Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas

"Grace becomes ours when we pull together the increasingly fragmented pieces of our lives and integrate them into a sustained pattern of meaning." 

                                                                                       

                                                                                  (Alexandra Stoddard)

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas

Hearth and fire be ours tonight,
       And all the dark outside.
       Fair the night, and kind on you
       Wherever you may bide.

           And I'd be the sun upon your head,
           The wind about your face,
           My love upon the path you tread,
           And on all your wanderings, peace.

                                         Gordon Bok

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas

“The only trust required is to know that when there is one ending there will be another beginning.”

                                                                             

                                                                                              (Clarissa Pinkola Estés)

Remembering Mom

My beloved mother passed away two weeks ago.

I wrote an essay once about my mom with the alarmist title “I’m Turning into My Mother,” and it chronicled some silly and scary things that I got from her.  But the truth is more complex, because I also got a lot of really fine qualities from this woman.

I got an instinct to rescue abandoned baby birds and dogs wandering on the side of the road, to listen to young people who were having trouble with their parents or other parts of their lives, to offer shelter to friends and strangers.

I got a strong sense of social justice, too: my mom always stood up for what was right.  She was one of the champions right here in Rockville of a project to bring access to the town’s center to residents of a predominantly black neighborhood on the “wrong side of the tracks.”

I got a pretty good sense of humor—we were neither of us ones for telling jokes but we did enjoy them, and we both tried to appreciate the ones life played on us.  When something set us off no one could reduce me to tears of laughter the way Mom could.

I got an excellent grounding in how to be a good friend by watching my mom be one as I grew up.  And I’m a better mother for having been parented by her. Mom always strove to do the best for her children, even as we became older adults, and she loved Jeff and me ferociously.

I got an artistic sensibility though not as much as Mom had. We were all surprised and thrilled when while doing her Associate’s degree at Montgomery College she turned out to be a talented painter.  And she had her hand in all kinds of handiwork and other artistic endeavors with her church crafter’s group.

I got a penchant for sociability and sharing other people’s stories from Mom, too.  Turns out she was quite the writer, as she proved in the writing group she attended here at the church. And her sociability was evidenced in things like her zipping around her beloved Fresh Market on her scooter (a gift from her cousin Annetta) talking to all the department managers about their respective days.

I got a sense of civic responsibility from her from the time I was in elementary school stuffing envelopes for political campaigns and hanging out the back of our station wagon stumping for candidates.  Mom ran many political campaigns back in Holliston, Massachusetts where Jeff and I grew up, and was highly respected in political circles there. 

I got a lot of strength and resilience from Mom, who weathered many a storm.

These are just a few things I got from my mother.  I also got imperfections and foibles, and a tendency to anxiety I could do without. But in balance I wouldn’t have wanted to be anyone else’s daughter other than Suzanne Marie Kullgren’s.

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas

“We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them” 

                                                               (Charles West)

Coming Out as a Caregiver

Sorry my blogging has been less than prolific in recent months.  Since my mother’s second stroke late last October, my responsibilities as dutiful daughter have increased manifold and my creative juices have not flowed. 

After her second stroke last autumn, Mom had a hellish stay in rehab punctuated by daily calls to me begging me to intervene to get the aides and nurses to respond to her often-urgent needs.  She emerged from that stint in rehab more traumatized than when she went in.  The benefits of the speech and physical and occupational therapy she was receiving were diminished by how rattled she was multiple times a day fighting for attention and her dignity while trying to meet needs as simple as going to the bathroom. 

She also emerged a changed woman, still competent but sometimes struggling to find the words to express herself and sometimes confused in that effort and in absorbing information.  She had two falls this spring, one on the scooter that is her lifeline as she no longer can walk.  Mom has been to the emergency room more than four times in the past six months for various problems—once for a third small stroke.  It seemed like every week I could count on a call from her alarm monitoring service telling me they’d dispatched paramedics.

Twice in the ER they found she had urinary tract infections.  I found out that in the elderly, UTIs can cause confusion or a delirium-like state (that can be mistaken for Alzheimer’s or dementia) and agitation and that certainly was the case with my mom.  This has confused efforts to understand what her current baseline state of mind is, though she’s definitely improved since her last infection.

I used to call my mom once every two days, then every day, but now because of her heightened agitation she calls me sometimes several times a day and I have to talk her down from whatever whammy life has thrown at her: like the transit van not returning her keys when she came home from the hospital last time and then apparently losing them, like having to deal with a repair phone call to and visit from Comcast, like her shower aide not being able to come, like a doctor trying to explain to her how he is going to change her medication. Between this and the midnight calls from the alarm monitoring service it’s gotten so I go into fight or flight mode every time the phone rings, my stomach clenching and the adrenaline pumping.

One nice thing that’s come out of this is increased communications between my brother, who lives in New England, and I.  He has really stepped up this year, taking over some of my mom’s doctor’s communications and calling my mom every day. He’s making spreadsheets like crazy to try and get a handle on her care. 

For now, Mom is able to live independently.  She can still manage her medications, attend to her personal needs, prepare meals for herself and so on.  She still scoots over to the shopping plaza near her to get her hair cut or to go to her favorite market.  She still goes downstairs in her building to chat with neighbors.  I admire her courage and her spirit.  And I pray for my own as I help her navigate this journey through aging through which I will follow in the coming decades.

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas

“We are each of us angels with only one wing and we can only fly by embracing each other.”       

                                                                                              Lucian de Crescenzo