Love and Life

Sibs Dinner

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Cheryl and I gathered last night at a place on a little river nearby with most of her brothers and sisters to celebrate nothing in particular. They just wanted to be together for a bit and share dinner.

The conversation swirled around Cheryl and a small child in the next room was testing her lungs on the building acoustical characteristics by screaming. She was probably about three years old and comfortable in her own skin. No one was scolding her.

Tari had her bluetooth cicada stuck in her ear in case there was an emergency and drank a very white pina colada. (I always saw them as yellow sometimes pink if they had a maraschino cherry garnish.) I put my cheap cellphone on the table in anticipation of Cheryl’s 7PM medication but forgot to check if the alarm was set. Nancy has gotten Gene to drink amaretto sours which is the only thing she will drink other than water. Gene usually drinks only water. Cheryl had a Pepsi because they did not have Coca Cola. Ken ordered a Captain and Sprite which I suppose is another Pepsi product. Jill drank water no ice. I had a dark colored Budweiser tasting beer (beir) on tap brewed locally by some mystery brewer specially for this restaurant. It was okay bier.

The food was excellent. The Deutsche themed restaurant offered schnitzel which I have not had for some time. Kartopfelpfannkuchen came with it. I ordered that. It was perfect. Cheryl ordered chicken tenders with the signature bourbon barbecue sauce, broccoli and apple sauce. She ate most of it which meant she both liked it and she was hungry. Barbecue chicken of some sort was the majority dish for the rest of the table. Others had a rib-eye steak and chicken cordon bleu. Those decisions made the conversation continued loudly. Cheryl had her parkie voice on which is very quiet.

The room was decorated with models of tanks and other weapons of war. Above the two marines in the front window there hung a bazooka the nemesis of tank warfare. It did not appear loaded. The current Abrams (M1) tank did not have a model present as did not the Bradley fighting vehicle. I think there was a Patton on display.

This is the sort of gathering that Cheryl’s mother Elaine would have enjoyed and as we were driving away it became apparent that Elaine had been there. She began to worry that her mom would not get home. That was our job most of the time when her mom was still alive. I assured her that her mom was where she lived now and would not need a ride. Cheryl reminded herself that her mom had passed onto another plane.

When we got home we watched TV for a bit and as it got closer to bedtime and she was more tired, she was also more confused. We talked some more about Elaine and as she remembered that her mom was in heaven, she asked, “Was there a funeral?” I replied, yes. Do you not remember? No, I do not she told me. So I started down the road of jogging her memory. Nancy got up and read a wonderful eulogy about your mom. Do you remember? Oh yes I remember that now. She talked about Bob and Mom. (Nancy did not but did a very respectable job of eulogizing her mom.) It is hard to keep calm and composed when your parkie wife wanders off into the memorial weeds. I merely acknowledged that and reminded her that we had a little luncheon in St. Clement’s lunch area. She remembered that pretty well.

She calmed down and called our son Scott with the news that we were home downstairs of grandma. After she finished her call with Scott she asked, “Is grandma not upstairs?” Her thoughts will bounce around for awhile after a big group gathering. She eventually remembered that her grandmother had passed away but became anxious for a bit that she could not remember any of it. Her grandmother’s funeral was early in our married years. I could not help her remember but we did settle on her calling her cousin Barb to find out what happened to grandma Moeller. (Today as I write this I notice that any and all of that anxiety is gone.)

Trying to keep up with conversation with her siblings is exhausting for her. They are catching up and joking around. This activity takes her back to her childhood and young adulthood. The small child screaming at random intervals seemed to add a nuance of grandchild. Her mom was there too. She was in the house on Phillips Avenue and we went home downstairs to where Aunt Jean lived. These were confusing thought patterns.

And eventually we both went to sleep.

Today after I took her to exercise class, Cheryl ate the leftovers that she brought home for lunch . She suggested that we go back there for dinner or lunch again. We will. They have food that Cheryl likes. Suggesting that we go back is a big endorsement from Cheryl.

I might get a different bier though.

Sadly this room was decorated with weapons of war or krieg as the Germans would say. All in all a good family visit.

Carpe the schnitzel Diem.

Serendipity

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One of our regular social gatherings is Pizza Tuesday. (Yes, I know it is supposed to be taco Tuesday.) Most times it is just a few of us, maybe 3 or 4. Occasionally Cheryl’s brothers and sister show up. Last evening in a moment of serendipity her cousin and many of his family showed up to celebrate their father’s birthday. Cheryl got a hug from her cousin that she really has not talked to for years.

Bob’s second wife died about a year ago and I took her to the funeral mass. We did not stay for the gathering after because Cheryl was not doing well that day.

Cheryl did not talk much to Bob. For one thing he was there to celebrate with his family in the big front room. For another although he may know of Cheryl’s on going battle with parkinson and dementia, he may not know how long it takes for her to get a thought out. Sometimes her thought is gone before she can vocalize it. I have been watching this for years. At home I merely wait.

Others have a hard time waiting so they want to guess what she is trying to say. Forming thoughts and then assembling complete sentences, keeping track of any names that need insertion is a hard task for Cheryl these days. I only help when I am very sure of who or what she is talking about and even then I can be wrong. Parkies can change topics in a heartbeat.

Last evening, however, was special and when we got home she wanted to do two things. Get Bob’s telephone number so she could call him and talk. And sit outside for awhile and watch the clouds go by to expose the moon and the planets. Venus is very bright and the moon is several days past its crescent phase. Watching the night sky lately seems peaceful for her.

I asked her siblings for Bob’s phone number. She now has his phone number for when she wants to call him.

As we left the restaurant her brother, as he often does, said to me thank you for taking care of my sister. My inner thought to him is I love her dearly and we made a vow to each other fifty years ago. What I say to him is “you’re welcome” and that bothers me sometimes. Some day I will pour my heart out to him. He is a good and kind man.

Carpe pizza Tuesday Diem

Photo by Kasumi Loffler on Pexels.com

Cheryl only likes pepperoni on her pizza but last night was a bruschetta night.

Inspiration, Thoughts and Ideas

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As we progress down the sad road of Parkinson and intermingled dementia I am always looking for ways to help Cheryl or get help for her and me. This web blog by Cheryl Hughes is and has been a source and an inspiration to me.

For the past few days as Cheryl has struggled through various mental clouds I have begun to ask about and look for trusted home health services. She is coming off of a UTI which I am getting pretty good at recognizing just by behavior. Some sort of mild sleep disturbing cough (thankfully not Covid related) has messed with sleep cycles for her and me. All of that is easing as the antibiotics have been used up. We are slowly drifting into our weekly sameness.

The past week of April has been beautiful in Ohio. On Tuesday I road my Rad City bike out of our drive onto the public roads. This is something that I have spent the winter gathering the courage to do. I rode around late morning to early afternoon on residential streets near me so that I did not have to deal with rush hour frantic antics. I greatly enjoyed my ride and although it was not long I realized that I was relaxed when I returned. My cousin-in-law was sitting in the kitchen with Cheryl having lunch and I was pleasantly fatigued.

It is time for me to get some consistent considerate help. It will cost money but there is that story about camels and needles that reminds me of my real responsibilities. Financially rich is not a good description of us but I am acutely aware that Cheryl’s care will cost more as time goes on. I may be too concerned about that but it is something I think about often.

Cheryl Hughes has pointed me to DailyCaring.com which is now sending me email newsletters. This website may prove invaluable as I try to learn more about helping Cheryl. Other friends have pointed me to a home care group that I will contact in the coming week to get established.

Carpe Diem

Just let go of it

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Time to let it go?

In a discussion last evening about bread knives with my daughter, I admired the bread knife that I bought her for some occasion in the past after discovering that she did not have a large knife for slicing the bread I had made for it. The knife that I have and use at home is a knife that has been around since my childhood. I do not really know the detailed story but Mom and Dad had this knife in their kitchens through life and they used it to slice breads and cakes.

As a child I always thought of it as “The Knife”. It is not the knife I used as a child of six years or so to slice open the back of my left index finger. The Knife was made by Federal Cutlery Co. N. Y. That is stamped into the side of the blade. The handle however looks to be my father’s handiwork. He made a couple pieces of wrought iron furniture when he was in Hughes high school. It would not surprise me if he had repaired this knife at Hughes and kept it for my Mom. Or found it somewhere in New York when they lived there shortly after the war. I was a toddler then. I do not know the story. I should have asked when Dad was still alive.

It does not cut as well it once did. Perhaps it never really cut that well but because Dad had repaired the handle and injected his love into it, it had never been let go. That is where my discussion with Anna went as I was admiring her knife and how smoothly it sliced the Irish Soda bread I had made. Perhaps it was time to let “The Knife” go?

Maybe if Dad was still alive he would tell me he did not really like how the handle do-over turned out but Mom really liked it. Dad was always trying to find the right gift for Mom. This was especially true on her birthday and Christmas. I went shopping with him a couple times. Looking back, he had a mechanical man’s sense of what would be the perfect gift but he loved her dearly.

The Knife will still be in the knife drawer but underneath the new bread knife I ordered identical to the one Anna has. The Knife and I have history together.

There are other things such as these that I have let go or am working on letting go. Some are physical, some are attitudes, some are worries.

Carpe Diem

After Reflection

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When I started these thoughts on Sunday, I wrote that Sunday for me is a time for reflection. It is not the only time.

Thinking about the future of things while making the bed up and doing other needed chores for today — Qué será, será – Whatever will be, will be – an old Doris Day tune popped into my head. It made me smile. Was Elaine floating around today? Doris was a contemporary of Elaine’s in high school. Cheryl seems to sense her mother today. She has mentioned her a couple times in the present tense. This evening she asked if we could go visit her mom tomorrow. We will. She seems to know her mom is deceased. I did not remind her of that fact. Perhaps we will go visit her grave tomorrow and then find some lunch.

I wonder if I have planned well enough for our future. Whatever that may be. (Man plans, God laughs.)

Perhaps another meeting with the children is in order. I should make an agenda so that I do not forget anything.

Perhaps more reflection is needed.

Carpe Diem

Pieces of a Life

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Cheryl has in her office files a phenomenal amount of random keepings of the pieces of her life and ours together. In her current state of Parkinson she will look through, take out, put back and reorganize these as she sees fit on certain days.

Pieces can come out of the office and land on the dinning room table for perusal and examination. A few days ago a real estate listing for our previous house appeared on the table papercliped to a receipt for home owners insurance for the first month that we lived there in 1980. If only I had been more interested in preserving the history of our small family I might be able to help her with discussions that begin “remember when… ?” I am disappointed in myself when I cannot help her. Much of that, for me, is lost in a fog of work, kids, school events, soccer games, parental worry, ( et al. ) none of which was collected in my memory with great detail.

I was adult then. Why can I not recall details like she can even through the mist of Parkinson? – although she has lost other memories.

Yesterday we went on one of our trips to a new place for lunch. She seemed to be doing well mentally and physically.

Tuesday we visited with her neurologist (MDS) which meant that Monday night through Tuesday morning she slept little. She was anxious to not miss the appointment. The rest of Tuesday and much of Wednesday was used up with recovery from lack of sleep, showtime for the NP, meds adjustments, pizza Tuesday with extra participants and simply mental fatigue.

These days her mind seems to have focused on Easter, so, much of our luncheon conversation centered on hard-boiled eggs, jellybeans, artificial grass and other items associated with Easter and Easter egg hunts. She ate her usual BLT and I had another sandwich with fires. We shared the fries. The Mason Grill was one of my favorite lunch places when I worked in my other career as engineer and Mr. Industrial Fixit guy. She remarked as we ate that she used to bring her Mom to this place and her Mom liked it. She reminisced about her mother and taking her to lunch when her mom was in assisted living.

Last evening she went to bed at the normal time and got up a few minutes later because her mind was racing around Easter services at our parish. She is unwilling to accept my premise that I will not let her miss anything important. I tell her this often. (In the background she recognizes that presence at church gatherings is not a high priority for me.) She sat at the dinning room table which has lately become her center of operations and read the church bulletin. She was very still staring at the bulletin for December 22, 2022. (I imagine inside her head her brain was struggling with Christmas : Easter : Christmas : Easter in a parkie way.) Words, dates and times lose their meaning in the evening.

I read my book for awhile longer and we went to bed at 11:15 or so.

Today I could not arouse her until 10AM. She was in the same position that she started in at 11:15 the previous night.

Another day passed.

Carpe Diem

And It is March

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Sometimes pride about the achievements of grandchildren can overwhelm. Yesterday Anna sent a copy of the letter Audrey got from the Air Force inviting her to USAF Academy summer seminar session A. Anna’s daughter is interested in the Air Force, flying and going to school in CO.

THAT IS SO COOL!

… the universe is unfolding as it should…

We are so proud of her and her achievements. Cheryl and I wish her well.

Carpe Diem

It is February

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February is a melancholy month. Thinking back to childhood, it is the coldest month. In four weeks it will be March. March is the first happy month. The world is waking from winter.

February is like the early morning. The care partner gets up quietly so as to not disturb the early morning peace. He stretches and puts on a sweater. He makes coffee. He opens the shades to see the sunrise. (Shifting person lets me step outside of myself.)

Cheryl is sleeping late. Early in the day yesterday she was showing signs of her impostor delusion so I got her out of the condo.

She is upset with the passing of her cousin Gerry. Janet, Gerry’s sister, called yesterday to report the news of his passing. We talked on the phone for a little while. I put the phone on speaker so Cheryl could hear and participate. All of us reminisced for a bit. After Janet hung up, Cheryl got up to get dressed. In that interval she became the person in charge of Gerry’s celebration of life. She decided she needed to pack for the trip. I helped her for a bit.

On the fly I conjured a tour of the countryside. I was not sure of where other than simply out. I sent a big long text to her brothers and sisters so they would be aware of her mental state if she abruptly called them.

We visited her mother’s grave. We had talked of this for a couple weeks. She often loses the fact that her mother has passed away. I struggle with ways to gently help her understand that I cannot take her to see her mother. For a moment yesterday she seemed surprised to read her mother’s name on the stone. It broke my heart to realize that this is the thing she cannot remember, her mother’s death. Cheryl and her Mom were very close. Her dementia was at the very beginning about five years ago when her mother passed away. I suppose I did not realize at the time that she had shoved this knowledge into a place where it was not easily retrieved. Gerry’s stay in Hospice and our visits to see him bought back a flood of childhood memories.

The written world and its words are a jumble to her. She told me that Mom would stay here until she is cremated. I drove her to another part of the cemetery where our niche is located waiting for our cremains. I do not think she understood that she had become her mom in her thoughts.

I let that go. I decided I was trying to fix an impression that did not need correcting. Often in her conversation she is a child, her mother, my wife and mother to our children and occasionally I become Dan, David, Scott or, in the very early morning, Janice all within the same five minutes of conversation. She wondered aloud if the cemetery office would know where Gerry was to be buried. I replied that Gerry was going to be cremated per his request and his remains interred in the parish cemetery in Kentucky. Oh she replied.

I started a conversation about where to go for a walk when we left the graveyard. She said we could go to Mom’s house and then corrected herself to say, “where Mom used to live.” Internally I smiled. It seemed to me there was hope. It is February and we are in Ohio.

I suggested lunch first, so, we discussed various places nearby. We landed at one of Ohio’s claims to fame, Bob Evans’s Farm Restaurant. There are a bunch. One was close by and it was the one she would take her mom to occasionally. While waiting for our food we chatted about various topics. I sent a text to my son David and asked if he would be home in the afternoon. We had forgotten our pie plate and the carrier and I thought to retrieve it. He lives far enough from us that Cheryl would get a sense of “going home” from his house.

When we arrived at David’s house a neighbor’s garage was on fire. It was several yards and a street away but it added a certain amount of urgency to getting in David’s driveway and added a discussion of events totally unrelated to Gerry’s death. Melissa made fajitas for dinner.

It was a good outing. Cheryl was exhausted when we got home. Later this week I may probe her memory of her mother. (or not.) This was a long rambling story about a day that made me anxious about her mental state which seems to be deteriorating quickly some days and some days not.

On this morning, the day afterward, she did not open an eye until I awakened her at ten o’clock. She had not changed position from when I got her into bed at just before ten the previous evening. She did not stir when I came to bed an hour or so later. She did not stir overnight when I made my usual couple trips to the bathroom. It seems as though she sleeps more lately but sometime she is agitated about something in the evening and when I ask she is unable to vocalize her thoughts.

Dementia and Parkinson’s are miserable companion diseases. (And they both suck.)

Carpe Diem.

Children are a Joy

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Even at somber occasions like funerals kids are a joy to the heart.

Verna’s funeral was today. (Cheryl’s cousin) Visitation was in church before the mass. Children playing hide and seek before mass in amongst the pews seems irreverent to many adults but not to me. The joy in their hearts shouldn’t be squashed or demeaned in any way. Some were wearing kitty ears. Some were wearing pigtails. All were dressed in their Sunday best because they were going to great Grandma’s funeral.

Funerals can be sad but not with kids around. One little guy spotted his Nana. He went to visit and scored a bag of fruit snacks. Nana is good for a treat. The same little guy needed the restroom in the middle of mass and upon the return decided to get back as fast as he could to Daddy. His father smiled and laughed with him when he returned. (Mom was more somber.)

Roman Catholic funeral mass liturgy is full of hope. There is a format but less ritual. The opening hymn was “Morning has Broken“. It is a good one full of hope and cheeriness. I always will hear Cat Stevens’ (Yusaf Islam) beautiful rendition of it in my head and because I like his music, the music of my youth, I know all the words.

Verna’s son, in his eulogy remarks, commented that someone had told him that he was now an orphan. I suppose one could say that since both of his parents had passed from this life but looking around the church full of family, children, grandchildren and friends, it seemed a poor term to describe this part of his journey through life.

Cheryl found and met with a couple cousins she had not seen for years.

She is making the snicker-doodles we started last night.

Carpe Diem.

Physical and Mental

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These two aspects of the Parkinson Dilemma are frustrating from a care partner viewpoint. They are the source of laments and weariness. The grind can be debilitating in many subtle and unsubtle ways.

Physical disability is only recognized by Cheryl when she is so physically tired that she cannot stand up. And even then she fights the thought that she physically cannot do something. That something might be as little as getting up out of the chair that I put her in because I was worried about her falling. There must be a balance somewhere. So I help anyway without trying to be a helicopter helper and hovering about her space.

Her mental ignorance of her ability to do something – rare is the occasion that she will ask for help – is simultaneously frustrating and heartwarming. She wants to do it. If she starts it and I complete it she feels like she did it. (Ugh!) Her memory does not allow her to remember that I completed whatever it was. So I help anyway without trying to be a helicopter helper and hovering about her space secure in the fact that she will not remember and assured that it is unimportant for me to correct her when she tells someone – see what I did. (except when she tells the doctor.) Tee Hee!

Seize the day and make something new if things are not going your way. Parkinson is a progressive dilemma and in Cheryl’s case there is an element of creeping apathy. The meah factor appears as she loses interest in doing things – exercise, writing birthday cards, visits with friends, laundry, making cookies, taking down the Christmas tree and decorations and other things. A little push every now and then never hurts. She will not remember that it was not her idea if you are subtle with your pushes.

Today we will visit a cousin of hers who is in the hospital. She is uninterested in exercise class. The hospital will be a long walk so we will switch activities today. And then as we left the little lunch place and headed toward the hospital my son called with a request to pick up our grandson after school. More driving but out in the world today. We will go to the hospital tomorrow.

This is an old picture but it is how I see this woman, the love of my life, the place I am home. I see that smile less and less but sometimes early in the morning it peeks out of her face.

Carpe Diem even if you cannot.