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Jul. 10th, 2008 03:05 am
Jul. 10th, 2008
A visit to see aunt Mary
Jul. 10th, 2008 01:49 pmIt's Thursday, I arrived Tuesday afternoon after a cramped but uneventful cross-country flight. My mother is doing well, her yard was recently re-fenced and relandscaped and it's very pretty (although poorly done in the longterm since once the plants get bigger it's going to not look so good.)
My mother is 83 (84 later this month.) Her next older sister Mary is 86 and her oldest living sister, Louise, turns 90 this year. Louise is amazing and really redefines what 90 is. She had a facelift about 20 years ago that makes her look younger, sort of, and even though she fell and broke a vertebrae last year and was in a lot of pain and barely able to get round with a walker at christmas when I saw her last, she's walking without pain and without a cane now. She's always been unstoppable.
Mary has always been unpleasant. She shared a bed/room with my mother growing up and according to my mother Mary forced her to sleep on the floor most of the time. She and my aunt Louise took my older brother (who was 6 or 7) to Louisiana to see their mother/his grandmother and she got frustrated with him and kicked him. After that she and my mother didn't speak and my aunt Louise was the conduit of information but Mary didn't speak to Louise for a 7 year period. When my grandmother died in '84 I saw Mary and she was really funny. My mother got upset that Mary and I got along - I suspect that Mary was more than a bit of a fag hag - but that trip ended badly all around with the siblings all telling each other off and my mother left early.
I didn't see Mary again until last christmas. During the previous year she'd fallen (and couldn't get up) and Louise found her. Louise had never been in her house, she wasn't allowed in, and apparently she was like a bag lady but instead of a cart she had a house. And the toilets hadn't worked for a long time. I was told that it was not uncommon for the cleaning crew to step outside to vomit. Louise arranged everything, got Mary in an assisted living place, got her a doctor, got the house clean and sold (for a few hundred thousand) and set up trusts for everything. Like I said, Louise is unstoppable.
My mother won't drive the LA freeways to Glendale by herself so when I was out I drove her up to see Mary. You'd think that sisters that hadn't spoken in 25 years would have some sort of drama or reconciliation but reality is much more mundane. They said hello, we made chitchat and left.
Over the last two months Mary has gotten repeated bouts of pneumonia - probably because she was too lazy and belligerent to get out of bed, demanding that she be waited on - and finally the doctors told Louise that it just wasn't going to go away. That was a month ago, and she moved into the nursing home next door. Yesterday, I drove my mother up to see her.
I always amazes me how sick people can be and not die. She barely eats and gets IV fluids but she's still cranky. "Stop fussing". We sort of sat there and made more small talk and I couldn't bear it. Finally I said to her "this really sucks, doesn't it" and she nodded yes. Then my mother asked her if she ever felt good and she shook her head no.
They want to take her IV out but it's not clear that she would coma and die before she got intensely uncomfortable from dehydration. So the IV stays in and she lingers. My mother, 3 years younger, and Louise, 3 years older, see their future. I see it too.
Then we went back to Louise's place to look at something in her garage and my mother tripped and fell, cutting her face under her eye and a getting a big scratch on her leg. She's falling more and more (but along with her plaque-free arteries she apparently has almost no bone density loss so there's not a big fear of breaking a hip) and is having trouble walking up the stairs but doesn't have a plan for what to do next. Luckily this house is a goldmine unaffected by the real estate problems so she could sell and live just about anywhere she wanted. But still. That's giving up. Her mother was active until she died from cancer at 93 so I expect as much from my mother.
When we left Mary's I asked her if it was her would she want me to discontinue the IV so it would be over faster but then I realized that we couldn't do it. No feeding tubes, but if she was still able to croak out a few words then she was still alive and removing the IV would be killing her. Not the same as removing life support from someone who's too gone to communicate. I think.
Yet again it's the question of "how little life is still worth living?" and the answer seems to be far far less than someone who is healthy and active thinks they would put up with.
My mother is 83 (84 later this month.) Her next older sister Mary is 86 and her oldest living sister, Louise, turns 90 this year. Louise is amazing and really redefines what 90 is. She had a facelift about 20 years ago that makes her look younger, sort of, and even though she fell and broke a vertebrae last year and was in a lot of pain and barely able to get round with a walker at christmas when I saw her last, she's walking without pain and without a cane now. She's always been unstoppable.
Mary has always been unpleasant. She shared a bed/room with my mother growing up and according to my mother Mary forced her to sleep on the floor most of the time. She and my aunt Louise took my older brother (who was 6 or 7) to Louisiana to see their mother/his grandmother and she got frustrated with him and kicked him. After that she and my mother didn't speak and my aunt Louise was the conduit of information but Mary didn't speak to Louise for a 7 year period. When my grandmother died in '84 I saw Mary and she was really funny. My mother got upset that Mary and I got along - I suspect that Mary was more than a bit of a fag hag - but that trip ended badly all around with the siblings all telling each other off and my mother left early.
I didn't see Mary again until last christmas. During the previous year she'd fallen (and couldn't get up) and Louise found her. Louise had never been in her house, she wasn't allowed in, and apparently she was like a bag lady but instead of a cart she had a house. And the toilets hadn't worked for a long time. I was told that it was not uncommon for the cleaning crew to step outside to vomit. Louise arranged everything, got Mary in an assisted living place, got her a doctor, got the house clean and sold (for a few hundred thousand) and set up trusts for everything. Like I said, Louise is unstoppable.
My mother won't drive the LA freeways to Glendale by herself so when I was out I drove her up to see Mary. You'd think that sisters that hadn't spoken in 25 years would have some sort of drama or reconciliation but reality is much more mundane. They said hello, we made chitchat and left.
Over the last two months Mary has gotten repeated bouts of pneumonia - probably because she was too lazy and belligerent to get out of bed, demanding that she be waited on - and finally the doctors told Louise that it just wasn't going to go away. That was a month ago, and she moved into the nursing home next door. Yesterday, I drove my mother up to see her.
I always amazes me how sick people can be and not die. She barely eats and gets IV fluids but she's still cranky. "Stop fussing". We sort of sat there and made more small talk and I couldn't bear it. Finally I said to her "this really sucks, doesn't it" and she nodded yes. Then my mother asked her if she ever felt good and she shook her head no.
They want to take her IV out but it's not clear that she would coma and die before she got intensely uncomfortable from dehydration. So the IV stays in and she lingers. My mother, 3 years younger, and Louise, 3 years older, see their future. I see it too.
Then we went back to Louise's place to look at something in her garage and my mother tripped and fell, cutting her face under her eye and a getting a big scratch on her leg. She's falling more and more (but along with her plaque-free arteries she apparently has almost no bone density loss so there's not a big fear of breaking a hip) and is having trouble walking up the stairs but doesn't have a plan for what to do next. Luckily this house is a goldmine unaffected by the real estate problems so she could sell and live just about anywhere she wanted. But still. That's giving up. Her mother was active until she died from cancer at 93 so I expect as much from my mother.
When we left Mary's I asked her if it was her would she want me to discontinue the IV so it would be over faster but then I realized that we couldn't do it. No feeding tubes, but if she was still able to croak out a few words then she was still alive and removing the IV would be killing her. Not the same as removing life support from someone who's too gone to communicate. I think.
Yet again it's the question of "how little life is still worth living?" and the answer seems to be far far less than someone who is healthy and active thinks they would put up with.