and didn’t move with the foot, leg and hip and the body turn down on Gina. Who had slid, gently twisted, and slowly dropped to the carpeted floor next to the stove.
After a phone call next door to my house, Cammy and I wandered over to view mom, who had crawled over to the living room telephone to ring me up for assistance.
I could only look at my friend who knew all her efforts to move closer to her own mother could culminate into a situation like this. Cammy was not prepared for the appearance of this type of event. A parent falling to the ground.
Looking at Cammy, I said, “Do you know how to lift someone?”
Ah! Would the stays in that girdle would really be a support for her. Gina hadn’t been on the floor from a fall, in three years, and probably wouldn’t have been for a few more years, since she overtly practiced, ‘the slow and careful movements’ and let everyone know it. Yet, Cammy’s mom would not accept that notion of slowing down at 75 or 77.
We got Gina up and on the chair with ease. Still, Cammy’s head inside was turning to her own mother, also her own senior years. Such is this life, of the house daughter or son, to have to jump the broom and marry. Jump the generations of time passing and find the logic in a girdle and its support.
New friends your life, don’t seem to understand this thinking like your own old, old, and older friends.