It's nearly the Fourth of July and I still haven't put a toe in the water, either the ocean or a pool.  Still, summer is upon us and I am more or less ready for it.  I don't have the bathing suit body I was hoping would have magically arrived by now, but there is something about having the windows open in the morning that just delights me.  In the U.K. they don't bother with screens, a fact which always fascinates me.  I'm sure it's true other places, too, where the climate is less conducive to the happy propagation of flying bugs.  I don't understand why they don't have a house full of birds, and speaking of the birds, they must be eating something, so there ARE bugs, but I digress.

We've had no obnoxious "3 H" days yet, which, for those of you not from the area, refers to "Hazy, Hot and Humid", so I can afford to be cheerful about summer still.  As is the family tradition, modified due to the internship of Son Number One in Washington, D.C., the clan got up at "zero dark thirty" on the day of the Summer Solstice and went to Nut Island to watch the sun rise.

For the second year, Papa came with us to round out the number and the view was very pretty, although I must confess it hasn't changed much since last year.  Still, it's a lovely tradition and breakfast is always fun afterwards at the Wheel House Diner.  I said to Papa, "I married into this insanity, but why do you drag yourself out of bed at this hour when you don't have to? and he replied, "Who knows how many more times I'll be able to?" and then he laughed.
I love that he laughed.  He's 84 now, which makes it no joke, but that is how he feels about life in general, I guess.  Recently he spent hours on his hands and knees putting pansies and petunias on the outside of our hedges, where there have been no flowers, no signs of life (except weeds) in twenty years.  It looks so nice that now I find myself weeding every time I go by.  OK.  Not every time, but often.  I guess it's a break from his twice daily trips to the nursing home to visit my mother-in-law.  She doesn't recognize him most of the time, but he lives for those fleet bursts of clarity when she does.  So here's to another season with Papa, who puts me to shame in so many ways.  He's at the Y or off on a walk every day, or when the weather gets really bad he's on the rowing machine in his attic.  He dotes on his grandchildren and the feeling is beyond mutual.  And he loves me, too.  How blessed am I?  All this and chirping  birds, too.

On this, the day after Canada Day, I will sing at the funeral of my 95 year old friend Annie, who hailed from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  The wake was last night and I saw so many faces I haven't seen in more than 35 years.  How did we all get this old?  Most of the faces hadn't changed.  The two nuns are white, not gray now, but otherwise unchanged.  Aunt Isabel continues to exude joy and leave a trail of peace in her wake.  There were new faces (to me) as well.  My old "boyfriend", Annie's son, was standing with his two grown sons.  The kids I held in my arms are parents now.  Some of them are grandparents now.

Yesterday was also the birthday of my older brother.  He would have been 69 if he hadn't died at 22.  I wondered if he would have had gray hair or gone bald, how many barbecues we have missed at his house and how many children he would have had.  What would his wife have been like?  In this Year of The Big Losses nostalgia is creeping in, and I find myself aching for I know not what.

Tonight, however, there will be a dinner with "Uncle Vinny", an old friend (in both senses) and a joy.  He has driven to Boston from Ohio again (at age 82) and loves to see my kids, especially the one I named after him.  But first there's a funeral to attend on this gray day, and like it or not, it's time to face (and make) the music.

It's the first day of summer, and, as is our family tradition, we all get up at sparrow fart and drive to a place very appropriately named Nut Island to watch the sunrise on the longest day of the year.  Except this year we made some modifications.  Son Number Two is away for the week, so my wonderful father-in-law filled in.  And I stayed home in bed until 7, which was the smartest decision I've made in such a long time!  The three boys, Himself, his Dad, and Son Number Two, all went out to breakfast after viewing the sunrise over the water.  This is also a tradition.  I have been many times.  This picture came off the internet and has nothing to do with Nut Island, but trust me....it looks just like this.
A week of double shifts, working both jobs has left me feeling my age and a bit of someone else's.  Sleep was the wiser choice today.
Now it's time to get dressed and go to the office, where the coffee is free and the people are warm.  There will be more material for the book that provides the running commentary for my day,  and the voices in my head will keep me company on the subway.  They've already started whispering that the days will now start getting shorter.  I've already told them to shut up.

The need to "parent" never ends.  After the usual snowstorm/airport fiasco which I've come to expect when Son #2 comes home, and having received the 3AM phone call from Son #1 who had safely landed in Seattle, I toddled downstairs and woke Son #2 from the couch and made him go upstairs to brush his teeth, wash his face, put his precious head on a newly laundered pillowcase and go to sleep.  I was feeling a little silly about this until the phone rang at 6:45 this morning and my 82 year-old father-in-law called to warn me (age 60) that I should be careful of the ice on the front stairs.

We all need to feel that our children need us.  Or that somebody needs us.  Otherwise all the mani-pedis and massages and book clubs become pointless.  Of course, it's important to take good care of and to occasionally pamper ourselves.  We deserve that, and it's good for the ego and the body and the nerves.  But I feel so much better after I've called a mourning friend and been able to make her laugh just for a moment, or shot an e-mail to a friend battling cancer to remind her that I'm praying and that she's not facing the day-to-day battle alone.  I don't think it's ego.  I think it's an awareness that we've got a job to do while we're here.  We all fall down at different points of our lives.  Our friends (and sometimes wonderful angel strangers) are usually there to pick us up.  When they fall we pick them up.  Eventually we help one another get to the other side.
As long as we don't all have our breakdowns on the same day, the system usually works, and I find it satisfying to be reminded once in a while that even though my babies are not babies any more, someone is still glad that I'm there to reach out a hand.  And I'm glad I have someone to remind me to hold the railing when the stairs are icy, even if I might have figured it out on my own.

Last post on the death of my mother, at least for a while.  The funeral was as nice as a funeral could be, I suppose.  Mom was laid out in the mint green lace dress she had worn to my wedding twenty-one years ago.  In her hands were her father's rosary beads, around her wrist a charm bracelet with the names and birth dates of all five children, and on her finger the wedding ring Dad gave her in 1941.  The grandchildren participated as pall bearers and lectors, and I actually managed to sing the Communion hymn without falling apart.  The trip to the cemetery was strange.  I hadn't stopped to think that on the other side of the hedge from my mother and father's grave is the grave of my brother and niece.  The last time I was there the hedges were up to my knees and there was space between them to walk through the rows.  Now they are at my waist and dense as a wall.

Stupid thoughts raced through my head all night.  I was aching because she was outside in the cold and the dark, as if that mattered.  I remember having the same silly thoughts years ago when my younger brother died in February.  Today begins the business of learning to live in a world without Diamond Lil.  As the tongue always searches for the hole after a tooth is removed, my mind keeps going to the empty space she has left in my life.  For today the time I spent at the nursing home can be spent writing thank you notes to the many friends who went out of their way to show their love and caring.  Tomorrow will be another story.

I've been quiet lately because I didn't want my sons to read about my mother's passing on my blog site, and they needed to finish their exams before coming home for Thanksgiving.  A week after disconnecting the feeding tube, Mom has finally found peace.  I was by her side on Monday as she drew her last breath.  I don't know if she could hear me or not, but I would have been disappointed if I had missed that part of the journey we've been on together for all this time.  Before the nursing home, we bought her six years of independent living in senior housing, where she had her own apartment and had her hot meals delivered to her door.  "I'm not eating in the dining room with all those old farts!" was the usual reason given for this.  Mom was not particularly soft-spoken or subtle.  If she didn't like you trust me...you knew it in the first three seconds.  After the fall and the broken hip which landed her in the nursing home, she became this sweet, docile, totally unrecognizable little old lady.  The transformation fascinated me.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I'm truly thankful that she is not stuck in that aged, confused, frail body any more.  Still, I'm having my moments.  My friends, who have always amazed me as being God's most generous gift to me, continue to outdo themselves in expressions of love and support.  There have been phone calls and flowers, meals and hugs.  I find that I do better when I'm working, or organizing, or anything.  The moment anyone is sympathetic I fall apart. 

There is Thanksgiving to prepare for, and I'm so not ready.  Then there is the eulogy to write.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to deliver that, but I will.  I've got all six living grandchildren as pall bearers, three of them reading, one playing violin, two bringing up the gifts.  It feels like a production. On the desk in my living room is small picture of my mother and me, taken when I was about two, on a picnic somewhere or other.  She was in a stylish two-piece suit, and I was wearing a yellow organdy dress.  She must have told me that, because the picture is in black and white.  She always had style.  I'd never seen the picture before I had to close out her apartment and move her into the nursing home.  I find myself staring at it a lot these days and trying to understand what I'm feeling.  What's it like to be a sixty year-old orphan?

I don't like being the grownup.  The decisions we are stuck making just aren't fair.  Today I signed the form that stops my mother's feeding tube.  She is in the later stages of Alzheimer's and her body is forgetting how to swallow, so even the pureed mush she's been getting for the past year can't make it down her throat, and last night the food from the tube made her violently ill.  At 89 it's time to throw in the towel.

She spent most of the day sleeping, but when she woke she was cheerful and glad to see us (whoever she thought we were).  I'd like to think she recognized me and my sisters and their families, although I'm not really sure.  But I sat next to her bed for six hours knitting a totally unnecessary and poorly-executed scarf for my son, and as I knitted I had a lot of time to think.  I remembered her sleeping across the foot of my bed when I was seven and had the measles.  I remembered her throwing her fake fur coat over my bed in the winter because we didn't have central heating until I was fourteen.  I remembered her dealing with the deaths of her two sons and her firstborn grandchild and her husband. I watched her cope with legal blindness for the last twenty years.  This is a strong woman.  It was so hard to realize that she's been strong for long enough.  It is selfish for me to wish to prolong her time with us.

Is anyone ready to let go of a mother, regardless of age?  I am lucky to have had her for so long, I know, with all her quirky ways.  Death could come in a day or maybe a week, but it's coming, and I am leaning on all my faith to face it.  And unlike Dylan Thomas with his father, I pray that she will "go gentle into that good night."

Oh dear.  Back in the emotional sludge. The lack of sunshine isn't helping my already dour mood, I'm afraid.  Sometimes it is just all too much.  There's not much to do except lash oneself to the mast and ride out the storm.  The squeeze of being between the generations is one of the hardest challenges facing the Baby Boomers.  Our parents need us desperately, yet so do our children, and somewhere in there we are supposed to take care of ourselves, but that seems to get pushed off to last on the list.  If it makes the list at all.

I'm trying to keep a sense of humor through everything that is going on, but it gets harder and harder.  I feel inadequate to every task.  A patch job is the best that I can manage at the moment, and it feels as if I'm trying to put pantyhose on an octopus.  Just when I think I have things covered, something pops out somewhere else.  Is Thanksgiving REALLY less than two weeks away?  I can't wait to hug my children, but I'm already dreading putting my younger son back on the plane on the Sunday after the holiday.  That's just dumb.  Tonight I get to take care of my mother-in-law for a few hours on my own while Himself and his brother-in-law take Dad out for a Veterans' Day dinner.  It's a lovely idea, but I'm not sure I'm equal to the task.  It involves walking in circles for hours on end.  She never naps, watches television, or sits except to eat.  While feeling very sorry for her, I also wind up feeling sorry for myself and praying that I never get to that point.  Everything feels sad.

The bright side is that I feel a poem forming.  When the hurt gets to the point of bursting it usually comes out in the form of words, and the sharper the pain the brighter the images.  Everyone has his/her bag of rocks to carry.  I'll get through.  Humor, faith, and poetry in no particular order.  What a mighty arsenal!

Some days it takes a Herculean act of courage just to put one foot in front of the other.  The forces of the universe just seem to conspire and almost everything that can go wrong does go wrong.  Notice I said "almost" because I don't like to challenge God.  S/He can have a quirky sense of humor when challenged.  I know it can always get worse, but could a girl catch a break here?

You know the days.  You're paralyzed with how much there is to do, so you get nothing done.  You try to hold your feet to the flame to tackle the one project against which your soul shrieks and find yourself gasping for air.  The Stress Monkey sneaks up behind you and gets you in the dreaded choke-hold until you run for the front door, car keys in hand, on the way to anywhere.  Just OUT.  I'm having one of those.

The sun is shining.  The meeting at the nursing home this morning about my mother's condition was predictable and pleasant enough.  I know what I'm cooking tonight for my in-laws.  I have a piano lesson at one.  Why do I want to scream?  Panic is setting in about finding a job at my advanced age.  I'm missing my sons with a white hot fury.  I'm surrounded by well-loved but utterly depressing women nearing the end of their lives and well past the end of their trolley tracks.  The clutter in my house is an accurate symbol of the clutter in my soul.  And I'm missing many too many friends.

It's sad not to know what you want to be when you grow up when you're over 60.  I feel all this potential and I'm terrified that if I pick the wrong thing I will blow my last chance at  finding out what I can really do and who I really am.  Writer?  Administrator?  Singer?  Speaker?  All of those and more, but how does that translate into a position someone would pay for?  So while I ponder these very serious and scary questions, and before the Stress Monkey chases me out the door again, I guess I'd better start the vacuum.  Because on days like this it's important to see that you've accomplished something.

It's always a mistake to wait until the end of the day to write.  In the  morning my intentions are so good, and the day is so full of promise.  There are a million plans waiting to be executed, each one sure to make a difference in how I feel about the world and myself.  By the time dusk starts to creep in I realize that I've blown it again.  I didn't run.  Heck, I didn't walk.  I didn't get as much laundry done and put away as I'd hoped.  I didn't send out enough resumes to find the perfect job.  The list goes on and on.

There were things I did do, of course.  I played chauffeur for my college son.  We went to visit my mother and fed her lunch to her, bite by unappetizing bite.  We went to Town Hall to get a flu shot (which apparently isn't offered until next week....I really should start reading signs), and we got Himself's car to the shop so that it no longer sounds like a Sherman tank as it zooms down the highway.  The list isn't nearly as impressive as I would like it.  There is time to get something else done, of course.  Another load of laundry, dinner, the Board of Directors meeting for my theater group.  Mostly I would like a nap, but the likelihood of that is dwindling fast.

So, like most of the human race, I fall a bit short of my target pretty much every day.  At least I still have a target most days.  And tomorrow morning, assuming I am granted another day (which most of us blithely take for granted, but I've learned better), I'll give it another shot.  Maybe that's what matters most.  That we don't just shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's just the way it goes," because I am not ready to settle for that.  Are you?

Nursing homes really are not funny places.  I should know.  I'm visiting one an average of five days a week to see my dear Mom who is 89, wheelchair bound and dealing with Alzheimer's.  But why is it that I so often want to write a sit com for some brave network about the residents?

All of my mother's neighbors have their "quirks".  There is the one who puts her makeup on with a shovel and flirts with everyone.  There is the one whose dentures really need adjusting and who sends her teeth flying when she gets yelling, which is fairly often.  There is the debonaire guy with severe arthritis who rolls out to the nurses' station every day at the same time to get his two cigarettes which he then takes down in the elevator so he can smoke them in peace outside.  There is the guy who does amazing bird calls....all. day. long.  And then there's Snoopy.  That's not her real name.  I won't tell you her real name.  But you've probably met her.  She hangs on every conversation, especially the ones in which she is not a participant.  From another table she will chime in with her two cents on any subject.  She asks unbelievably personal questions, and is guaranteed to make at least one very unwelcome personal observation in the course of a week.  "Geez, you've packed on a few pounds," she will tell you, whether it's true or not.  "Your mother's hair is getting thin.  It's the medicine," she kindly offers, even though Mother could probably have lived without the information.  It goes on and on.  The nurses have moved her to another table for meal times.  It's not for my mother's sake.  It's for mine.  And for Snoopy's safety.  Because one of these days I'm going over the table and strangling her.  I'll just snap.  I can feel it coming.

I realize that she can't help it and that she is bored out of her mind by sitting in the same place all the time.  I do know that I represent "the outside world" and that she is starving for conversation and company.  Sometimes I even try polite chit chat with her, because I'm not a monster.  I have a heart.  The foibles and weaknesses of all the other residents I view with patience and compassion.  The nearest I can figure out is that she represents all the traits I see in myself which I like least.  And if nothing else, she does help to keep me humble.  Because for all my smugness about what a wonderful daughter I am, I am truly ashamed of how often I dream about hitting this poor old lady right in the smacker with a large cream pie.

I've heard about the "sandwich generation" who are torn between taking care of elderly parents and taking care of their children, but I haven't felt the intense pressure of it until now.  My mother is 89 and has Alzheimer's.  I won't say she "suffers from it" because for the first time since 1967 she seems at peace and charming.  That was the year my older brother died in a car accident after returning from Viet Nam with a Purple Heart, and my mother hated the world and everyone in it until she had a fall in her bedroom almost two years ago and broke her hip.  I don't know who this new lady is, but she is much easier to deal with.

I try to get to the nursing home about five to six days a week and I always come at meal time.  There is nothing to discuss besides food and how sleepy she is.  She calls me a "Deah"  and a "Dahlin" (this is Boston, after all) and some days I think she knows I'm her youngest daughter, but most days I think she thinks I'm a REALLY attentive aide.  "Why are you so good to me?" she asks at least twice a week.  "Because you're my Mama and I'm your baby girl!" I reply.  The answer is usually, "Well, I'll be damned!"

Watching her fade away a little at a time is strange.  I still have my mother, but I don't.  There has to be a bubble of protection around me when I visit or the sadness will crush me like a bug.  She had her hip repaired, but has been in a wheelchair since January of 2011 because she's too afraid of falling.  She has gone from regular meals to ground food, to puree.  I ask sweetly which lump she'd like to taste first, the green one, the beige one, or the white one?  Sometimes there's gravy.  None of it looks appealing.  She takes a mouse-sized nibble of each and then announces that she's full.  She has been on a gastric feeding tube overnight for a long time.  The coughing is starting, even though I always remember to put the thickener in her coffee.  She always wants her coffee.  They tell me that once she forgets how to swallow (and it's coming) they will rely on the gastric tube for all her nutrition, and then eventually her body won't be able to process that either.

Knowing what to pray for is getting more difficult.  I feel guilty if I want the end to come more quickly.  Part of me really doesn't want to be an orphan, even if I am 60.  But she doesn't participate in the music, or the "activities", because she is legally blind along with everything else. It doesn't seem fair to pray that she hang on for this life.  The next one is bound to be an improvement and she deserves the rest.  For the moment, I'm glad that she is not in pain, either physical or emotional, and that she has no clue that she is in a nursing home.  Because if she ever figured it out it would kill us both.