Bye Nana

Marge passed away last night.  It’s been a difficult time for Rachel and Wil.  What was originally predicted to be a few days of hospice care had rolled into 10 days and there was talk of moving her back to the nursing home because she was dying but wasn’t dying in a way that required hospice care, or at least that’s the transcript of what was going on as I heard it through the grapevine.  

In fact, while my daughter and I were talking by phone about Nana’s situation, Nana was quietly slipping away.  So when we were sharing how, for her sake, we wished she could go, she went, or, as best as I can calculate, she passed within that hour.

The same thing happened when my mother was dying of cancer back in 1988.  She was in a great deal of pain and, ever the mother, didn’t want us to see her suffering.  She forbade us (my brother, sister and me) to visit her after she said her good-byes, and she thought since she was  officially done, that was it.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t it, and as two emotionally painful days went by, by the third I decided to go back to see her.  I was talking with my secretary on the phone, sharing how I just wished my mom could pass and end the suffering, then headed to the office.  My plan was to go down to the shore that evening to sit with my mom for a bit again with my brother and sister, who had decided to go back too.  But when I got to the office, the VP of our group met me at the door and walked me back out, giving me the news (my sister had called my office).  So when I was ranting about how unfair her suffering was and how I wished she could go peacefully to the next place, she did.

I’m wondering if they heard me.  I’m wondering if they could feel the spirit in which those words were said.  I hope it’s not like the 1939 movie version of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier in the shadows hearing Cathy’s harsh words about him and leaving before he heard the loving expressions that followed.  I hope they know how much they are loved, even now, and how the expressions of speeding them off were for their benefit, not mine, because the emptiness of the loss never goes away, no matter how long they linger or how quickly they depart.

My Relation to the Patient

“What’s your relation to the patient?” the nurse asks.

I think I’m going to get kicked out.  I blurt out the truth.  “I’m their mother,” I say, pointing to my children, Marge’s grandchildren.  The nurse is sweet but it’s clear I didn’t answer right.  “Her ex-daughter in law?” I say, my voice rising at the end like a teenager making a statement.

She smiles and begins telling me about the medications Marge needs and how they will be administered.  She is very kind and I smile. 

Marge is a sweet person.  I’ve never known her to be anything but nice and she’s always been so good to my children.  On the grandmother level, she definitely has sainthood status.

She’s been in a nursing home for several years, ever since she was hospitalized for stomach problems and kept falling out of the hospital bed, injuring herself.  She never went home again and it was, as they say, downhill from there.  But it’s been a long, low sloping hill with little hills of hope in between.  Sometimes she knew everyone’s names, sometimes she slipped on one or two but got the rest right.  But over time, the hills leveled and the downward slide continued.

Recently, the speed picked up and she’s tumbling headlong to hospice care.  

Rachel told me last night that “Nana” recognized her, but then admitted later that perhaps she didn’t know her name but seemed to recognize her face.  She said Marge couldn’t talk or hear and that she was heavily sedated. She then said that Marge is going into hospice care on Sunday and that she’s got renal failure and is teetering on pneumonia.  If her grandmother seemed somewhat “with it,” I wanted to see her.  

It’s been a while, I admit.  I take the kids to the nursing home but it’s so hard to see Marge like that, and she frequently doesn’t recognize us, is argumentative, or doesn’t want to bother with the protocols of visiting, its dialogue, its breaking of a pattern she knows and we don’t.

So when we went to the hospital and I saw that little slip of a body framed underneath the covers but a fairly alert woman in possession of it, I was a little surprised.  She smiled when she saw us and seemed to be struggling to say something.  She seemed to warm up under my touch and I smiled at her and said, “It’s okay, don’t try to talk.”  But she looked as deeply into my eyes as a person can look into another’s and she said, very clearly, “Thank you.”  She was so glad to see the kids, and I guess me too, and it made me feel good to bring her a little happiness.  I felt like the tumbling had returned to a gentle downhill ride.

We stayed for almost an hour and then promised to come back tomorrow.  The script writer in me, always running dramatic scripts alongside reality, suggested she may not be there, but I know it will be a few days, or weeks, before she slips away.  

I hope she gets some peace soon.  It’s been a long life, a fairly uneventful one, and one that she deserves to wrap up soon and move on.  Her body is a prison and her soul is somewhere in there as we had the joy of sharing today.  Who knows who will be in that body in that bed tomorrow.  

So now as she slides gently down the last slopes of the long long glide, I hope the grass is soft, the breeze is gentle and the sun is warm on her sweet smiling face.

Enjoy those you love while you have the time together, even if together is a term used loosely.  Today we felt together, and it felt good.

Another Typically Busy Week

For those of you who know me, you’ll recognize that this is just the tip of the iceberg on a typical week for me.  But this is my place to share.  So while none of this is earth shattering, I do believe that, like the rest of my posts, there may be one or two little nuggets that helps you see we’re all in this together and none of us is ever really alone in our experiences.

So, it’s not that I haven’t been writing, it’s that none of it is making it to this blog.  One piece that started out as a post has morphed into more of a short story, so you may or may not see that at some point.  It was originally about how the cats that live with me are not mine, they belong to my 2 children, but it took on a life of its own as I thought about how the cats have personalities similar to their respective owners, how my “children” aren’t “children” anymore, how the cats are very close the way my kids are, and that’s where it went awry.  That’s because, right now, my daughter is off at NYU Tisch working hard to become a screen writer and my son is 15 going on 20, seeming to have gone from a boy to a man practically over night.  They went from being each other’s best friend and very close to hardly connecting at all.  I can go on, and I will, but not here, not now.

I’m investigating purchasing a decorating franchise to run in addition to my current business.  I’ve been working on a test project.  It doesn’t seem right to say I’ve been working on it--it’s too much fun to call it work.  I really love using the other side of my brain like this and it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

What else have I been doing?  Well, this isn’t where I’m going to talk about DBE but I will say that that business is growing too, knock wood.  But that’s all told on the DBE website.  

I haven’t taken a vacation in 2 years.  The day trips with the kids last year didn’t count.  This year I’m taking 3.  Rachel and I are going to France in the spring; Wil and I are going on a cruise to Bermuda in the summer; and Marc and I are going on a cruise with my brother, sister, and their spouses in the fall.  I’m looking forward to all 3 for different reasons.  

I always wanted to take Rachel to Europe and she’s always wanted to go, it’s just never never never worked out in these last 10 years.  

And the best vacation I ever had was when WIl and I went to Universal together when he was 11, so while this will be very different, I’m really looking forward to the 1:1 time with him, just him and me for 5 days.  

And then a cruise with Marc and my family will be great too.  The last time I went on vacation with my siblings was after my mother’s estate was settled and we thought it would be a good, recuperative and bonding experience.  I went with my then-husband.  Short story:  I have never been on vacation with my brother and sister since.  They are with the same spouses; I am divorced.  Marc and I have been together for 10 years (working together for the last 5 or 6).  This is our first vacation with my family.  I am nothing but positive we’ll have a great time.  

Stay tuned for updates after all 3 vacations.  If my life is any indication, there will be insights and stories to share.

Oh, and here’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in the last week:  first the backstory.  I haven’t slept well for more than 10 years.  It’s gotten increasingly worse.  A sleep study five years ago revealed mild apnea, mild as in “not worth doing anything about.”  This time, after two sleep studies, the report was the similar:  mild apnea, but clearly there was something else going on. A CPAP (air flow machine) was ordered as a first step but oh what a failure that was.  Not only did it not help, but I’ve been so exhausted by the lack of restorative sleep for the past 6 months that even a minute less than usual was intolerable.  (Yes, moving, Rachel going off to school and driving new business development for DBE were definitely stressors--all positive, but apparently our bodies don’t differentiate well between good and not-so-good stress, or, at least, mine doesn’t.) But guess what?  My sleep doctor said that perhaps if I just didn’t roll over on my back, I wouldn’t get apnea for any reason and maybe I’d sleep better.

Enter the shark fin.

Actually, it looks nothing like a shark fin.  It is a 3-bubble device that is attached to a wide black belt that Velcros onto me (this is not me, I wish I looked like this):  

Rematee.com

The hard bubbles keep me from rolling over in my sleep.  While I do wake up, I’m not waking up frantic (pulling out of REM from lack of breathing).  I can easily fall back to sleep.  So for 7 out of the last 8 nights, I’ve slept better.  This is by no means a 100% fix, but its at least a 40% improvement over where I was and it’s making me feel much more positive and energized.  I think as I get accustomed to it I’ll continue to sleep better, and being more rested makes me want to exercise and focus on eating right.  Who knew the shark fin would be the answer?  So if you’re one who suffers from apnea, you might want to try it too:  Rematee.com.  Look in products for the bumper bubble belt that’s right for you.  Yes, they call it a bumper belt, but to me it’s my shark fin (remember Land Shark from SNL?).

Well, that’s probably enough for now.  I’ve got to go finish my decorating project and the marcom plan for DBE.  And there’s more, so so so much more.  But this is a blog not an epic novel so I’ll save it for next time and again and again.

Enjoy the day!