I ended the month of May with a short piece about being "on call" as my mother entered the hospital near the first of the month and remained there for much of the time. As she was treated for a stomach infection via intravenous tubes, antibiotics, an emergency surgery, drainage tubes, and CT scans, I was in a position of waiting: Waiting for phone calls that would give me updates on her health, checking in with my father on how well he was coping, trading e-mails and texts and phone calls with my sisters as we grappled with an unfamiliar situation, trying to figure out what next to do. Amid that all, I tried to rise up to the challenge of trying to go on with life as usual -- going to the office, checking up on students, reading and commenting on assignments, preparing to attend conferences, just generally trying to keep up with meetings, projects, and other commitments, and continuing to try and write and do workouts at the same time.
As May spilled into June, I found myself in Muncie, staying for ten days with my parents in their new retirement community townhouse and adjusting to a life that saw my mother using a walker to move around the house, relying upon others to provide her with food instead of insisting on preparing elaborate meals for others, asking for help with an array of tasks, and generally trying to do as much as she could on her own.
The move to the townhouse had occurred the previous fall. It was a smart move on the part of my parents -- providing them with living quarters that were still quite spacious and suited for independent life but smaller and more manageable than the homes in which they had lived for the prior four decades. I remember my father telling me as I helped them sort through their possessions and make decisions about what to keep and what to pass on to others that he felt as if he and my mother would be quite happy there. He particularly liked the backyard, which featured a pleasant patio, a wooden pergola, and a small gurgling fountain amid a series of small, manageable gardens.
In June, the pleasant air of the townhouse seemed to have been put into disarray: four-foot tall dandelions had taken over the gardens, along with a series of other weeds. The fountain was shut down, and the patio and pergola sat alone in the pleasant sun receiving very little use.
I decided that bringing order back to the backyard might be one way to re-establish a sense of normalcy, for my father particularly, as my mother recovered. Over their mild protests, I went out and uprooted the overgrown dandelions, and filled a thirty-gallon garbage bag with weeds. I re-located some solar lamps, and my sister brought several potted tomatoes, summer squash, peppers and herbs that she and I proceeded to plant in the backyard. As life returned to the yard, it seemed to perk up my father's spirits, as well. On the day before I left, he went to the grocery store purportedly to pick up some daily staples. After he returned, I spotted something bright hanging from the pergola: a basket of hanging flowers. He had purchased two of the baskets to enliven the space.
Two days after I left, my mother returned to the hospital for a follow-up CT scan. All of us -- my father, my sisters, close friends and other relatives, and even her doctors -- hoped and expected the image to reveal a clean bill of health because, it seemed, that she was recovering so well. She had been gaining strength and weight with each passing day, and just before I left, had been able not only to cut a few vegetables on a chopping board but also to check on a meal-in-progress, stirring the pot and offering an assessment with her expert eyes of what more needed to be done to complete the preparations.
Instead the scan reveal a recurrence of infection. She was re-admitted to the hospital. New tubes were inserted, and more antibiotics were given. A series of new tests were administered, as well.
I received this news while on a work trip, via the same technologies that had dominated May: text messages, e-mails, and phone calls between myself and my sisters. Once again, I found myself watching my phone, waiting, and wondering what was the best thing to do.
I am not a weepy emotional person. I do love and care for my parents and my sisters, but I do not demonstrate these sentiments very often in the warm-and-fuzzy Hallmark-esque kinds of ways that celebrations of such things as Father's Day and Mother's Day seem to demand. I also realize that life needs to continue, that the ailments of one individual will only grow worse if those around her fall ill, as well. And so I enter the week before the Summer Solstice with a sense that any aspect of daily life is now subject to change. I can make plans, set goals, and establish deadlines as I have always done. But I cannot guarantee that those plans, goals, and deadlines will be met. Perhaps this is the new normal that all of us with aging parents and/or ailing relatives must ultimately confront.
No comments:
Post a Comment