Coffee with Mom

by Mike Glenn

  When my grandfather died, the oldest children wanted their share of the farm and forced my grandmother to refinance the farm to pay the oldest children their share of the inheritance. That debt is what put my father and his family in debt they couldn’t recover from. Add that to trying to scratch out a living in one of the poorest areas of the country, southern rural Mississippi, and you have a recipe for a childhood of extreme poverty.

  When my grandmother remarried, she left my dad and his little brother on their own. A family friend told their son and daughter, Carolyn, to go pick up Marshall (my dad was known by his middle name when he was growing up). He was going to stay with them a while. Carolyn told me at Dad’s funeral she and her brother pulled up in the front yard and Dad had walked over to the car.

  “Marshall, mom said you’re going to live with us for a little while.”

  “Okay,” my dad said. “Let me go get my stuff.”

  Carolyn told me, with tears in her eyes, she’d never forget the picture of my father walking across the yard to the car carrying a rolled-up paper bag.

  Everything my dad owned was in that paper bag.

  The local doctor hired my dad to run his gas station. Dad slept in the back of the garage. When the gas station closed, Dad would go to Laurel (the nearest town) and roller-skate. According to my dad’s friends, Dad was something of a local hero at the rink. I’ve heard story after story about how well my dad could skate. I’ve even heard stories about him skating on the wall. More than one person has told me how fast my dad would skate around the rink, and then, jump and throw his skates up against the wall. For Dad, it was a game to see how high and how far he could skate before he had to put his skates back on the floor.

  Again, according to my dad’s childhood friends, he was thrown out of the rink more than once for skating on the wall. I’ve heard this from too many people to doubt its truth.

  One night, while skating around the rink, he noticed a tall, lean brunette, and he wanted to find out who she was. So, he tripped her. As he helped her up, he apologized and introduced himself. She told him her name was “Barbara,” and according to my dad’s telling, he had accomplished his mission. He found out her name.

  According to my mom’s telling of the story, she decided right then that the guy who tripped her would pay for what he had done. So, she married him.

  Dad accomplished his mission, and Mom was just starting hers.

  Once, I asked Mom what she saw in Dad and why she wanted to marry him. “He was going somewhere,” she said, “and I wanted to go with him.”

  Dad would find out my mom had been growing up with her own story. My grandmother died when my mother was twelve years old. She had breast cancer, and her death left my grandfather with four little girls to raise. Mom was the oldest, and Jenny, the baby, was about two years old.

  My mother became an adult overnight. I don’t know if my grandmother had told her she would be in charge, if my grandfather or someone else had said something in passing about my mother having to be in charge, or if my mom, with her personality, assumed she was in charge. She became mother to her three younger sisters. Whenever they got together, they would argue as sisters, and then, the argument would change to the topic of Mom being too controlling over their lives. Sometimes, she was their sister, and other times, she was their mother. This unique dynamic made for some interesting conversations around the dinner table.

  When my grandfather remarried, it wasn’t a good situation. His second wife was an alcoholic and caused untold hurt in my mother’s family. Some of the relationships weren’t restored until after I was an adult. Although this marriage ended in divorce, the damage was still deep.

  I didn’t know my grandfather had married a second time. I knew my grandmother had died and my grandfather had remarried, but what I thought was his second marriage was his third. He married a local school teacher, and she became the grandmother I knew.

  Mom had started working at a local department store, saving her money so she could move out of her house and give her sisters a place to go. She was working at the department store when she met my dad.

  They wanted to get out of Mississippi, so Dad decided to join the Air Force. They got married but didn’t tell anyone. My dad left for basic training and wrote letters to my mom every day. I have some of those letters. My mom kept everything, and she certainly kept these. His letters sound like a bad country love song. One of them tells her that he had gotten his wedding ring. They were so poor when they got married they had to put my dad’s wedding band on layaway.

  When my mom was finally able to join my dad, they lived in a small apartment and scraped by to make ends meet. They were trying to start their lives on an airman’s pay. I have one of Dad’s original W-2s that shows they were living on less than $4,000 a year.

  I don’t know how they made it, and when I talked to my parents about it, they didn’t know how they made it either. Dad always hustled, and Mom was always behind him. Dad worked two jobs for most of my life and three jobs for part of it. Mom would hold the house together, so everything would be just right when Dad finally got home. They didn’t have much in the world besides each other, and each was determined to always be there for the other. They weren’t just close, they were inseparable.

  Coffee with Mom: “I dreamed about your father last night, and I kept my eyes closed as long as I could. I didn’t want the dream to end.”

  Why am I telling you all of this? Because you can’t know my mom if you didn’t know my dad. They lived for each other. His dreams were hers, and her dreams were his. Whenever they would get involved in a project, they would define success in terms of what the other wanted. When they built their house, Mom made sure there were things in the house Dad wanted. When I talked to Dad, he would tell me he didn’t care where he and Mom lived, but the house was important to her, so he went along.

  If you asked Mom why it mattered, she would say it was important to Dad. If I asked Dad, he would tell me it was important to my mom. I could never get a straight answer from either of them. Maybe it was because they had been through so much together. Maybe it was because they had achieved so much together.

  Then, my dad had his first heart attack, and not only did everything change for Dad, it changed for Mom. Her life now focused on taking care of my dad and making sure he was healthy and lived without stress. If something upset my dad, my mother decreed we would not talk about it. If the doctor said my dad was to walk three miles a day, he walked three miles a day—not one step more and not one step less.

  Mom kept my dad alive through another heart attack, another bypass surgery, numerous rehabs, and countless trips to the doctor’s office and emergency room when the pacemaker or medicine would get out of whack. The last two years of Dad’s life, my mother didn’t sleep. She would nap on the couch in between my dad calling for her. She was his caretaker twenty-four hours a day and living on the ragged edge. One of the reasons I had such a hard time accepting her illness was knowing what caring for Dad had taken out of her.

  She wouldn’t let anyone help. This was her job to do, and if my dad wasn’t living, she didn’t want to live either.

  When Dad died, Mom lost her reason for living. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t give that back to her.

  I could do a lot of things for Mom. I could make sure she was safe. I could find her the best doctors possible. I could make sure she was fed well and had her medications. I could make sure she had nice clothes, but no matter how much I did, the one thing I couldn’t do was be my dad.

  I could take her places. I could talk about our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but as soon as the conversation would lag or as soon as she saw something that reminded her of Dad—and everything reminded her of Dad—she would drift off into her grief, or she would start to cry and tell me how much she missed him.

  Mom did everything she co
uld to keep my dad’s memory alive. She laminated every piece of paper that had anything to do with my dad. And I mean EVERYTHING—routine business letters, travel expense reports, doctors’ letters, and curriculum notes from his teaching with the Army. Everything my dad touched, anything he wrote on, anything that was addressed to him, was laminated for history.

  Dad had lived a significant life, and Mom was going to make sure everyone knew it.

  “I’m always amazed,” she said, “at how much your dad was able to accomplish after starting with so little.”

  Compared to my dad, I was a disappointment.

  “Mom, you were part of that team. Dad used to tell me he couldn’t have done what he did if it weren’t for you. Mom, you did the hard work. Dad couldn’t fire anybody. If someone had to be fired from the store, you fired them.”

  “Your daddy was a big old softie.” That would bring up another story about Dad and how he helped someone out and changed their life. At my dad’s funeral, we stood in line for over five hours and listened to person after person telling us how Dad had saved their life. When we got in the car to go home, Mom asked me, “Where were we when your daddy was saving all of these lives?”

  “We were in the car, Mom, blowing the horn and yelling at Dad to come on.”

  When you’re caring for your parent, you’re tempted to try to fill every hole in their life. You want to make sure they have plenty of friends and have exciting trips to take, but no matter how hard you try, there will be things in their lives you simply won’t be able to replace.

  Coffee with Mom: “I miss your dad. He brought all of the color to my life. Without him, everything’s just black and white.”

  When my mom moved to Nashville, or rather, when I kidnapped her and stuck her in this prison, she lost friends she had for fifty years. She lost her favorite places to eat, her hairdresser, and her favorite grocery store. She lost her pharmacists and neighbors she loved. She lost her Sunday school class and her favorite choir. She lost the geography of her life. I might as well have taken her to another planet.

  And she had lost Dad. The one person she could always count on. She lost the person who knew her better than anyone. She lost her stories, her history, and her confidence that she could handle the future.

  Yes, I look like my father, but I wasn’t him. She had lost a lot, and while I could replace some of it, I couldn’t really do anything about the missing parts that mattered most to her. There are some failures in life you just can’t fix.

  Chapter 15

  You Have No Right

  Coffee with Mom: “What did you do with all of my clothes? They’re too big for Jeannie. Are you wearing them?”

  As I’ve mentioned before, my mother was one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. For her, it was always about strength. If she thought you couldn’t handle the moment, she would push you aside and take over. Weakness was a sin. She was strong enough to get the job done, and if you couldn’t, then she would push you out of the way.

  And for the longest time, Mom couldn’t understand how things had been reversed. She wasn’t in charge anymore. I was. There was never a meeting when we transferred power from her to me. There were never any documents signed or a legal fanfare celebrating the transfer of power.

  Just one day, I was in charge. I knew it. I think Mom knew it, although she never admitted it.

  “What right do you have to do this to me? You’ve stolen all of my things. The things your daddy and I worked for, and you just came in and took them. You took everything. You kidnapped me and stuck me in this prison. What did I ever do to you that you would treat me like this?”

  Those were the tame conversations. Sometimes, Mom would sound like her old self. I would recognize the tone of her voice. I could follow the line of her reasoning, but these times grew further and further apart. I soon learned that I would have to carry both ends of the conversation.

  Yet, just because my mom was ill didn’t necessarily mean she was wrong. Had I overstepped my bounds? Had I usurped an authority that wasn’t mine? Did I have the right to do what I was doing?

  Legally, I did. Mom had signed all of the papers making me her legal representative and guardian. I’m sure she didn’t have this circumstance in mind. Her grandmother had lived well into her nineties. Her father had lived a long life, despite being a serious smoker for most of his life. They had enjoyed reasonable health most of their lives.

  When her grandmother could no longer care for herself, the family took care of her by keeping her for six weeks at a time. I can remember taking my great-grandmother to the airport and watching her plane take off. Those were the days when you could walk with the passenger directly to the gate. I can still remember watching my great-grandmother waving from her seat as the plane taxied out for take-off. I would often tease Mom that I was going to buy her some white gloves and a little pill box hat like my great-grandmother used to wear and send her off on the next plane out.

  I think she would have gone, and I guess that’s why I didn’t push it.

  Things were turning out very differently for my mom. She was still in great health. She was strong and took very little medicine. We were told over and over again that my mom could live for a very long time. My mom had planned to live a very long time.

  And she didn’t plan on living like this. She was going to live in her home in Huntsville. She was going to get up every day and go eat breakfast with her friends at Gibson’s Bar-B-Q. (Don’t smirk about eating breakfast at a barbeque restaurant. It’s the best breakfast in Huntsville.) Then, she would run her errands, and after going to the bank or visiting a sick friend, she would come home and work on her projects. She would make baby blankets, bake for her neighbors, and watch craft shows on television. She might read a little bit before she went to bed or watch a little TV, but this was her day.

  And tomorrow would be just like it. This would have been her life.

  I had taken all of that away from her. I had taken her car away. I had moved her to Nashville. I had taken away all of her friends. Did I have that right? Sure, I know I hadn’t done any of this. The illness had robbed Mom of the life she’d wanted. Mom didn’t see it that way. She never saw it this way. I was the one who had done all of these things. She wasn’t sick. She had been robbed, and she had been robbed by the one person she should have been able to trust the most—me.

  Which brings us back to our original question: Did I have the right to do what I was doing?

  Coffee with Mom: “Santa came to see us, and I told him the only thing I wanted from him this year was a ride home.”

  Here’s what I knew. All of her doctors, her friends, and family agreed she could no longer live by herself. I had enough evidence to make a case. She had missed her house payment. She was showing up at places at the wrong time. She was getting lost driving around town. It wasn’t so much that she got lost as it was she suddenly couldn’t remember where she was going or why she was driving in the first place.

  One doctor told me my mom could probably operate a vehicle reasonably well enough, but with her illness, she’d wake up one morning, and it would be that day, only ten years ago. She would have gone to the places trying to do what she was planning to do ten years ago. If my dad had been in the hospital ten years ago, she would have gone to the hospital to see him. If she remembered going to the cleaners ten years ago, she would have gone to pick up her dry cleaning in the building where the cleaners was located ten years ago.

  Have you ever read stories about Alzheimer’s patients trying to “break into a home”? This is what happened. They wanted to go home, and they went to the home they were living in on the day they are now remembering.

  The car had little dents and scratches she couldn’t explain. But these were nothing to worry about, she said. After all, didn’t I have a few bumps and dings in my driving history?

  I couldn’t run my
own life, she said, what made me think I could run hers?

  I didn’t want to run her life. I wanted her to have the life she wanted. I wanted her going to breakfast with friends, singing in church, making her crafts, and tending to her property and projects. I didn’t want her sitting at a table staring at pieces to a puzzle she’d never be able to put together.

  My mom was never declared “incompetent” to handle her affairs. I didn’t have any legal papers giving me custody of Mom’s business and medical affairs. I had no judge’s ruling granting me sole authority for her financial and healthcare needs. She had granted me power of attorney. I was authorized to write checks, speak to her doctors, and handle her property. I was listed as next of kin in all of her paperwork and HIPAA. I knew the details of her affairs and healthcare. I was the one who people in her life communicated with.

  I guess had she pushed the issue she could have made a legal scene. But Mom had taught me to keep good records—and copies of everything—so, I was prepared, if asked, to present the evidence that one, everything had been spent for Mom’s benefit, and two, her resources were being used in a reasonable and expected way.

  More than once, people would tell me how good it was to see someone love their mother the way I was loving her. Hearing that remark would always surprise me. I didn’t see myself doing anything out of the ordinary. I took her to her doctors’ appointments. I made sure her clothes were cleaned, and her bills were paid. I would argue with her about where she was staying and convince her to stay one more night.

  What else would a son do? Yes, I know there are a lot of broken families, and my story isn’t normal for most people, but it was normal for us. This was the way I had seen my mother and father love each other all my life. This was the way my mom had loved me. She had always been fierce in her love and protection of me. Now it was my turn to love her the same way.