"My, people come and go so quickly here..."

Those were the words of that great Kansas philosopher, Dorothy Gale. She muttered it in Munchkinland but, based on my last year or so, I now accept it as a sound Principle of Life.

As you know from my last post, Mom died in September of 2018. Our big black boxer Tui started having seizures two months later and died the following March from a presumptive brain tumor. (Presumptive because I said no to Dr. Crazy Canine Neurologist, who advocated spending $3,500 for an MRI to find out for sure so I could then subject him--the dog, not the neurologist--to brain surgery.)

My daughter and her husband safely delivered my gorgeous grandson Ezra in July and he thrives, happy and loved. I tried to upload a video because I know you have never seen adorable babies before, but Blogger says the file is too big. I'm sure they offer a workaround for Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen, but all I can do is give you this Ewok in its place.

One month later, my 92-year-old father died. I know now that he worked as hard as he could to stay alive without my mother, who was his light. He pushed and pushed through the strangulating effects of Parkinson's on his physical ability and his mental clarity. He pushed until he could see that his beloved granddaughter and her new son were fine and that I had a clear mastery of and full legal access to his estate. Despite the fact that, to his lifelong chagrin, I am no better at math now than I was in fifth grade.

When Dad saw that all was fine, he just stopped pushing. He felt weak on Sunday morning and died the following Saturday, in the early morning hours of my mother's birthday. He spoke his last words to me from a fog midweek. "Be sure to clear away the leaves."  From where, Dad?  "From the ground." 

My daughter and her new family left for the funeral. She and the baby headed to Detroit. Her husband headed to Wisconsin. His grandfather, the man who helped make my son-in-law the spectacular man that he is, died one day after my dad.

In October, my stepson and his wife safely delivered a beautiful baby elfin child. She too thrives, happy and loved.

One week later, little Ezra and little A's auntie, my stepdaughter, announced that HER son will be arriving at the end of May!

And so now I see what Dorothy Gale saw. People come....people go. Sometimes, its as fast as the Wicked Witch of the East going up in smoke or the Good Witch popping down in her bubble. 

I became a Bobbe (Yiddish for Nana/Grandma/Granny/Mom Mom and all that other cockamamie stuff) and an orphan in four weeks. The family I grew up with once was four...and then there was one.  My other family, the one facing forward, will have three new babies within 10 months.

Other times, it is only visible out of the rear view mirror. Now, I am the next generation in line to slip away.

Hopefully, without drama.

But it is always happening. I struggled mightily with the tornado as it whirled around me. But now I accept it. In fact, it isn't a tornado, it is the way. The Way. Perhaps my acceptance comes from a daily meditation practice that seems to have at last taken root. Perhaps it comes because once again, the passage of time remains the best cure for what ails ya. I am not going to look a gift of acceptance in the mouth, that's for sure.

Ironically, like Dorothy, Himself and Molly and I are also headed to Kansas. Next month, this beauty comes into our driveway.

Our own Airstream! When it comes, we will go. To the Black Hills of South Dakota, via the Oregon Trail and whatever else strikes our fancy. No deadlines, no reservations.

Just coming and going.

What My Mother Taught Me About Dying

Last year, as spring slid into summer, my mother slowly slid into what would be the last months of her life. The process started with disengagement. First, she shied from the outings that had always energized her. Then, she grumbled at having to leave the apartment. Finally, she refused to leave the couch, where she slept most of the day tucked in the nest of handmade pillows that she collected over a lifetime of traveling around the world.

The next step was a week-long tsunami of agitation and combativeness. This was even more astonishing because the single gift of Mom's dementia had been to make her sweet and compliant.

In retrospect, I now see that I was actually astonished by the whole last months of her life. ..or were they the first few months of her dying?  Because the first thing I learned from my mother's death in mid-September was that even at age 64, I knew nothing at all about dying.

I was a young teenager when Elisabeth Kubler-Ross challenged our notions of how to treat the dying. Along with the rest of the culture, I assimilated the radical notion of On Death and Dying that we should no longer shunt our dying loved ones to the hospital. The New Directive was to support their dying at home or in a compassionate environment like Hospice, where they could retain their dignity all through their final hours.

And let me add that, in the absence of any direct experience, I just assumed that dying was exactly that: a matter of hours.  Fed by the filtered black and white photos in my copy of On Death and Dying, I developed quite a poetic bank of images of what those final hours would look like. You know what I mean. A hospital bed, its steel softened by a handmade quilt and the family cat, sits by the window, arranged to capture the view of the magnolia tree in pink bloom. A bedside candle flame dances as loved ones hold hands, share memories, and beg--or offer--forgiveness. The whispered "I love you" and then...perhaps a shudder...and then sorrow. With serenity just around the corner.  

My mother's death left me with a profoundly different bank of images.

Yes, there were the angelic aides from Hospice, who alternated between lovingly massaging cream into Mom's eroding skin and checking their cell phones for Facebook updates. Yes, there was a hospital bed but I couldn't add the afghans she had knit because my father keeps the thermostat set to "Human Body, Feverish." 

But there was no candle (see thermostat, above). And there were none of the serene exchanges that resolve all unspoken tensions between mother and daughter.  In fact, there were no exchanges at all. My real mother's default response to emotion was avoidance. I will never know if dying would have changed her mind because her mind was full of Ativan, Haldol, and morphine to control terminal agitation.

Yeah, "terminal agitation." Ever hear of it?  Me neither.

As the name suggests, terminal agitation is an escalating picture of restlessness, agitation, and downright combativeness that may occur in the last weeks of life. Hospice considers it a crisis--and given all they have to deal with, that's saying a lot.

Terminal agitation has bloodied all my fantasies of how we die. Here's a snapshot from the morning I stayed with Mom during a care planning meeting. The last day she ever talked to me.

"We need to go now," she insisted, trying to get off the couch without any success.

"Get me out of here NOW," she commanded. I obliged, trying to figure out a route away from the public spaces of the nursing home.

"Can't you go any faster?" she demanded, as I wheeled her up and down the halls of the third floor. That held her. Until it didn't.

"What's the matter with you, we need lunch."

"Ok, here you go," I said as we returned to the apartment and I slipped a small plate of her favorite foods on to the table.

"What's the matter with you? I said 'lunch'!"

Here is where mothering two toddlers came in handy. "Okay, here's lunch," I said as I put two M & Ms in her mouth. But she wasn't having any and I was shit out of ideas. Luckily for the both of us, the nurse returned and, even luckier, she had a morphine injection in her pocket. I coaxed Mom to the couch, where she relaxed into my arms. She asked me to tell her a story...which I did, with tears in my throat.

My gentle and gentlemanly father could not acknowledge that his wife of 65 years was dying and so could not help but scream at her when she swore at and scratched at the aides. Hospice took her to another apartment to stabilize her (and him). Mercifully for me, they told me I shouldn't come by. By the time I saw her four days later, "stabilized" looked a lot like unconscious.

If I hadn't experienced the agitation myself, I would have suspected they were simply drugging her to make their lives easier. But they weren't. They were drugging her to make her life easier for her. ...to make her death easier for her.

We went to our craft show for the weekend because 1) no one told me I should not and 2) I desperately needed to catch my breath.  Rona the Super Aide stayed with Mom in her deep fog, whispering to her that I would be home on Monday as she cleansed the sweat off her brow (see temperature, above).

I came back Monday morning and held her hand, searching for any sign that she was holding my hand too.

"I'm going home now to change and will be back later," I whispered. "But if  you need to go now, it is ok. I am taking care of Daddy and I will make sure he will be all right."

I was in the car for 15 minutes when Rona called me to tell me she was gone.

It is going on eight months since that phone call. I am starting accept, rather than avoid, my new understanding of the reality of dying.  I am starting to accept what my mother taught me about dying: it is not a moment but a process. It may not be pretty, but it will be real...as real as life.

And I am now starting to catch glimpses of my real mother through the searing images of last year.  They are in the way I am quick to judge anybody and the way I wave my hand to dismiss opinions of others. They are in the way I trim fat off the brisket I cook for Passover and the way I fold used pieces of aluminum foil and tuck them in the drawer.They are in the way I love adventure and the color red.

They are in the way I am washing and folding the sweaters she knit for my babies, readying them for the grandchild I am expecting in July.

Thanks, Mom.