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Copyright (C) 2008-2009 David B. Axelrod |
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“I’D RATHER BE DEAD” My Mother’s Story by Dr. David B. Axelrod
When she said “I’d rather
be dead than live with you,” I figured it meant she would never want to be
dependent. In that spirit, I went back to my home state of The family home was sold a dozen years ago when my father couldn’t care for it any longer—a Victorian dwelling that, if not a mansion, felt even larger than just twelve rooms. Now my mother had lived six years alone in the condo they had bought, and though I was used to it enough to call it home when I returned, it still felt to me that she had been reduced to living in an apartment. We sat in her living room, on the same old velvet couch I remembered from the house, its orange and brown leaf and branch design appropriate for the autumn day. Though it was at least sixty degrees outside, she had the electric baseboard cranked up to nearly eighty and it groaned as its metal expanded each time the thermostat clicked on. The house smelled of meat and onions, and of dust because she hadn’t vacuumed before the heaters were turned on so the hot air rising carried months of accumulation into the air. I was beyond having to convince her that she couldn’t spend another winter on her own. At ninety-one, her heart weakening and congested, suffering from poor circulation that caused lesions on her feet and legs, she, who walked miles a day before, couldn’t walk down her hall without effort. She knew some major changes needed to be made. What I was there to do was convince her that moving in with me would be the answer. We had a joke we shared often. She told me one day in the grocery store an even older woman seemed to follow her around for a while and then stood staring at her. Finally the old woman said to my mother “You dress so nice. And you have no spots on you!” She was right, of course, not only did my mother keep herself and her clothing very clean, but her taste in clothing was always impeccable. Even now, in her own living room, she was dressed in pale green cotton slacks, a white and green, polished-cotton blouse with a jade and sliver stick-pin adorning her collar. “You don’t have any spots,” I told her.
“I guess I have to decide,” she said, aware of the purpose of our
sit-down. “I don’t want a nursing home and I’m too weak for assisted
living.” My fourteen-year-old might make my mother crazy but my mother, I was convinced, would be a welcome addition to our house. I had my strategy planned to convince her. If I said it was just for her sake, she would fight me all the way. “You know, if you move in with us, I’d have you to do things with—movies, conversation. If you want, you could even pay to help me hire a housekeeper and I wouldn’t have to do the cleaning myself anymore.” She liked that. Appealing to her sense of purpose and generosity was a good tactic for me. The truth is, we both knew we weren’t going to talk much about it. She really had no choice. A congestive heart was weakening her and though she had driven herself around until even days before I arrived, it was time to make the change. Nothing to argue about anymore.
Though I spurred her on for another three days, her packing to take the
trip down a couple hundred miles to live with me got postponed until the night
before our departure. Even then, I could see her heart wasn’t in it. She put
three or four of those very-familiar outfits into a suitcase, a couple pairs of
shoes, coats. She packed a smaller, pale blue hard case with her medications and
a few personal things. As I carried it down the long hall in my left hand, my mother gripped my right arm tightly and we walked ever so slowly toward the elevator. We said nothing. The hall itself seemed shabby to me, the maroon carpet tread-worn, the hall stuffy with a blend of too many smells of other people’s cooking. The sun was overly-bright as we came out the front doors. A light breeze stirred leaves on the ground. The white mums in the border gardens were wilting, past their prime. I left her to bring the car up. She used to charge up the little hill in the parking lot and hop right into my van. Now I had to help her step up into the front seat. I suppose a part of me—and now I don’t doubt, her—knew she wouldn’t come back to this spot again, but neither of us would have ever admitted it. At my house, I had taken every step I could to prepare. I had stripped the back bedroom of all my grown son’s sports memorabilia, moved in more suitable furnishings with ample room in draws for her belongings. My daughter had even made a “Grandma’s Room” sign to tape to her door as a welcome. As soon as she arrived, I made a point of unpacking her, hanging her clothes in the closet, helping her sort things into draws. Suddenly, I was struck by how little she really had brought. The five-draw bureau was nearly empty as was the closet. She set the blue hard case on a stool and said she would be just as glad to keep using it for storage. It seemed as if she wasn’t planning to stay that long. The month she did stay was what we both dreaded. My plans to make her comfortable turned into her feeling less and less able to do things for herself. Not having to shop for herself meant she didn’t feel strong enough to go with me to shop. Not getting calls from friends who would insist on taking her out meant she could say no when I asked if I could take her for a drive. Not making her self do things became a way of just letting go. Despite my bringing her to an oriental medical doctor for alternative therapy, she just got weaker. And then there was the day she asked me to “Make a time for me to see that nursing home your friend works for.” My friend was the acupuncturist and herbalist who was trying to help her feel weller. He had already gotten the wounds on her feet and legs to start healing. He’d given her herbs that were to strengthen her heart and ease her breathing. I took her fully fifty miles two or three times each week to get a treatment. He was the staff doctor at a very well-regarded nursing home—which also had a hospice floor.
My mother and I had talked for years about how old people should not have
to suffer. My father, after a series of strokes, was reduced to begging to stop
his medications so that nature could just take its course. In It was clear when we arrived at the doctor’s that my mothers condition, for all our hopes and efforts, was much worse. Even the month before, when we first visited, she could climb up onto the treatment table herself. Now we both had to take her arms and help lift her. She sat on the edge of the table to catch her breath, her chin down, her eyes closed. We turned her to lie back and it was clear that her legs were ever more swollen and the wounds, though smaller, were weeping. The doctor put some acupunctures needles in strategic spots, applied some ointments, turned on a heat-lamp to warm her cold feet. We left my mother to rest and adjourned to his consultation room where he immediately called the nursing home. “She’s much weaker,” he pronounced, though it was ever so obvious. “Let’s take her to see the place.” After the treatment, we both took her arm and walked her ever so slowly to the lobby of his office, then out to the car I brought to the front door. He drove ahead of me to lead me to the nursing home. He parked in the doctors’ lot and went in to alert the medical director. I parked near the front door of the facility and opened my mother’s door. It was just the same kind of day—even the same time of day as when we had left her condo. A light breeze moved the fallen leaves on the concrete walk to the front doors. The sun shined brightly on our backs as we walked, arm in arm. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘what a gorgeous day. Does she see it? Doesn’t she appreciate it? It would be worth seeing a few more.’ Whatever she was thinking as she walked in, she made one thing clear when she sat down next to the director’s desk.
“Hello, Irene,” the director said, “You’re here to see our
nursing home? Would you like to see one of our rooms?” “Why?” the director asked. “I’ve lived ninety-one years, three months, and I’m happy with that. I don’t need to live anymore.” She had clearly calculated that, though she missed by a month. Later it would occur to me that she only counted until she moved in with me. It was ninety-one years and four months but that last month was left off. The director was not an easy woman to convince. She grilled my mother for almost two hours to be sure my mother was neither depressed nor suicidal. Every question she asked, my mother gave a firm if tired answer. Every objection, my mother countered with even wit and humor. At the end of the interview, the director wrote a brief note on a pad and turn to my mother to try once more. “So I have written here in summary: ‘Mrs. Axelrod says she wishes to check into our facility to stop her medications so she can die. She does not want us to take any steps to make her well. She just wants to sleep until she doesn’t wake up.” “Wait,” my mother stopped her. “What magic wand would you use to make me well?” The director smiled. “I’ll cross that part about ‘make her well’ out then,” she said. “You are about the clearest-headed person I’ve ever interviewed,” she congratulated my mother. And then, she picked up the phone to have them prepare a bed for my mother. We hadn’t packed a stitch of clothing. “I just need a hospital gown,” my mother said. I don’t need to go out of the bed or the room.
We hadn’t packed even a toothbrush, no personal items, nothing, though
the next day when I drove there I would bring back the pale-blue hard case with
the initials “ As I walked out of the nursing home without my mother that first night, I had a feeling of tremendous emptiness. It was a mix of fear—the kind that a parent has after leaving a crying child behind with a teacher on the kid’s first day of day-care or school. And it was a mix of anxiety, the kind that tightens the chest and makes the head spin as if the ground was coming up to meet you. I walked into the last ebb of light, took a breath of the chilling air to try to recover. I pictured my mother sitting on the edge of her bed where I had left her about to put on her hospital gown. It would be the last time I saw her in one of her spotless outfits. Ten days later she was gone. |