New Space opened in our heart...
Good morning. Decent time of the day … about 4:30 am.
We’re pretty far off as far as any schedule goes. We’re behind in school, at work, in blogs, about everything. There have been a couple of things that have overcome our minds over the last few days. We’ve allowed Dr. M. back into our thoughts, which is a step in the right direction. I’m not sure though if we have a scheduled meeting this week because of upcoming holiday. I think he would have let me know if we weren’t going to have a meeting, but I should probably write today and ask specifically. I know that Thursday and Friday are both off from work. I’m going to need that time.
The biggest preoccupation of time over the last couple of days has been that I’ve initiated contact with a few people; namely, my mother and Grandmother. The mother is the much more difficult of the two, but you can’t really do one without the other. The mother is 66 and my Grandmother will be 98 on June 1rst. I’ve never had a relationship with the first that we could talk as nice people. For example, I wouldn’t allow her to see an informal picture of myself. With my Grandmother it’s been different, but I wasn’t able to handle that the two shared information back and forth.
My mother though wrote a generic email to my sister, brother, and myself. Yes, I have them too, but they are pretty far out as far as not wanting anything to do with them. I’ve been separated from any of these people since my father’s and step-mother’s funeral 3 years ago and, prior to that several years of not much contact; about once a year with my mother during a good year.
I don’t want to get all into that though for the time being … like to avoid everything there altogether actually. We’ll go as far to say that the conversation was about as stiff as it’s always been to the mother. Can’t get too much further than we have never had a personal conversation and it was pretty much, “Yes ma’am, no ma’am.”
My Grandmother though was different. We used to be able to hold real conversations with her. It took a lot of patience on her side to get through our otherwise silent walls. If the mother was in the room, we would sit quietly and not say anything. The email that we’d gotten though was the mother saying that she’d finally moved. It took her a year and a half to do so. She and her husband had bought a place on a lake a couple of hours north of my Grandmother. My Grandmother has confirmed that she doesn’t hear from the mother except about every 2-3 weeks. I think this had a lot to do with the stepfather. Around him, the mother is even more plastic than without.
I think the conversation with the mother lasted about 15-20 minutes, where we talked to my Grandmother for about an hour and a half. It was much easier for me to be asking about her than it was for her to be asking about myself. But, yesterday I sent her a sheet which showed some of our recent pictures. And, a note, and a copy of the paper I’d just written. She gets a copy of the center’s quarterly newsletter and that’s has been about it. I write a small column in that, so it’s been the only real contact. She doesn’t know a lot about my work other than that. The paper introduced her better to me as a person, staff, student, and such. It had also included a little of the work with Dr. M. in relationship to the mother. I thought that it was a fair representation of who I am at the present.
Now, maybe I could think out loud a little more about my Grandmother as per the phone conversation on Sunday. Like I said before … she’ll be 98 in June. She’s as sharp as a tack. She’s a little frustrated because since December, she has needed to use a walker. She lives in a place like independent living for older people. She pays for her own unit … like a condominium. It has a kitchen, living room, bath, and two bedrooms, but it is attached to other peoples’ places. She has two tabs on the outside of her door and twice a day she needs to push those tabs in the other direction to let the staffs know that she is ok. If they didn’t get pushed, they would open the door to check on her. It’s a pretty nice deal. She has options as to the eating. She can obviously cook for herself, or she can go down to a dining area and eat with others, or she can have them send up food to her. I think she uses a combination of these things, but of late she seems to be having less of an appetite which worried me.
My Grandmother has had medical problems, but in general has always been a healthy person. She says now she needs to be checked because of something that has required her blood transfusions a couple of times a year. She says that her system is not producing as much new blood as needed. And, she says that she can no longer eat “roughage” in that it breaks blood vessels which could be dangerous. When we talked about how she felt toward death, she stated simply that she like many people she knows feels like she’s living on borrowed time and that when the time comes, she’ll be ready. She, however, feels she is living a life worth living. I can see her comparing herself to others. She talked with a little frustration over the condition at the nursing home attached to the same complex she’s living. She said those people just sit in their rooms waiting to die. They don’t do anything with their days. She said that if she got that way, she would just as soon have her time ended. She surprised me to in talking of a living will. She made sure I knew that she didn’t want any of the resuscitation. She says that she has had a good life and she wants the end not to be dragged out.
We didn’t disagree with anything she had said. We did clarify that she did want to continue living. And, she said yes again that her life was good. We also asked her about depression, because we were aware that sometimes that happened as we grew older. She talked about having close friends and that one of her best friends from “the old days” had died in December and she talked a little about their relationship. She said that the woman had lived close to her place in Minneapolis and had picked her up for meetings and cancer sewing. She missed this relationship being able to talk to someone. In my heart I thought maybe she would let me talk to her, not to take the place of this woman, but as an addition to her life.
Toward the end of the conversation she did take our new number and said, don’t be surprised if I call. That was the nicest thing she could have ever said to me. I think that I will call her today after work just to say hi. I’ll let her know to expect a package in the mail. I’m pretty sure she knows something is coming though, because we called her yesterday for a minute just to confirm her address. This is the picture we sent her.
It was like all these pictures that we’ve been taking make sense to more than just me and a few of my friends. As V. said, we’re pretty sure she’ll like them. Pictures have always been a pretty big deal for her. She keeps out pictures of all her children, grandchildren, great and great, great grandchildren. She had four children and they had total 11 grandchildren, so you might imagine she’s been fairly busy throughout her life.
My Grandmother talked about some of her family, especially the ones who had more contact. My mother used to do more with her as far as shopping or medical, because she was only a mile or two away. One of her daughters had died in her late 30’s, but one of her daughters helps out periodically with cleaning or picking up things on errands. The person who is probably most stable in her life right now is her oldest son who lives in Los Vegas, but has maintained a house up on a close Wisconsin lake. He has built an extra house on the adjoining property for when his four kids were available to visit and he spends good time there over the summer months and my Grandmother has always been invited to that set of events. One of his sons was very good about also stopping in to help with a few of the bigger maintenance type tasks, but he had a terrible accident falling onto his driveway in December where many things were broken and he is just to the point he is returning to work part time. This was one of my favorite two cousins. The other was his sister who is somewhere … I didn’t catch which state. She’s married to an air force Flight instructor and they have two kids, I’ve never met, although they are going off toward college now.
I’m sure I will learn much more of these people as time goes on. I have to admit though I would rather learn about the time that she claims she is just sitting and thinking and of the times she spends with her friends. She is part of a little group that get together to put together puzzles. The person that owns the complex arranged to place an extra table out in the hallway overlooking the large lobby. One of the things I remember about the lobby is they have a cage toward against one wall that is huge … like probably 6 foot, by 6 foot by 8 foot that houses a variety of small singing birds … it is pretty cool. This balcony table is close to the elevator (three floors) and so the ladies casually talk between themselves or to people coming up and down off the elevator. They are part of the buildings social circle. Hehehehe
My Grandmother still likes to listen to MN sports on radio and TV and she says she spends quite a bit of time reading. When we asked her what she was reading, she said anything I can get my hands on! Funny Grandma. I have it on a private source that she does a fair amount of dabbling in romance novels. We talked a little about her patience in allowing me to have been gone from her life for so long and then a sudden return. I guess I’ve been doing this for quite some time. She was surprised to know that we’d been with the same married man for 13 years. But, we didn’t press that too much. Fairly sure she has more morals than I do, but the rumor is that my great Aunt … her sister had a relationship with a married man for 40 years. Eh, figures then. *Silly grin* Her basic take is that people do what they need to do and she’s always glad to hear from the one’s who don’t keep as good of contact. She also said she was afraid that had been a problem when I told her that it had been hard to talk to her because then I knew that things would go back to my mother. I think she’s more able now to separate herself from all that, because my mother has been more distant since she moved. She understood also that my mother’s surfacy conversations are strained about things that interested no one and she was very dominated by her husband now 72. The new town they live in has a population of about 900. I’m pretty unsure of that situation. To them I figure they will be foreigners, but you never know about small towns. Maybe they are as inviting as she seems to think. Eh. We’re slipping again.
One way or another, I suppose it’s about time that we get on with our day. I’d really like to do something at work with the CARF information. Just basically daydreamed most of yesterday by. That’s not such a good idea. Ok, you … we can do this!
posted by Ann Marie @ 4/11/2006 06:24:00 AM
Comments: 4
