Other sentences my mom tried to complete:
“For breakfast I had a glass of orange … beds.”
“Two plus two equals … two.” My mom immediately knew this answer was wrong, screwed up her face, nodded calmly, and gave what she was certain was the right answer: “One.”
“Peanut butter and … red paint.”
“All I want for Christmas are my two front … elephants.”
Because I had explained a bit about my mother’s past to the therapist, many of her questions were geared around food. Each time the therapist could explain the logic behind my mother’s incorrect answers. She spent hours and hours explaining them to my mom, too, so she could slowly begin to untangle the twisted neurons misdirecting her language traffic.
Ten days after my mom’s stroke, I was told that she had to leave the hospital in three days. I panicked.
“She can’t move,” I said. “She can barely speak. How can she go back to her apartment? What the hell am I supposed to do?”
The hospital social worker sat down with me. Reassuring and helpful, she explained that my mom needed to be moved to a rehabilitation center. Hopefully, after rehab she’d be able to return to her own home, with the proper live-in care. I was warned that I shouldn’t count on that, however. The doctors suspected that she would be forced to live in an institution for the rest of her life.
She could not go back to the Rusk Institute, where she’d gone after her first stroke, because she was not advanced enough in her recovery to fit into their rigorous program. So I began scouring the city for nursing homes. The first one I went to was just a few blocks from my apartment—convenient from a travel time perspective if nothing else. And believe me, it was nothing else. Gorgeous on the outside, a landmark Greenwich Village building, inside it was a cross between the asylum in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the World War II Japanese POW camp in The Bridge on the River Kwai. I saw roaches scuttling around and the place was absolutely filthy. The guide showed me one room, the size of the smallest dorm room at the worst college imaginable. In it were two beds and one nightstand—there wasn’t room for more. In one of the rooms was a person—I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, and I don’t think he or she could, either—who was hooked up to a few machines and wasn’t moving. The other bed was empty. Indicating the body in the bed, the guide said, “This is Mrs. Johnson. She’ll be a very good roommate for your mom because she’s very quiet.”
“That’s because I’m pretty sure she’s dead,” I said.
I got out of there within seconds.
I looked at a few others and all I could think of was my mother saying to me, a few years ago, “If I ever wind up in a home with nothing but old, sick people, just smother me with a pillow and kill me.”
After my tour of rehab homes, I was almost to the point of deciding that that was a reasonable and decent course of action.
Then my mother’s wonderful doctor came through. He used his pull to get her into a lovely, humane rehab center, Amsterdam Nursing Home, on 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. I spent a lot of time there over the next few weeks and, if you’re interested in some New York City sightseeing pointers, a couple of blocks from her rehab joint was the real-life diner they used as the George/Jerry/Kramer/Elaine hangout in Seinfeld. I had a lot of coffee and quick meals there and it always made me grin to step inside. I’m big on silver linings, especially if they involve pancakes or western omelets.
The day I learned that my mother could be moved into the Amsterdam home, I called my brother, who was living in France, to tell him what had happened. Eric called Morgan to fill him in and a few days later, both of them flew into New York.
My mom was thrilled to see them. Morgan stayed two or three days and my mom perked up every second he was around her. Same for Eric. He hung out at the rehab place, spent a lot of time talking to her and trying to do whatever could be done to help her. He said later that it was the first real quality time that he and my mom had spent together in years.
Now I began spreading the word, telling people what had occurred. My mom had an enormous and varied circle of friends, so Janis, who was amazing during this entire period, began sending out mass e-mails about the events of the past couple of weeks, regularly giving updates on my mom’s condition. The first one gave a thorough overview and assured everyone that my mom was making progress. Then, over the next few weeks, there would be helpful tidbits: “Judy got out of bed and into a wheelchair!” “Judy moved her right hand!” “Great news: Judy took a shower and washed her hair and she looks beautiful!”
Everyone was, of course, concerned, and everyone was understanding and helpful, knowing just when to intrude and participate and when to step back.
Well, almost everyone. One of my mother’s friends in Los Angeles called one night to find out what was happening and how my mother was doing. This was early on in the recovery process, so I was particularly stressed. I happened to be at the hospital, in my mom’s room, when this woman called. My mom obviously couldn’t talk on the phone, so I explained to her friend how we were handling the situation and I said that an e-mail would go out every few days for a while and then as often as there was something to report. The woman said, “That’s not good enough.” I explained that was the best that could be done because there were a lot of people who were concerned and with whom we needed to communicate. She then said, “No. I want you to call me every day to tell me exactly what’s happening.” I said, “Excuse me?” And she repeated it: “I want you to call me every day!” I guess she caught me at a somewhat fragile moment because my immediate and exact response was, “I don’t think you do want that … because if I did, every single day, I’d tell you to go fuck yourself!” And I hung up the phone.
My mother, just a little startled, muttered something, which I understood to be, “Who was that?” When I told her, and repeated the conversation, my mother laughed for what must have been five minutes. Then she did her best to say something else, which I finally figured out was an admonishing, “You’re terrible.” Then she started laughing again.
After my mom had been in the nursing home for a week or so, Wolfgang called me to say he was coming to New York and would bring food to my mom. I told him that she was relearning how to eat. At first she could only sip liquids, and very slowly. Over the past few days she had progressed to soft food that didn’t require real chewing. Wolf showed up two days later—it was a surprise to my mom—with a huge bowl of mushroom risotto. My mother was not the only one who was ecstatic. The entire nursing staff almost fainted when Wolfgang Puck—the one from the Home Shopping Network!—stepped out of the elevator to bring Mrs. Gethers food. She was golden from that day on.
Wolf’s visit gave my mom a great boost. He was the first non-family member she allowed in to see her—my friend Paul and his wife Laurie counted as family—and eating his risotto made her realize that things could be normal again. Or reasonably so.
It wasn’t long after Wolf’s cameo that my mom spoke her first fully thought-out and complete sentence to me since she’d had her stroke: “Get me out of here!”
From that point on, the will of steel kicked in big time. She ate, she spoke better, she moved better. She walked, taking tentative baby steps, with a lot of aid. Because she was determined to get the hell out of there, she was an ideal patient, pushing her therapists to work her harder, doing everything by the rules except for one thing: she refused to take her meals in the common room with other patients. The nurses told me they thought it would be good for her to interact with other people. I told this to my mom.
“No,” she said. “Don’t like old, sick people.”
“Mom … you’re kind of an old, sick person yourself. So maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”
“I’m … getting … out … of … here.”
And she did. She didn’t make my favorite yearly tradition, Kathleen and Dominick’s Thanksgiving Dinner, but she did make their annual Christmas party. Paul and I sprung her
from Amsterdam for the night. She refused to go into Kathleen and Dominick’s apartment sitting in her wheelchair. We helped her up, and she walked in on her own two legs (with a few helping hands) and ate her beloved croquembouche. After a couple of hours, Paul and I got her back to the nursing home.
Once again, my mom defied all the medical predictions. The head of the rehab center and her doctor told me that she was now able to return home. My mom was overjoyed. I was a bit nervous. There were still so many things she couldn’t do on her own. I didn’t quite understand how all this would play out.
I interviewed several potential live-in aides. Again, the social worker at the nursing home was incredible, talking me through the process, explaining exactly what I needed to look for and how to go about it. She gave me a list of places to contact. I called a few and didn’t feel the vibe. When I said to the director of one of the places that I would want to interview the candidates and so would my mom, she said, “We don’t allow interviews. If you and your mother don’t like them, we’ll replace them as soon as we can.” I said no they wouldn’t because there was no chance in hell I was going to be using their services. After several more calls, I went with a company called SelectCare. When I said we wanted to interview the women who might be working and living with my mom, the head of the agency said, “Of course. We wouldn’t let you hire anyone unless she got along with your mom.” She then asked me to tell her a bit about my mother. When I was done, she said, “I think I have two perfect people. They both can cook. It sounds as if that’s essential.”
In early January 2009, my mother returned to her apartment.
And thus began the next stage of her life, probably the most impressive one yet.
* * *
SHE WAS STILL quite aphasic, she needed thrice-weekly sessions of physical and occupational therapy, she had to use a cane to get around (no walker or wheelchair for her), and she moved at a snail’s pace. But as soon as she was home, my mother resumed her normal life.
She saw friends. Went to movies and to the theater. She went to restaurants all over the city. One day I called her up to say that friends had been to a brand-new restaurant and they thought we should try it.
“Already been there,” my mother said.
“Mom, the place has only been open a week. You’re almost ninety, you’re stroke-ridden, and it takes you fifteen minutes to get to the elevator! How the hell do you still go to restaurants before I even hear about them?”
She just cackled.
It helped enormously that three of the kindest, most compassionate, most wonderful people I’ve ever met had come into my mother’s life. They were her three aides from SelectCare: Jennifer, Janet, and Karlene. My mom kept her emotional distance from them at first, determined that she would eventually return to being self-sufficient and not need any live-in help. The doctors told me that would never happen, but doctors had used the word “never” many times before when it came to my mom. But this time they were right. The women rotated their shifts: Janet four or five days a week, Jenny on the weekends, Karlene whenever she was needed or as a vacation replacement. And over time my mom accepted them into her family and came to truly love them. In many ways they became more than family, they became friends.
Three other women also began to play an important part in my mom’s recovery. This second stroke eliminated my mom’s ability to cook—it took a long time for her right side to become even decently functional. She had to learn to write with her left hand and eat mostly with her left hand, two things I’d never be able to do. But cooking was too difficult. Her taste, however, remained. So one day, Janis suggested that an excellent birthday gift for my mom would be to hire a chef to come in and cook for her once a week and perhaps make meals that would last several days. My mom was thrilled by this idea and the first woman I hired was Jenny Cheng. Jenny’s parents ran a Chinese restaurant and she had gone to cooking school to learn how to make other types of cuisines. When I hired her, she was working as a line cook at a Tribeca restaurant. She, too, was an instant hit. Jenny didn’t just cook for my mom, they talked about food, which was terrific for my mother’s mental acuity as well as great speech therapy. When Jenny outgrew the job, Joyce Huang replaced Jenny, and Joyce was eventually replaced by Cynthia Tomasini. They all learned a lot from my mom, and not just about food and cooking. They learned about spirit.
Sometimes I would bring Jenny and the other cooks ingredients that I knew my mom especially liked. Or I’d bring packaged food that my mom loved to eat. I’d bring her Époisses, which made her face light up like a neon sign. I suggested that Jenny cook out of the Ratner’s book, so she made pirogen and blintzes for my mom (my mom gave both versions a C+—she was a tough customer). My mother told her chefs all about working at Spago on their special Passover dinners (my mom made the matzo balls) and helping Wolf prepare his Academy Award dinners. So I suggested they make dishes from Wolf’s books that my mom used to help prepare. My mom was delighted to rediscover these tastes.
One other thing helped engage my mother, physically and mentally. I’ve never had children, but I do have two cats in the post-Norton era. When Norton moved on to the great Kibble Bowl in the Sky, it took me three years to work my way up to being owned by another cat. At that point, I went to a breeder intending to buy another cat just like Norton—a male Scottish Fold whose ears had folded (not all of their ears do). But the first little creature who crawled her way into my heart was a girl whose ears sat straight up. It was love at first sight with this five-week-old dark gray kitten, who soon became Harper. But I really wanted a boy with real Fold ears, so when her orange and white brother—I named him Hud—flopped his way over to me, I found myself saying, “Okay, I’ll take them both.” I had taken Norton everywhere with me, so there was rarely a need for anyone to look after him. But it’s harder to travel with two of these guys, so now that my mom was in New York, she was recruited to be my cat sitter when I had to travel for any length of time.
The beautiful, regal Harper at age fourteen
She and Harper quickly bonded. My sweet girl cat would sleep next to my mom, my mom’s fingers grazing the top of the furry little body all night long.
Hud died suddenly when he was six, which devastated me way more than I suppose it should have. He was my particular pal and I’m pretty sure he thought I was actually his dad. When he died, Harper mourned deeply. She didn’t eat for weeks and she lost several pounds. She paced and cried and changed her personality from sweet and calm to nervous and cranky and unsure of the world. But she still loved going to my mom’s if I had to take a trip. The cat took comfort from my mother and my mom took comfort from my lovely, loving cat.
When she was taking care of Harper, I’d call my mom every day I was away. We’d chat, I’d see how she was doing, how she felt, and then my mom would say, “Okay, you’ve done your job. You can ask.” Sometimes I’d protest and say I was really calling to talk to her but she’d have none of it. “I know the truth,” she always said. So then I’d ask, “Okay, how’s Harper?” I’d get a detailed report and tell my mom that I’d talk to her the next day. “Just to talk to you,” I’d say. And she’d go, “Uh huh.” For years she’d ask if she could take care of Harper for a while—just to be sure I’d call her.
Mitch as a kitten
… and as an adult
Five years ago, I got Mitchum. Harper, now fifteen, is as delightful and special as a cat can be. But Mitch is Norton-esque. He is crazy smart and extremely beguiling and he goes out of his way to seduce everyone he meets. He has yet to meet a human whose lap he can’t be nestled into within fifteen minutes of the introduction.
My mom’s companions love Harper and Mitch as much as she does. Janet, especially, is always saying to me, “When are you going away again so I can see my little boy?” My mom pretends to be somewhat indifferent, but she lights up when they show up. Harper ignores the aides and goes right to my mother’s side. Mitch goes out of his way to say hello to and get petted by the aides, th
en hops on my mother’s bed and makes himself comfortable, as if it’s his bed and perhaps he’ll let her join him for the night.
* * *
MY MOM HAS two friends, Bill Chastain and Jean-Paul Desourdie, who are longtime partners. Bill is retired now from the movie business and JP is a caterer. I threw a surprise eightieth birthday for my mom at their apartment as well as a surprise eighty-fifth. Both times, but especially for the second bash, as the door opened and everyone yelled “Surprise!” it did occur to me that it might not be a great idea to give such a sudden shock to a woman of that age with a dicey medical history. But my mom took it all in stride and both parties were smash hits.
When my mom turned ninety we had one of the greatest parties ever. It wasn’t done as a surprise and pretty much everyone she knew, on both coasts, was invited. Just about everyone came, too. We had sixty or seventy people at Bill and JP’s apartment, the food was great, and, in essence, my mom got to witness her own laudatory memorial service because so many of her friends—young and old—got up and spoke. People talked about how much she meant to them, how strong she’d been for them at different points in their lives, and how strong she helped them become. They talked about the food she’d made and the lovely things she’d done to help them. It was a rare and moving outpouring of love.
One of my mother’s oldest friends, Takayo Fischer, composed a song for her and sang it. Paul, who has known my mom almost as long as I have, and I prepared a PowerPoint presentation purportedly showing the complete arc of my mom’s life. A lot of it was true and a lot of it was completely made up. Paul did the technical stuff and did it brilliantly, so dozens and dozens of photos popped up on the big white wall of the apartment as I narrated my mom’s story. We had uncovered photos of my dad in a Camp Mohican show and a picture of my mom’s camp bunkmates. My cousin Jon Korkes delivered to us a home movie of my mom and dad when they were in their early twenties, kissing and fooling around for the camera. I had a picture of my mom walking through the jungle in New Guinea with a studly native, explaining that this was my mom’s wild period, when she ran away from my father to have her torrid affair. We had family photos from different eras and lots of photos of my mom at different ages. People laughed throughout—my mom most of all—but tears were flowing freely by the end.
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