“I understand. I only want you to be safe.”
The phone went dead.
I waited another ten minutes and right on schedule the phone rang. I didn’t even bother to say hello this time.
“Linda. What am I to do?” she cried, her breath hitched as she spoke.
“I want you to relax. I’m going to take care of everything for you,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t forget my cigarettes when you go to the store. I’m almost out.”
“June, I’m at home. I can’t bring you any cigarettes.” I held my breath and waited for her response.
“Ooo.” Her howling climbed to a high pitch. “How am I supposed to get cigarettes?”
“Call Joe and see if he’ll go to the store for you.”
Click went our connection.
June continued to call me every ten or fifteen minutes until about four in the afternoon. The calls stopped about the time she poured herself a vodka.
The calls persisted for the next three or four days, always beginning around ten a.m. and ending at the cocktail hour. I slept less and less each night thinking, praying, wondering what to do next. Lanie still hadn’t returned my calls and I hadn’t found a single assisted living home that would allow her to smoke.
“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.”
- Thomas Wolfe
Chapter Thirty
When Lanie at the Visiting Angels never returned my calls, I had to take matters into my own hands and fast. I abandoned any plans to move June closer to me and found her a room at the Hawthorne Assisted Living down the street from June’s apartment. Susan and Greg agreed to fly to Florida to do the extraction while I managed her move from afar.
June had been living at Hawthorne for about a month. She couldn’t smoke there either but that ceased to be a high priority for me. The lobby was homey with a television and big comfy chairs. The rooms were clean and spacious, the staff friendly and helpful. It didn’t come cheap but it was full of ladies like June who she could become friends with to divert her focus from me.
All my conversations with the nurses and Yvette, the concierge, indicated she was adjusting well. I tried to relax and grasp the idea I had done the right thing for her. That my father might be proud of me and know his Junie was being well taken care of came first.
I called her after dinner, like I did every few days.
“Linda. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do,” she cried into my ear.
June frequently spoke of confusion but I’m not sure what she meant by that. I suspected people suffering from dementia, have a spot way down deep inside their brain, that clearly knows the mail is delivered every day at noon, the bills are paid by the act of writing a check, along with the names in order by age of all the children and grandchildren. The rest of their brain however, will not allow the person to verbalize those specific facts, creating a sense of confusion. That is how my non-scientific self explains how to decipher June’s comments in a way that makes perfect sense to me, right or wrong.
“June, I’m taking care of everything for you. Just relax and enjoy yourself,” I said.
“I don’t have anyone to talk to. I’m so alone,” she responded.
Running out of ideas on how to answer this question, I said nothing.
“I know you and Richard have good intentions, but this is horrible,” she cried.
“June, give yourself some more time.” I could hear her let out a long deep breath.
“Okay. I can do that.” Her tone of voice calmed considerably. “When did you move away?”
“A long time ago, June.” Her concept of time came and went like the hands on over wound clock with a spring loose.
“How long?” she wanted to know.
“Five years ago,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not very long to me,” she replied.
I paused. Words that came out of June’s mouth were beginning to confuse me about as much as they did her. Who really has the dementia? Is it the one whose brain is in turmoil? The words June speaks made perfect sense to her. Or is it the person trying to understand the mixed up thoughts of a person who is now in decline?
“What is a long time then?” I asked.
June answered quickly. “1966. The year I married your father.” She let out a sad sigh. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. The best day of my life.”
The thoughts of her Paul drove away all confusion in her world.
“Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart.” - Mencius
Chapter Thirty-One
With tax season finally over, I spent more than enough time using the excuse I needed to recuperate from the exhaustion doing taxes could instill. As a CPA, tax preparation was the only job I could find but I really did enjoy it even though it only lasted for four months out of a year. It kept me busy and my mind off June.
The right thing for me to do now was to drive to Boca Raton and see her. I hadn’t been to see her since before Christmas when Richard and I drove to Ft. Lauderdale for a friend’s boat parade party. I didn’t want to do it but I’d run out of excuses.
What I was afraid of was that June would be thought of as a poor old woman with no family or friends. The nurses and staff at the home would feel sorry for her and when I did show up as infrequently as I did, they’d admonish me for the horrible, neglectful daughter that I was. So here’s where my struggle begins. Am I the daughter? Am I the cruel stepdaughter who only does exactly as much as she feels is required to get what’s left of her money? The issue of blood relative versus a stepchild would not become apparent to me until much later. It played a huge role in her final care unbeknownst to me. Am I stupid or just plain naive?
When I felt I couldn’t put a visit to June off any longer, it was Mother’s Day. After driving the two and a half hours to see her, I stopped at Publix and picked up a pot of deep pink tulips and two bags of Dove Chocolates, her favorite, the kind with the little sayings inside the wrapper. They were on sale, buy one get one free. June always loved a buy one get one sale.
My nerves fluttered when I drove into the parking lot. Anything to do with June these days tended to put me on edge. Who inside would seek me out asking me to buy June some new clothes or tell me she was out of lipstick? I usually paid careful attention to a request from one of her aides, but the few times I showed up in person, they swarmed me like bees. I wondered if the shampoo and soap I sent ever got to June or if the nurse was out of it at home and had a black market going at the expense of the residents.
I found June stretched out on her bed staring at the ceiling. Her hair was done so I knew she at least got out of bed to go to the beauty parlor and her nails were painted a bright red. A manicure was something she’d never spent money on in her younger life. I paid the bill for it now and if it made her feel more pampered, I was glad to do it.
“Hi June. Happy Mother’s Day,” I greeted her with the tulips in my outstretched arms.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said. I called her three times in the past week to remind her.
“It’s Mother’s Day. I thought we should celebrate together,” I replied.
“Isn’t that nice of you.” She sat up, took the plant, smelled the flowers and handed it back to me. “Tulips are my favorite.”
“Mine too.” I set them on her desk in the corner. “Can you see them from there?” I asked.
“Oh yes. That’s perfect.”
I set down the rest of my presents on June’s chair, the one with the dark circular stain where, if I were guessing, pee would be if she couldn’t get up in time and make it to the bathroom. She loved that chair and the little wood ottoman with the needlepoint cover that went with it. I had tried to clean it but couldn’t get it out so maybe it wasn’t pee at all, but something else I didn’
t want to think about. She insisted the chair come with her. So it did.
“Look what else I brought you.” I waved the bag of chocolates in the air.
June smiled.
When I cleaned out her apartment, I found Dove chocolates of all different flavors tucked in a variety of places. I found them in with her underwear drawer, scattered among the orange foam curlers she rolled her hair in every night and even a couple in the medicine cabinet. Chocolate can cure just about anything so that’s as good a place as any to keep some first aid.
“Scoot over.” I climbed into the single bed she once hated but had now grown used to. Richard, being in the furniture business for most of his career, had picked her out a far better mattress than she ever slept on before. The new combinations of springs and memory foam cradled her aging bones. I relaxed.
“Milk chocolate or dark with caramel?”
June held out her hand. “Whatever you’re having.”
I opened the dark chocolate, handed one to June and took one for myself. June unwrapped the sweet and greedily ate it before reaching for another.
“Wait, what did your fortune say inside the wrapper,” I asked.
The small black printing on the foil proved difficult for her aging eyes to read. She held it close, straightened her arm to move it farther away, before turning it to the right.
“I can’t read it. What does it say?” she asked in a phelgmy voice coated in chocolate. “Where’s my water?”
A small, short bottle of water lived on her nightstand. I handed it to her and she took a long gulp.
“Be good to yourself today,” I read from the wrapper.
“OK, I can do that. What’s yours say?” she asked.
“Go ahead. Have another.” We both giggled.
I reached into the bag and gave us each two more candies.
We stretched out on the bed, talking and laughing like two young girls at a sleepover. I’m never sure which June I’d get when I called or visited. I’ve felt the wrath of cranky, dementia ridden June and happy June is much more fun to be with. Today was a good day, calm, peaceful and most of all happy.
By the time I took a good look in the bag, only a handful of chocolates remained. While we were solving the problems of the world for well over an hour, we’d managed to polish off a bag of candy.
“I’ll put what’s left in your drawer. You can have some before you go to bed,” I said. “I better because you’ll go to dinner soon. So let’s have one for the road.”
June unwrapped it and read from the wrapper herself this time.
“Enjoy this moment,” she whispered.
I bent down to hug her thin frail shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. She hugged me back.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ok?” Her eyes glistened, filled with tears.
“Ok. I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” I answered back.
“Before Alice got to Wonderland, she had to fall.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next month my routine interaction with June changed dramatically. I went back to work full time. My days were no longer my own as I tried to learn the ropes at a small securities office. My medical insurance became too pricey and I struggled to pay the premiums while attempting to keep my retirement funds intact. I needed employer-sponsored benefits and full time work was the only way to get them.
Richard called me the girl who can’t wait to get old. His social security check came right on time every month with his Medicare premium already deducted. I longed to be able to retire along side him but with thirteen years difference in our ages, I had some catching up to do.
Even though June lived 150 miles away, I’d never been in the habit of visiting her on the weekends. I dreaded the drive and I learned to check on things by phone. I talked to Yvette, the concierge, who answered the phone at Hawthorne several times a week. I thought I was getting accurate information about June’s condition and was in touch enough for the staff to be aware someone watched over her.
“Mom’s okay,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. Those two words were to become the new salutation I would hear over and over again any time I received a call about her regardless of the situation. “She fell in the bathroom this morning. Her aide found her and she went by ambulance to West Boca Medical Center.”
“Do you know how she is?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything,” the nurse at Hawthorne replied. “The hospital has been given your contact information.”
“Thank you. I’ll call the hospital.”
A call to the hospital meant a maddening trip through an electronic maze called a switchboard. Press one for this, press two for that. I listened to each number until I got to “press nine for an operator”. The operator transferred me to the surgical floor. I was put on hold three more times before I finally spoke to a nurse who knew of June. She hadn’t yet been assigned to a room but she would be admitted sometime today.
“Fracture of the left hip,” she said before transferring me back to emergency.
The frustration at getting through on a phone was about to pale compared to what was coming next.
“Do you have a power of attorney?” the emergency room nurse asked.
“Yes.”
“Fax it to me. I can’t discuss anything with you until I have it on file,” she announced.
I wrote down the fax number and got the wrinkled, faded document out of my file folder. June made me her power of attorney after my father died. The signed paper was tucked away in my file cabinet for years just waiting for the opportunity to show its face. The bank and the assisted living home made use of it. This necessary and previously unused legal agreement was about to make the rounds in a big way.
The orthopedic surgeon called a couple hours later after I stewed myself into an overcooked soup.
“Mrs. Wright has a fracture of the left hip. You have two choices,” he said. “We can do a hip replacement or we can keep her off it until it heals on its own.”
“What are the pros and cons of each? She’s 92 years old,” I asked.
“Only a third of women over age 80, survive more than a year after a hip replacement. Not having the replacement means she’s bed ridden and runs the risk of bed sores.” He continued on with a lot of technical jargon intended to help me make a decision. My brain turned to mush and I tuned it all out. Here I was in charge of making the life or death choice for another person for the second time in my life.
“Are you her daughter?” he asked. “Are you able to sign consent forms for Mrs. Wright?
“Stepdaughter,” I answered and waited. “I can sign. I have her power of attorney.”
“Do you need some time to think it over?” the doctor asked.
All she wants is for all this to stop, to be with Paul, my Dad, her husband. No matter what choice I make, the good qualities of life ended for her long ago. I was making a decision on how miserable her final days were going to be. Would one choice bring death sooner than the other? I had no way of knowing.
I chose a hip replacement. I prayed I wouldn’t regret it later. My siblings made it clear from the start, decisions about June were mine to make.
***
June’s surgery took place the next afternoon. The doctor called me around 4 o’clock.
“Everything went well,” he said. “Her bones are thin so I had to wire the bones to the prosthetic. Nothing to be alarmed about. It’s fairly common.”
I wouldn’t fully understand until I had my own hip replacement a few months later at age 60. My surgeon gave me some background on this, I think as part of the usual protocol of keeping the patient informed. It’s unknown how a person’s bones will react to the new hip until it’s put in. The bone may spread and in that case the wire is used to hold things together.
“She’s going to sp
end the night in ICU mainly because of her age,” he added. “The floor nurse will call you when she moves to a regular room.”
I thanked the doctor and put down the phone. I held my face in my hands wondering what I needed to do. Just like June I thought, “What am I to do?” only I had no one to calm or reassure me by saying, “Relax and enjoy yourself”.
The next day the floor nurse called right on schedule and asked for the power of attorney. I dutifully faxed it to her for June’s file.
Not having been in a hospital since 1980, I didn’t realize how much things had changed. Each patient is assigned a nurse and the patient’s relatives call that nurse’s cell phone if they need anything. I knew June couldn’t reach the phone next to her bed so I called the nurse instead.
“I want to make sure she has her teeth and her wedding ring,” I said to the nurse on duty that evening. “They were supposed to be kept on the floor until she got moved back.”
Does a hospital have a locker for such things as dentures, glass eyes, toupees that had to be removed before going into the operating room. Did patients forget to ask for them back? Did they die and not need these items any longer? Did their grieving families not know of the existence of such personal items and therefore not retrieve them? Then what happened? Did the hospital hold a once a year lost and found rummage sale?
Teeth for sale. Well used.
See clearly again. Glasses in every prescription. One is sure to be perfect for you or someone in your family.
I never saw June’s false teeth except when they were in her mouth, and I didn’t want to see them any other way. But having her gum her food for the rest of her life was equally as disturbing to me.
“Let me check for you. Mrs. Wright, smile for me.” There was a pause. “She’s got her teeth.”
“What about her ring? It’s just a plain gold band.” I said.
“Mrs. Wright. Do you have your wedding ring? Hold up your hands.”
A Bittersweet Goodnight Page 20
