Holding the Net

by Melanie P. Merriman

  I stayed for a week, and when I left, Barbara was still shaky, but able to go to work. Over the next few months, with the help of medication and counseling, she returned to her new normal—mostly her old self, but living more cautiously, just like me.

  After that, we continued to grow closer every year. We traveled to Europe together. She helped me move out when I left my first husband. We visited each other for fun.

  I guess Mom could see it. She started nagging me about Barbara. “She talks to you, doesn’t she? Do you think she’s happy?”

  Leave her alone, I wanted to say.

  In my experience, people don’t change significantly over time. Once you get to know them, you decide whether you want to accept them as they are, be friends, and spend time together—or not. I’m rarely disappointed in my friends, because I don’t expect them to be any different than they are.

  Mom wanted Barbara to be different than she was. Mom wanted Barbara to be more open about her life. She wanted Barbara to be more like her. And Barbara, rightfully, resented it. She knew Mom loved her, but she wanted Mom to accept her just as she was. And the more that didn’t happen, the more Barbara kept her distance.

  With Daddy gone, I was the one who would be there for Mom. She had always been my biggest supporter. All I wanted now was to be her biggest supporter. I would do whatever I could to help her have the best life possible without Daddy. I had no idea what that might mean, for her or for me.

  Chapter 3

  WHEN I WAS LITTLE, one of my favorite books was Helpful Henry, about a little boy who tries to help around the house, often with disastrous results. It became a family joke, because Mom often mistakenly referred to the book as “Helpless Henry,” but it wasn’t a joke to me. I always aspired to be the helpful one. In the first year after Daddy died, I remembered Henry, and took my vow to be Mom’s biggest supporter very seriously.

  Mom was seventy-eight when Daddy died, but she looked and acted much younger. She kept busy with her friends, most of whom actually were younger. She had something penciled in for every day on the calendar she kept on the kitchen counter: bridge, hairdresser, book club, luncheons with her university women’s group. I knew she had a lot of support from her friends, and that her days would be happily occupied. I cringed, though, at the thought of her sitting in that sunroom eating dinner on one of the teak TV trays alone.

  I called every few days. She filled me in on the details of modifying the living trust, transferring the car title, and generally setting herself up as sole owner and manager of her life. If she said she was feeling down, I’d offer to visit.

  She always refused. “You have your work and your life. And you’d only be here a few days. I’ll be alright. I’m just a little sad today.”

  I made sure she had company on all the major holidays. Barbara and I went to New Port Richey for Mother’s Day, and made brunch for Mom and her friend Lenore.

  Mom and Daddy knew lots of people at Gulf Harbors, but it wasn’t until Lenore moved into one of the condos that Mom found someone who felt like a sister. Lenore, like Mom, was a college graduate. They both loved books and plays and concerts. Lenore had traveled and lived overseas, something Mom had always wanted to do. They liked to talk about ideas, opinions, and feelings. Lenore was a widow, and when Daddy died, she and Mom had one more thing in common.

  On Father’s Day, Mom sent Barb and me framed reprints of a picture of Daddy at the beach with his two little girls. I cried at the thoughtfulness and pure sentimentality.

  In August, Klein and I got married in Hawaii during a family vacation with all of Klein’s family. Two weeks before we left for the trip to the islands, I had talked to Mom on the phone.

  “Why don’t you get married when you’re there?” she’d suggested. “Well, we could, but I know you wouldn’t come, and I don’t think Barbara could come, either,” I countered.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I was at your first wedding. It’s okay if I miss this one.”

  “Really?” I was surprised, but kind of relieved. A Hawaiian beach sounded like the perfect place for a wedding to me.

  “Really. I didn’t go to Barbara’s second wedding, either.”

  She was right. While I felt like I had married into Klein’s larger family—and happily so—he hadn’t had many opportunities to bond with my tiny one. For that matter, neither had Barbara’s second husband, Phil.

  Though Klein and Phil never really got close to Mom, Barbara and I continued to bring the family together now and then. In November, we were all at Barbara’s house in Arlington for Thanksgiving. Barbara and I had decided to try brining the turkey. We were looking in the garage for an ice chest large enough to hold the turkey and the cold brining mixture.

  “Do you have to do that? It seems like a lot of trouble,” Mom said.

  “Ugh, can’t she stay out of it?” Barbara hissed to me. “Nobody’s asking her to cook the bird.”

  “That’s just how she is,” I said, chuckling. “Remember that time at Bern’s?”

  “Oh, my God,” Barbara laughed. “That was too much!”

  Bern’s Steak House, a world-famous restaurant known for its telephone-book-sized wine list, had been Daddy’s favorite place for celebratory meals. He and Mom latched onto specific waiters—first it was the young, blond Dean, and when he left, they had adopted Jamal. We had previously toured the wine cellar, and on this particular occasion, Mom asked for a kitchen tour, because she, Barbara, and I all enjoyed cooking so much.

  When we finished our meal, we headed into the kitchen with one of the assistant managers. The heat, the noise, and the sense of organized chaos amazed me. I wanted to linger, but I kept up with the group. As we all exited the kitchen, we realized we’d lost Mom. We waited a minute, then two, then three. Finally, the manager went in to find her.

  “What happened?” I asked Mom when she emerged.

  “I stopped to talk to the guy sautéing the carrots. I told him he was using too much almond flavoring,” Mom replied.

  “Mo-om,” Barbara and I moaned in unison.

  “What? I thought he’d want to know. I would.”

  That was Mom—sure she knew best. I accepted it. Barbara got annoyed. Klein and Phil found it irritating, and felt defensive when Barbara or I were on the receiving end of Mom’s “corrections.”

  A month after Thanksgiving, Mom visited Klein and me in Miami for Christmas.

  I decorated the tree before she arrived, even though this violated the family tradition. When we were kids, the Christmas tree had always gone up in the corner of the living room on December 24th and stayed up until Epiphany on Jan 6th. Instead of putting presents under the tree, Daddy would set out the elaborate foldable green platform he had built for his model train set. Each year, Barbara and I set out the village of miniature houses Daddy had put together from kits, along with tiny rubber trees, fake snow, and a compact mirror for a skating pond. We delighted in placing the little plastic guy, who looked like he was running with a lantern, just a few steps short of the outhouse.

  “Your tree looks lovely,” Mom said now. “I have some decorations in the condo, but I’ll never put up a tree again. It reminds me too much of your dad.”

  I thought about all the things that reminded me of Daddy: classical music, bad puns, and the smell of pipe tobacco. He was the reason I shook the bottle to get out every bit of the catsup, and rolled up the toothpaste tube to get the last squirt. He had always quoted the Great Depression adage: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

  By Easter of 1995, Daddy had been gone for a year. Mom’s life settled into a comfortable routine that featured her friends, bridge luncheons, her role as historian of the local chapter of the American Association of University Women, her book club, and, most importantly, editing the condo’s monthly newsletter.

  Mom had taken over The Comet in 1977, just a few years after moving to Gulf Harbors, though “taken over” seems too mild a description. It became her mission, her vocation
, her welcome daily touchstone.

  She was proud of how she’d redesigned the masthead by tracing a picture of a real comet, and using letter stencils from the art store to give the title some character. She’d also added an “editorial” on page one.

  “I aim for timely, but never controversial,” she said. “I always keep it light.”

  In January, her topic usually included one or two New Year’s resolutions. In the spring, she might write about Peter Rabbit, including a brief bio of his creator, Beatrix Potter. In October, she held forth on Halloween myths.

  For eighteen years, she had compiled The Comet every month, and managed its distribution to over five hundred residents. At first, she had typed it on a stencil, and Daddy had helped run off copies on a mimeograph machine. Then Xerox copiers came along, and she typed the master on plain paper before taking it to the office supply store for copying. In the mid-1980s, Mom learned to use a computer, and typed The Comet using WordPerfect. When the office at Gulf Harbors purchased new computers, Mom had to learn how to use Microsoft Word.

  “That damned mouse is impossible,” she told me.

  At seventy-nine, she was still going to the condo office every morning to work on The Comet for a few hours. She would never visit me the last week of the month, because that’s when the newsletter was printed and distributed.

  In the years following Daddy’s death, I continued my hospice work, eventually leaving my job at the hospice company and working from home as an independent consultant. In collaboration with two physician colleagues, Ira Byock and Barry Kinzbrunner, I developed and published an index to assess quality of life for people nearing the end of life. I also gained a modest reputation for my work in the development and implementation of other measures of hospice quality, such as pain management and patient/family satisfaction with care. I traveled often to help hospices across the country improve their quality, work with colleagues on quality measure development, and train hospice staff in the use of the quality of life index.

  Mom was well-known to anyone who heard me speak on improving quality and best practices. I used her chocolate chip cookies as an example of how we all think we know (and are practicing) the optimal way to do our jobs, but sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know. I explained that she made the best chocolate chip cookies on the planet, and she told me she used the recipe on the package of Nestlé Toll House Morsels. I used the same recipe, and my cookies were never as good as hers, so one day, I insisted we make them together. It turned out that she used margarine instead of Crisco, mixed with a wooden spoon instead of an electric mixer, and baked the cookies at a slightly lower temperature than the recipe called for. We were both following the recipe; we were just following it differently. This story always hit home for nurses who worked alone in the field, one-on-one with patients, and it stimulated lots of discussion about how to discover and share best practices.

  One hospice I worked with was near Tampa, only a few miles from New Port Richey, so I had opportunities to visit Mom every few months. I typically spent the day lecturing about quality of life at the end of life, then drove down Highway 19 to spend the night with Mom at her condo. I arrived right at cocktail time.

  My drink was a Jim Beam Manhattan with a cherry. Mom’s was a Tanqueray martini, on the rocks, very dry, with an olive or two. She considered the switch from Gordon’s, Daddy’s gin, to Tanqueray an extravagance.

  “I always remind myself how lucky I am to be able to afford it,” she told me.

  “I think Daddy would approve,” I replied.

  Mom usually put out some cheese and crackers, and we would sit side by side in the matching rattan chairs in the sunroom. Mom sat in Daddy’s chair, and I sat in hers.

  By this time, she was in her early eighties and I was in my late forties, but we’d gab like girlfriends.

  “My book club is reading Memoirs of a Geisha,” Mom said. “Some parts are really brutal, but it’s a good book. You would love it.”

  “Will you send it to me when you’re done?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “I’m so disappointed in Bill Clinton. Why didn’t he just tell the truth about Monica Lewinsky?” I asked.

  “I know. Better to be a sex fiend than a liar, I always say,” Mom replied.

  Often, I would peruse the most recent issue of The Comet as Mom told me her ideas for her next editorial. I told her about my business trips.

  “You work too hard,” she said. “I swear, they’re going to bury you with that computer.”

  She almost always reminded me about her memorial service.

  “Be sure to turn the music up. People at Daddy’s service said they couldn’t hear it.”

  “Mom, your service is a long way away. You’ve barely even slowed down. You’re acting like the White Queen, crying out before anything bad has happened,” I said.

  “Well, I am slowing down. You just don’t see it. And even if it is far away, once it happens, I won’t be there to remind you.”

  I assured her I would turn the music up as loud as possible.

  Then she would serve a home-cooked dinner on the teak TV trays, and together, we would solve the Wheel of Fortune puzzles. We were both smarter than any of the contestants.

  Four years after Daddy died, shortly after Mom turned eighty-two, we had a scare. She slipped when getting down from the examination table at her doctor’s office and broke her wrist. By the time she called me, she was at home with her right arm—her dominant arm—in a cast that went past her elbow.

  “I’ll come right away,” I said, “I have a meeting tomorrow morning, but I can miss it.”

  Her voice was shaky, but she assured me she would be fine until I could get there the next afternoon.

  “I’m not feeling too bad right now.” Lenore, her best friend, had picked her up at the hospital and taken her to get the prescription filled for her pain medication.

  “But Mom, how will you get ready for bed and everything?”

  “Ginny’s on her way now to help me.”

  I gave silent thanks for Ginny, Mom’s dependable upstairs neighbor and close friend.

  “Call me if you need anything—or have Ginny call me,” I said.

  “Try not to worry,” Mom said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  When I arrived the next day, I found Mom alone, sitting at the table in the silent, darkening sunroom, propping her cast up with her left hand. On the table next to her sat a half a glass of water and the cordless phone. She barely looked up as I called to her.

  “Mel,” she sobbed, “I can barely move. What am I going to do?”

  I put my arms around her and rocked her, stifling my own tears of shame for not coming sooner.

  “It’ll be alright,” I said, “I’m going to take of care of you.”

  It broke my heart to see her suffer. I found the information from the hospital and checked her prescription bottle. I gave her two pills and made her eat some sliced apple, cheese, and crackers. For the first time ever, I helped her use the toilet. I brushed her teeth for her. Together, we got her into her nightgown. She lay down in bed, and I propped her arm on pillows. Once she was asleep, I called Klein.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “Not good. I’m so glad I’m here.”

  I made myself a drink, turned on the TV, and fell asleep in Daddy’s chair.

  The next morning, I woke early and went to check on her. She was in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “I think I need to go to a nursing home,” she said. “I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself.”

  After I’d fixed some coffee and gotten Mom set up in the sun-room, I called Barbara.

  “She’s pathetic,” I said. “Not at all like Mom. All the fight’s gone out of her. It’s scary. Once I leave, you might have to come for few days.”

  She said she would, but I could almost hear her steeling herself.

  For the next three days, Mom was listless and let me be in charge. I called doctors, took her for
a follow-up clinic visit, and made sure she got a sling. I helped her figure out how to wipe her butt with her left hand. I gave her sponge baths until she was strong enough to stand in the shower with her cast wrapped in plastic. I made comfort food—grilled sandwiches for lunch and roast chicken for dinner. After a couple of days, her spirits improved, but that giant cast on her good arm prevented her from doing much on her own.

  I called Barbara again.

  “She’s better, but she can’t shower or dress by herself, and she needs help getting meals.”

  “I can come for a few days,” said Barbara, “But then what? Can we get some home health care or something?”

  What hadn’t I thought of that? I knew all about home care. Medicare would pay if Mom was homebound, which she definitely was—and if she had a doctor’s order, which I was sure I could get.

  “I’ll make some calls and get it set up.” I said. “Maybe you won’t have to come.”

  “No, I’m coming. I want to do my part.”

  I gave her a lot of credit. I knew spending a week with Mom wasn’t high on her list, especially when Mom wasn’t at her best.

  Barbara flew in on Saturday, and I left on Sunday. She met with the home care nurse who came do the assessment. She made sure everything was set for Mom to get morning and evening visits, and stocked the freezer with home-cooked food that Mom could just warm up in the microwave or the oven.

  When I called Tuesday night, Barbara said Mom was getting to be herself again, taking charge of everything.

  “She asked me to write the monthly check for the condo fees, and talked me through it like I was a four-year-old. She pointed to the top line and said, ‘Put the date here.’”

  Over the next few months, Mom healed well, and after a grueling stretch of physical therapy, regained full use of her arm and wrist. I knew things were back to normal when she told me her ideas for the next editorial in The Comet.