“I hope you don’t feel guilty,” our vet said. “You took care of your parents all those years.” She knew, because half the time I was shepherding Mother and her rescue cats and dogs in for their constant care.
I tended my parents emotionally, too, in more subtle ways. As they aged, they suffered the usual indignities I’ve learned to associate with our culture’s treatment of elders. Their long-term doctor no longer wanted to treat them. When Dad tried to participate in after-theater discussions, as we’d done as a family all our lives, the actors or director shut him down. In the final years, my parents tried to give parties for their old friends, cooked for days, laid out banquet tables of food. The way it was in the old days.
For the last one, not one person showed up or even called.
“I guess you need to take some of this,” my father said of the vast trays of food. “Mom and I won’t be able to eat it all.”
I invited my parents to my parties and tried to wrap them into my own activities, as I always had, but toward the end, I was pretty much the only social life they had. After Mother could no longer drive to teach her writing classes, Dad chauffeured her for a while. But she no longer possessed her teaching magic. Attendance trickled away. I gave her my student papers to mark, and although to me, her extensive comments made little sense, my students loved them.
I also walked from my cabin to theirs with young friends bearing guitars. As they serenaded her, singing in the dusk for hours, Mother’s face glowed. I hosted a party on the seawall and invited some long-time family friends, but Mom and Dad descended to the beach in bathrobes and sat immobile on plastic chairs as the guests spoke eagerly to each other.
Sweet neighbors walked through the woods on the ancient trails and stopped to chat with Dad as he worked in his lifelong organic garden. They brought soup.
One day, Mom walked over to my cabin with two children’s books she wrote as part of her late life master’s program. Although she could no longer find the precise words, she wanted me to do something with them.
That evening, when I carried over one of the meals I’d started making when I saw they weren’t eating, Dad said, “None of those vanity presses.”
After Dad died, a bed became available in a home-based hospice that hosted two guests at a time. Janice and her husband served home-cooked organic food from their gardens. We could visit any time. Mark brought in Mom’s books about her cocker spaniels Mora and Shi-Shi and read them to her.
“You wrote this,” he said. Once again, her face lit up with joy.
“The hospice nurse stopped by,” Janice said on our next visit. “The volunteers made this for your mother.” Janice held up a tiny quilt and a basket of clothes for a naked doll my mother clutched in one hand. No amount of cuddling, stroking, or offers to walk broke through. Without acknowledging us, she went into her little bedroom. I followed to say goodbye, but she turned her back and methodically pulled doll clothes in and out of the basket.
Sometimes my mother was planted in front of the television. When I was growing up, we never had one. After they retired, Mother watched Masterpiece Theatre once a week, but otherwise their ancient tv remained silent. Even after she could no longer teach, read, write, or go out, it never occurred to Dad or to me to place her in front of it.
In his own final year, Dad re-read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. After my sister stepped in to care for our parents, she read a chapter of Tess of the D’Urbervilles each night as they sat side by side in bed. When my sister needed a day off, I read to them too. Mother would sit rapt, gazing into my eyes.
I wanted to make a sling so I could carry her around with me, the way I had with my beloved cat Mr. Darcy, whose only requirement in life had been that he be as close to me as possible.
Without my mother, I did not think I could take care of myself. I wasn’t sure I could even survive.
I told my physician’s assistant about my weakness and lethargy. She said prolonged stress or sadness could cause adrenal function to decline, or something like that. When I declined “something to take the edge off,” she asked, “Do you take vitamins? You might try that.”
“Be nice to yourself,” everyone said. “Your parents are dead and dying. Your family is reorganizing.”
In support groups, I needed simple slogans because the only part of my brain that functioned was a child’s brain. I was one slogan away from misery. Time made no sense. Words made no sense. I could barely force myself to speak. If I could have just mimed what I wanted or did not want, I told myself I would have been fine.
Images are by my friend, veterinarian, and neighbor Dr. Anna Maria Wolf. Anna is a holistic veterinarian connected to animals and inspired by nature. She takes her photographs while hiking with her dog or riding her horse in the magnificent scenery of the Pacific Northwest.
It's so sad to think of your parents doing all that cooking and no one came and of you feeling so bereft after they were gone. I'm glad you can write about it. ❤️
That image of your mother with the dolls sticks with me, but this whole piece was very moving. Thank you for sharing it Kirie.