The little girl on the left, Jane, in 1929 or so, became this young girl in the early 1940s:
Who became this mother in the late 1940s:
Who became a grandmother, a great grandmother, and this is the story of her at Sunset:
I found my room on the second floor, considered unpacking my
small bag, but decided my clothes would suck up the smell if left out, so I got out the pillow case and zipped
the suitcase closed. I had picked up a
bottle of Fabreeze earlier. I replaced
the pillow case and sprayed the sheets, the carpet, the recliner, but
everything still smelled of old feces.
Trying to sleep, I thought of Mom, down on the first floor, how
difficult it was for her, especially since she kept everything so clean, and
had such sensitive smell. Hell, I was
smoking cigarettes, and I couldn’t stand it.
The entire facility smelled like feces, struck you like something
physical when you entered the foyer. I suppose they all reek like that, assisted
living facilities, old folks homes, their last home—no home at all. I guess it’s what I have to look forward to,
should I live that long. When I asked my
friend, Willy, what he thought about getting older, he replied after lengthy
thought, “Well, if you get old, you’re lucky, I guess.” That made sense back in my thirties, but now,
I’m not so sure.
Typically, when I flew in from Alaska to visit Mom, I rented
a two bedroom suite at the Marriott Courtyard and liberated her, sprung her
from Sunset, if only for one or two weeks.
We gathered all her laundry and bedding and washed it at the Marriott,
ate out or made simple meals in the kitchenette, watched T.V. and talked. I took her to dialysis appointments, from
which she emerged looking weak and beaten.
Sometimes they couldn’t get the bleeding stopped. Her fingers would cramp applying pressure,
and I would slide my fingers under hers.
Afterwards, she wanted to stop at a coffee shop for a café mocha or Frappuccino,
even though it exceeded her fluid allowance.
I couldn’t say no, nor could I say no to anything else she wanted that
wasn’t on the dialysis “smiley face” list.
She had suffered a stroke a few years back, had a bad heart, no
functioning kidneys, and her feet were messed up, toes knarled into each
other. She had to use a walker, or I
pushed her in a wheel chair. She didn’t have enough arm strength to wheel the chair across carpet. Not even eighty, but her body was worn out;
her body, but not her mind. She enjoyed
those escapes, but especially my company: family, loved ones. It was heartbreaking when I had to leave,
gathering her stuff and taking it back to Sunset. Once I left her at lunchtime sitting with her
tablemates. At the door, I looked back
and she was hanging her head crying as the other old women stared into their
plates—they knew. Such sadness in life. Sometimes I couldn’t wait to get out of
there, but when I saw her crying, I saw her as a young girl, and from old photographs,
a beautiful young girl. I vowed to keep
that in mind whenever I visited.
With Mom at dialysis, I went shopping for groceries, did our
laundry, and returned to Sunset for her plethora of medications and to work on
her apartment, which had a small sitting area, television, kitchen all in one
room and a separate bathroom. The room
had large windows that looked out on the back courtyard, and beyond that, a
grade school where you could sometimes see the children. Of course, all guests
had to enter through the main door and into the foyer, stop at the desk and
sign. A young Vietnamese girl sat behind the desk.
She was pretty, and she knew it.
Her demeanor said, “I’m young, I’m pretty, I’m healthy, and you are
not.” The building itself was quite
nice. It resembled a southern mansion from the front, with a wraparound porch,
complete with rocking chairs; although I seldom saw anyone rocking. Smell aside, the foyer was welcoming with nice carpet , sofas , chairs and coffee tables,
the dining room, also nice, off to one side, a TV room to the other, with a staircase curving up to the second
floor—although few could use it. There
was even a dog, a fat golden retriever lounging about who sometimes came to
life and woofed at visitors, but never the old folks. The foyer was a gathering place, mostly
before and after meals. The old folks
chatted and read newspapers, or just sat quietly in wheelchairs. Remembering John Prine’s, “Hello in There,” I
stopped to talk or read newspapers with them, to look in their eyes and ask questions:
do you have kids; where are you from; what kind of work did you do; were you in
WWII or Korea, and so on. One lady had
been a ballerina, one man a sportswriter, and I met several school
teachers. It’s shocking, but they all had full and interesting
lives to which one gained access by merely stopping: hello in there.
After visiting, I moved on with my Windex, Lysol, Fabreeze
and paper towels to deep clean Mom’s room.
I borrowed the facility vacuum cleaner—to the amusement of housekeepers—and
vacuumed everything in her apartment. I
could tell from one visit to the next that I was the last to clean under the
bed, or behind this or that, and Sunrise wasn’t cheap. Mom ran out of money, but my brother, Jerry, and
I pitched in so she wouldn’t have to move to a state facility, certain horror
for Mom; she still had her mind, but would have lost it at a government facility.
She could hardly abide Sunset, but we made it as nice as possible. Jerry and his wife furnished her apartment
with quality furniture, I cleaned, and we let the staff know—in a
non-threatening way—that we were concerned and watching. You don’t want to complain too loudly in such
places for fear of retribution against your parent. It happens, even in the nicer homes, and
there’s not much you can do about it. So
I deep cleaned and dusted, cleaned the windows inside and out, replaced light
bulbs, thawed out the freezer, tightened things, spread potpourri, sprayed
Fabreze. Hers was the best smelling room
at Sunset. When she first moved in, the
staff did her laundry and bedding, and it came back smelling of feces, smelling
of Sunset. She tried doing it herself,
keeping her laundry separate, trudging up to the second floor, but the
equipment stank, the dryer stank. On my
first trip, she couldn’t wait to gather it all up and take it to the
Marriott. Then my brother and
sister-in-law, who lived close by, began taking her laundry home and returning
it clean and smelling fresh—it meant the world to her, such a simple thing. Mom had a dryer most of her life, but she
still hung laundry outside, she liked it aired out. I know it must be difficult in such places
where every time they turn around there’s a wet spot on a sofa or the carpet,
or some old guy has lost control of his bowels, but that’s the job: take care
of them. The government inspection report
was posted by the front desk, as required, no doubt. I read the few discrepancies the inspectors
noted, and thought if that’s all they can find, they either don’t know what to
look for or aren’t looking too hard.
Government inspectors should be required to spend a few nights every quarter—unannounced—
talk to the old folks, listen to their complaints, eat and sleep there.
I ate with Mom and her tablemates several times and got
acquainted with them, her few Sunset friends.
I sent them gifts from Alaska, simple things like coffee mugs, hats, knick-knacks,
but receiving any kind of mail at a place like Sunset, especially a package, a
gift, is a grand occasion that has everyone talking. As I met more people, I never failed to send
them something from Fairbanks when I returned, so that I became known as,”
Jane’s son from Alaska.” A couple times,
I brought in a few dozen doughnuts from Dunkin’ Doughnuts for the old folks as
well as the staff, and you would have thought it was gold. I had an ulterior motive for that
kindness. Unless in church—her own
church—or around relatives, Mom was very shy and not at all outgoing. She was too timid to order at a
restaurant. My gifts, treats and
willingness to sit at Sunset and eat in their dining room was, in some part,
designed to make Mom known, to help her make friends, and it did. At first, she spent so much time alone that
my brother and I noticed a mental change; she saw and heard things that didn’t
exist, at least not for me and Jerry.
She worked her way through that, and the friends helped. They shared the same expectations, Mom and her
tablemates: their next visit from family. And they shared the same dream: going
home. But they would never go home. Although quiet, Mom listened hard, and was
more savvy than most at Sunset. Once at
dinner, one of the old women talked about going back to her home, her own
house, and Mom leaned over and whispered, “She doesn’t have that house
anymore. Her daughter sold it.”
The staff’s strong point was providing activities and
outings: card games, movie nights, exercise, wine tasting and trips to local
restaurants, for instance. Even so,
there’s not much to look forward to in such places. A visit from family was number one, and
mealtime a distant second, but mealtime drove the day. As the dining room could not hold them all,
they ate in two shifts, not necessarily rushed, but with no time to linger and little
time for decision making, two things I found the old folks required. The food was not bad, but the service was
horrible. It was inefficient, obviously
unorganized, illogical, and so terribly slow.
For instance, if one of the entrees was a hamburger, the staff first
served everyone their hamburger, then served the other entre, and then “maybe”
came back around with the condiments required of any hamburger. So the old folks had two choices, they could
eat their burger warm without condiments or watch it grow cold for thirty
minutes while trying to flag down a server.
It was the same with other food.
Eggs: no salt and pepper. Soup:
no crackers. Salad: no dressing. Coffee: no cream and sugar. Sometimes, if I saw someone in need, I’d get
up and serve them myself. Other than
being understaffed—which they were—the staff’s excuse was they could not leave
condiments or crackers on tables because
the old folks would abscond with them, horde them in their rooms. My feeling was, “So what? Put out a barrel of crackers. These people are paying a fortune to live
here. If you weren’t so stingy in the
first place, they wouldn’t be hording.”
The service was slow, but the servers moved quickly when serving. If they came through offering coffee or desert,
the old folks had to have their wits about them and shoot that hand up right
now, or the offer expired as quickly as it came. Sometimes, anger and yelling resulted, but
anger and yelling did not score points with the serving staff, and the staff kept
score. Too much yelling and uncontrolled
anger, too much crying or too much helplessness, would buy you a ticket to the
third floor. Those on the third floor
did not come down to dine. It was a
running joke, “Better behave, Josie, or they’ll put you on the third floor.”
During her first two years at Sunset, Mom’s health was good
enough for long outings. She went to
church with Jerry and Jan; in spring, they drove her around D.C. to see the
cherry blossoms, and in fall, took her on a foliage trip. Once, all of us loaded up, including my son,
Eric, and his buddy and pushing her in a wheelchair, rode the metro to the D.C.
Mall and spent the day in museums and touring the newly opened WWII Memorial. Charlie, the middle brother, and his wife,
Linda, made their first trip to the East Coast, and consequently took Mom with
them on a meandering driving tour that covered a few states. Her
favorite activities at Sunset were church related, and she showed up whether it
was the Catholic priest or the black lady who played piano, led singing, and
then read from the Bible to the few in
attendance, which made no difference as two or more were gathered. The black lady was her favorite and Mom
brought her Bible and followed along, although she knew it by heart. Those of faith gravitated toward Mom and she
strengthened them in their last days, prayed with them, prayed for them.
The scream of an ambulance was a daily occurrence at Sunset. The old folks declined so rapidly, their last
days came quickly. On every visit,
familiar faces were gone, or those who strolled the courtyard on my last visit
now struggled with walkers, those who had used walkers now sat in
wheelchairs. Some went to the third
floor. Some departed in a silent
ambulance. Mom’s health declined as
well. She could no longer stay at the
Marriott, so I decided to stay with her.
I slept on her recliner on one trip, and then learned that Sunset would
sometimes rent vacant apartments to family members for short stays. On the next trip, I rented the room on the
second floor. After my attempt to
deodorize, I lie on the sheets in my underwear and read a book. A female staffer opened my door without
knocking, then stood there nonplussed and talked. I thought, “This is it. This is how they treat you, with no privacy,
no respect, and it’s so prevalent, they’re doing it to me.” The apartment doors had locks, but the
staffers had keys. They were required to
knock before entering, but I noticed in Mom’s room that they seldom did, and if
they did knock, it was concurrent with barging in, so that you could be
standing there naked or sitting on the toilet and find yourself looking into
the blank face of a staffer.
I sent Mom an Alaska wildlife card and short letter every
week, and enclosed a few bucks so she would have money for church or to go to
lunch in the Sunset van. I told her not
to save it, but spend it, and if it were stolen, not to worry about it—occasionally,
things did disappear. She sent letters weekly or more often while I was in
Vietnam and Iceland with the U.S.A.F., and she sent homemade Toll House
cookies—man, were they good over there—and she prayed for me, always. For her 80th birthday, Vicki
bought a beautiful diamond pendant for her, but I told Vicki it was too nice,
that it would worry Mom to death, the fear of having it stolen. So Vicki took it back and bought an April
birthstone instead. We told Mom not to
worry if it were stolen or lost, that it wasn’t expensive. She hid things around her room, kept her
little wad of money in her bra. One of
her favorite gifts was a thick book on pills that she studied with knitted brow,
memorizing the side effects of every prescription drug she was on, much to the
chagrin of my sister-in-law, who had to suffer Mom’s analysis.
Mom saw Sunset in a dream years before she landed there. “Yes,” she said, “this is the place. This is
the building I saw in the dream.” She
was forever dreaming dreams and seeing visions.
While in high school, whenever I secretly got involved in something
untoward, she told me of a dream.
“Stevie, last night I dreamed you were a baby, and you were playing at
the edge of a dark abyss. I called for
you to move away from it, but you kept playing.” One Christmas, my brother, Charlie, and I
drove from Denver to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Mom and Dad lived. The car
was packed: my two kids, his wife, Linda, and their three kids. Driving across Kansas at night, the car’s
steering wouldn’t respond when I moved the wheel, but kept tracking straight in
the lane. I told Charlie, “I think
there’s something wrong with the power steering: look at this,” and I moved the
wheel right and left with no response.
Charlie told me to try and pull over and we’d take a look. So I slowed—I had been doing 75 mph—and eased
it over on the shoulder. Charlie opened
the door, stepped out, but he had to grab the door to keep from falling on his
butt. “You’ve been driving on black ice!”
he yelled. The remainder of the trip was
uneventful, and we pulled into Hot Springs the following morning, pretty much
forgetting about the black ice incident.
Mom met us at the door. She
seemed anxious, and asked me specifically, “What were you doing last night around
eleven O’clock?” This was the age before
cellphones. We told her about the black
ice. She said she was awoken at that
time and saw me standing in her bedroom.
She knew I was in trouble and got on her knees and prayed; she asked
Jesus to keep his hand on me and keep me safe.
My life abounds with such stories, stories that most either do not
believe or attempt to explain away. The
fact is, my mother was spirit filled and close to God. She might get tongue-tied in front of strangers
or a waitress, but she talked to God all day, every day. As a teenager and young man, it was
exasperating. She couldn’t follow the
conversation, couldn’t get the joke, because she was always off somewhere,
either thinking about God, or praying.
Not five times a day, but a thousand times a day, while washing dishes,
hanging laundry…she prayed ceaselessly, she talked to God. She talked to God at Sunset. I pray she talks to him now.
end
