February 2002

On Valentine's Day two of my sisters and I are speeding across the desert of eastern Utah laughing uproariously. I am laughing so hard my stomach and face muscles hurt. We are playing a game called, "Do You Want To______ Or ______, With Mom?" In this game we each take turns filling in the blanks in the question. My youngest sister asks, "Do you want to ride all the way to New York in the back of a pick-up truck during a snow storm or ride in the cab for 20 minutes, with Mom?" We roar with laughter. I gaze at the stark scenery around us and ask, "Do you want to live in a shack out here in the middle of nowhere without electricity, heat, or water, or live in a mansion, with Mom?" More raucous laughter. We are driving from Denver to San Diego non-stop because of our mother and we are angry at her because of it. We are also afraid she is going to die before we get there.

Our mother has been chronically ill for the last ten years with emphysema and heart disease. About a year ago we tried to persuade her to move from the small town she lived in, up the Hudson River from New York City, to San Diego. My sister was leaving New York which meant no one would be close enough to help her if anything went wrong. At the same time she found out the house she had been renting was being sold and this helped her to decide to go. Our brother lives in San Diego and he agreed to help take care of her when she got there. Plus we were sure that the climate in San Diego would be better for her. Her health at the time was not very good. She was in a wheelchair because she could not walk more than a few steps at a time, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day, she was using a nebulizer four times a day, and she was having problems with allergies that would literally take her breath away.

So, Mom agreed to move and did better physically after she got there. After six months she was walking unassisted, up to two blocks at a time while pushing her wheelchair, which she used as a cart to carry her oxygen bottle. She no longer had to use a nebulizer, and her doctor had told her to try breathing without oxygen when she was sitting for a couple of hours a day.

The problem was that although Mom was doing better physically, by this time she and my brother's relationship had deteriorated to the point that neither one could talk to the other without it ending up in a fight. When my mother first got to San Diego she stayed with my brother and his wife. lt was to be for about a week or two until the brand new assisted living housing apartments that my mother was going to live in were finished. After two months the apartments were still not finished and my brother and mother were speaking to each other as little as possible.

My brother did not understand how sick our mother was when she first came out and did not handle the pressure of having a mother who ended up in the hospital every week or two for breathing problems very well. My mother did not help by reacting to any attempt to help her as it was an intrusion. She has never been able to ask for help because, for her, asking for help was being weak and my mother could never appear weak. Accepting help now would be admitting that she needed help, and needing help meant she was weak. The pressure was relieved a little when they found another assisted living complex for Mom to live in, but by then their relationship was damaged so much that neither on of them would take the small steps that could help to heal it.

Now our mother's health is failing again. The steroids she takes to help her breath are also damaging her body. At the beginning the steroids did more good than harm but now that ratio is reversing. A couple of weeks ago she had a vertebra in her lower back collapse and instead of calling my brother to take her to the doctor she tried to take care of it over the phone. Then she had to go into the hospital because of an infection in one of her lungs and she waited until it was almost to late to call for help. When she got back home she refused help from my brother and my sister-in-law. My brother snapped and called us (his sisters) and said we better come out and do something about Mom because he was through with her. He also said he was afraid she was dying.

So, my sister flew into Denver from the Netherlands, I drove in from Kansas, and she, I, and our younger sister climbed into my car and started driving to California. We are driving because we cannot all afford to fly and we are doing it in one day because of time limits. My youngest sister has to be back to work by Tuesday of next week.

The drive isn't too bad. We each take a two hour shift driving and then we rotate from driver's seat to front passenger seat to backseat and then back to driver's seat. While we travel we talk. At first we talk about Mom and all the sins of omission she made raising us. During this discussion my youngest sister says something that stuns the other two of us. She tells us Mom used to hug her and cuddle her all the time when she was little. We cannot believe it, she hardly ever hugged us and she never cuddled with us when we were little.

We think about this piece of information. Maybe by the time our sister was born our mother no longer felt overwhelmed by being a mother. She had her first three children spaced a year and a half apart. She spent almost five years with at least one child in diapers. Her fourth child came when the one before was three years old. Then she had a breathing space of five years before her next baby was born. So, at one point she had five children under the age of eleven. Two years after her fifth child she was pregnant with her last baby, who was stillborn in her sixth month of pregnancy. After that she no longer could have children. Maybe that was why she hugged and cuddled our youngest sister. Maybe losing her last baby and not being able to have another made my sister all that more special.

We settle into our drive, rotating every two hours. Once, when I am in the passenger's seat and starting at the road before us, I see what seems to be a man sitting by the side of the road. He is so far ahead that I can barely make him out. He looks like he is sitting with his knees drawn up under his chin and his head resting on his knees. As we speed closer, the shape that I mistook for a man changes and I see that I am looking at is some kind of large bird. Then we are close enough that I can tell it is a Golden Eagle. He is on the ground about five feet away from the road and just sits there watching us approach. As we pass him I turn my head and watch him as he turns his head to watch us rush by. I cannot believe what I've seen and ask my sister who is driving, "Did you see that?"
"What?"
"That Golden Eagle sitting by the side of the road."
"No."
"You didn't see him?"
"No."
I cannot believe she did not see him.

We reach San Diego around two o'clock the next morning and check into a motel. After a few hours of sleep we drive to my mother's building and take the elevator up to her floor and knock on her apartment door. When we get inside I am shocked by her condition. She is lying in bed on her side and looks so much older compared to the last time I saw her. She also looks like a child laying there and I have this crazy thought that she is shrinking and that pretty soon she will just disappear. The apartment is a mess, with stuff piled everywhere and dust covering all surfaces. Any anger I have disappears and I quickly walk into the bathroom so she will not see me cry. I am crying because my mother is so very ill and I am crying because, even now, my mother has not let other people help her.

We spend the next two days cleaning our mother's apartment, getting her to eat, doing her laundry, trying to lift her spirits, and just being nice to her. One day my youngest sister and I take our mother to her doctor's appointment and while we are gone our other sister uses that time to change and wash her bedding and to move the bed and clean around it. She also washes the window next to he bed so our mother can see out. Our brother meets us at the doctor's office and our mother agrees to let the doctor answer any questions my brother has about her illness. We feel this will help him to handle this better and relive some of the pressure he has put on himself.

After the doctor's appointment I take my mother out for lunch. On thing that is hard for her is being cooped up in her apartment, not being able to get out of bed. We go to Red Lobster and my mother is so hunger we order a bowl of soup for her as we wait in the bar for a table. Ten minutes after we are shown to our table my mother tells me she is in pain, cannot do this anymore, and wants to go home. When I get her home her bed is ready for her and my sister and I help her change into her bed clothes and put her to bed.

We feel we have accomplished a lot. We have cleaned her apartment , got her to eat, so she is feeling better, lifted her spirits, and done all her laundry. My younger sister has also talked to our brother about his part in this mess and lets him know he is not alone. She tells him that anytime Mom gets to him to call one of us and not to yell at Mom. He agrees to do this.

The only thing left to do is to talk to Mom about what is happening between her and our brother. My youngest sister decides to do this part so, I and my other sister go out into the hall while she talks to our mother. After a while she come out and says she thinks Mom has seen the light. She started out by asking Mom why she did not call our brother when her vertebra cracked. Mom answered that "hell would freeze over before she was going to call him."
My sister answered, "Guess what, Mom? For you it almost did."

Then she went through each one of Mom's complaints about our brother, one by one, and came up with a solution for each one of them. Most of the problems came from lack of communication or miscommunication on her and my brother's part. She also tells Mom that she has to let people help her and to be nicer to the people who were trying to help her. Mom agrees to everything.

On Sunday we leave and head back to Denver. This time we will stop overnight half way home. Again we talk about Mom while we drive. We know that she will not be with us much longer. The doctor told us any infection she gets from now on could kill her. We all think she has three to six months to live. What are we going to do without her?