"Tommy, Can You Hear Me?"

The refrain from The Who's infamous rock opera keeps running through my brain, "Tommy, can you hear me?" Right now, the answer is a resounding "No!" for both Tommy and for me. And when you feel you're not being heard - not at home, not at work, not with family and friends - the feelings range from agitation to anger, from frustration to fear. When did this all begin?

There we are my dying mother, my baby sister, and I. My mother lies in the recently-delivered hospital bed, dozing off and on. My sister, eyes closed, lies in the "old" bed curled up into my mother's body. I sit in an uncomfortable chair off to the side, feeling like a stranger in their midst. I want to scream, "Let me in!" but no one is listening.

For almost two months my sister has tended to my mother, surrounded by hospice care workers and a steady stream of friends. This is her turf. It was, after all, her suggestion that my parents buy the little house in Ohio. Florida was just too far away.

I dutifully follow my sister's rules: emotions checked at the front door, absolute silence in my mother's room. I'm suffocating. But I hold my tongue. I have no right to question. I want to scream, but no one is listening.

My mother died with my sister by her side. I was tending to my father who had landed in intensive care after most likely having had a mini-stroke, falling, hitting his head, and suffering a subdural hematoma.

Even before my father knocked himself senseless, he'd become an angry old man. Looking back, I can't blame him. His wife of sixty-five years was on disconnect, and my sister and her crew had taken over. He had lost control, and no one was listening to him, either. Maybe that's why he decided that there should be no funeral for my mother. It was a decision he thought he could make.

I would have none of it. My mother was a very social person with deep connections to friends and relatives. She would have hated not having had some kind of respectable memorial. But my dad was adamant. "Just tell people to make a contribution in her name," he said.

My sister hadn't attended a funeral since my brother died 30 years before. She sided with my dad. And my surviving brother didn't seem to care one way or the other. So, there I was alone. The only ones who seemed to hear me were my husband and son. And they were hundreds of miles away.

After two days of pleading my case, my family relented: We would have a funeral, but it would be a quiet gravesite affair. And we would have a second funeral just weeks after the first, laying my dad to rest just inches away from my mother.

The snow keeps falling on this the first day of March. I am weary of winter's cold shoulder. Mother Nature ignores my yearning for spring and a new beginning. I want to shake Her until She hears me.

Who would have thought that I, a committed freelancer, would take a full-time gig at a Jesuit publishing house? Yep, that's exactly what I did, and I'm here to say that it was a brilliant career move. Little did I know how hungry I was for human interaction after working solo from home for 27 years. Who knew? And little did I realize that a nice Jewish girl like me could find so many fun and kind people working at Loyola Press. My Catholic friends call on a regular basis, curious to know if I've started attending mass or taken my first communion. I assure them that no one has tried to convert me, least of which my two bosses - one of whom was a priest, the other a seminarian.

I figure that my dad had something to do with my move back into the 9 to 5 (actually, 8:30 to 4) work-a-day world. He worried about my living beyond my means and how in blazes I would make it financially once he was gone. Well, he's gone, and I'm more financially stable than I've been in, well . . . 27 years. If only he were here to enjoy my stability and delight. Ironically, it may have taken his death to push me to make a 180-degree career move. Dad, this one's for you!

Now, I have people to laugh with, complain to, and to share the challenges of revising and editing a set of venerable language arts textbooks, texts that have been around since the mid-1940s when a group of teaching nuns from Philadelphia published the first edition. The texts are sold to elementary and junior high schools nationwide and, while the majority are used in Catholic schools, there is nothing to stop public schools from ordering the books. That means the books are non denominational - as best as I can tell the ONLY non denominational publication coming from Loyola Press.

I love getting up every morning, donning something other than jeans and a sweatshirt, and heading off to work. My days are full, the work is challenging enough, and the time flies. And to think that I almost blew off the interview. I'm a writer, not an editor. I did the educational thing in another lifetime (I taught junior and senior high school English) so why would I want to return? And the Jesuit Ministry thing . . . Well, I was a bit concerned. I imagined crosses adorning every bulletin board, prayer sessions each morning, and a group of Bible-thumping zealots.

Some people do display crosses in their offices and cubicles. And there are prayer sessions (optional) every once in a while. And copies of publications like Christ Our Lord and The Catechist's Toolbox do fill the bookshelves. But Father Lane and the staff are some of the sweetest, most supportive people I've met and, honestly, I could probably use a little bit of that sweet, old religion about now.

So, on this Thanksgiving Day I give thanks for this new job, for my family and friends, for my good health. Oh, and did I mention a whole lot of gratitude to the American public for having the good sense to elect soon-to-be President Obama?

None of Us Wavered

If you are reading my blog for the first time, this post will hardly reflect my often playful and humorous take on life. In July, I lost both of my parents within three plus weeks of each other. It was - and remains - a very painful, stressful time. This may be the final piece about that marker event in my life for some time.


The doctor says there are few families that would have let my father die on his own terms – at home, under hospice care, with no feeding tubes or other measures to prolong his life. Someone in the family, the doctor says, would have cried “Uncle!” and tried to save him, gone the extra mile to prevent the inevitable. None of us wavered.




He looks like a young boy. He looks like a monkey. Now he looks like a skeleton, his cheeks sunken, his ribs protruding, his perpetually swollen legs all but sticks. My dad is in the final stages of dying after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He cannot talk. He cannot swallow. His is paralyzed on his right side. Still, he hangs on. Maybe he is wrestling with unfinished business or maybe he’s changed his mind; the death he seemed to covet is no longer so appealing. Or maybe at age 91 he is a lot stronger than any of us could have imagined.


My brother, sister, and I know the signs of dying only too well. My mother died in the same bed surrounded by the same hospice staff just three weeks ago. That was our first experience. We are old hats now. While my parents’ illnesses were different, the stages of dying are eerily similar. It is hard work to die. We labor to come into this world and we labor to leave it.


Our family is apparently not unique. A study conducted by Harvard University found that men are 18 per cent more likely to die shortly after their wives’ deaths, and women are 16 per cent more likely to die shortly after their
husbands’ deaths. I have a friend whose mother died, leaving her father alone and depressed. Nothing brought him a modicum of joy, not even moving in with his daughter and son-in-law. The widower mentioned over and over again that he’d never missed being with his wife on her birthday or on their wedding anniversary. And he had not intention of changing things. But his physician had given him a clean bill of health; he was nowhere near dying. Soon after, he suffered a massive stroke. He held on for six days and died on his wedding anniversary.


Most of us have heard stories like this about an older person who “dies of a broken heart” shortly after their longtime spouse’s death. But it all seems like the stuff of soap operas – over-the-top drama until it happens to someone you love. My dad had made it clear that he wanted to die before my mother. And he made no bones about hating to grow old. “Growing old is not for sissies,” he said often. But as I watch him now, struggling for each breath, gurgling in the phlegm pooling in his throat and lungs, I know . . . I just know that he’d give anything for a reprieve.


We knew my mother was dying; we had time to “prepare.” One day, she was on her way to play bridge at the Lighthouse for the Blind. Later that afternoon, after complaining of pain in her legs and having trouble walking, she was in the hospital with an irregular heart beat, high blood pressure, and the worst case of gout the doctors had ever seen. “It’s nothing,” my dad said. He was wrong. The medication for the gout turned her stomach into a whirlpool of upset and pain. Her red blood cell count dipped dangerously low. My mother, once active and involved, spent most of her time in bed. Within ten days, she was back in the hospital. Still, we remained optimistic. The massive dose of steroids given as a last resort to battle the gout would turn things around. We were sure of it. Again, we were mistaken. “Your mother is dying,” the doctors said. While my mother accepted her fate with grace and dignity, my father did not. “I know she’s going to pull out of this,” he said.



Just thirty-six hours before my mother died, we found my dad flat on the floor with his forehead bleeding profusely. He had no memory of falling and no idea what may have caused the fall. He was rushed to a local hospital where, after a battery of tests, the doctors confirmed that he had suffered a cerebral Hemorrhage, or bleeding on the brain. His situation was borderline; if the bleeding didn’t stop, he’d need an operation. “No surgery for me,” my dad said emphatically. And he meant it. Either he recovered or he didn’t. That was that. All that mattered to him was seeing my mother.



The ambulance pulled up slowly into my parents’ driveway. The EMTs opened the back door and carefully lowered my father’s stretcher to the ground. After a heated discussion, the hospital staff had allowed him to come home to spend sixty minutes and no more with my mother who had died just hours before. Family and friends tried their best to hold back the tears but to no avail. There was my father, sitting now at the end of the bed, staring at his partner of sixty-seven years. The late afternoon sun bounced off of her shiny silk pajamas and highlighted her incredibly smooth skin, her delicate hands, her full head of hair not yet all gray. Satisfied, my father signaled that he was ready to return to the hospital.



My father looks like Popeye The Sailor Man now with his one cheek swollen twice its normal size. He lies on his side, his pace maker sticking out from his chest like a pack of cigarettes. He’s no longer responding to noise or to touch. There is no way to reach him. It’s evening now, the night before my birthday. My dad is going to die on my birthday. I just know it. I try to see the poetry in this, the “life coming full circle” thing. It’s a stretch, a big stretch. Up until now, I’ve loved to repeat the story of my birth toward the end of World War II at 4:40 A.M. Eastern War Time. But if he dies tomorrow, my birthday will never be a day of celebration again. It seems so selfish for me to be thinking this way. I can’t help it.


It’s 4:00 A.M. on my birthday, and I cannot sleep. Restless, I grab a jacket, slip it over my mother’s nightgown that I’ve taken to wearing, put on a pair of sandals, and start walking the block from where I’m staying to my dad’s house. Halfway, I see two figures emerge under a street lamp. As I get closer, I realize it’s my brother and sister. They are coming to get me. “We think dad is ready to die but that he’s waiting for you,” they say. I walk quickly now. I’m on a mission. I stand by my dad’s bedside and retell the story of my birth, urging him to let go. I remind him that his dear wife and beloved son who predeceased him by 30 years are waiting for him in a better place. I brush up against him, hoping that the still lingering perfume on my mother’s nightgown will push him to the “other” side. It doesn’t work. He keeps on breathing, quietly now, regularly. I wave off birthday wishes from my siblings like some kind of sick joke and slink back to bed.


The vigil continues. Friends come, sitting with my father, their eyes closed, their hands folded neatly in their laps. When my sister is in the room, there is no talking allowed. I guess it’s about respect for the dying; for me, it’s
cruel and unusual punishment. I’m not getting a thing from watching my father die. He’s emaciated, deformed. Now I can see the chord leading to the pacemaker. For God’s sake, why doesn’t someone figure out how to turn the damn thing off and let the man die in peace? This is when assisted death makes complete sense. Not the Jack Kevorkain style – just a large enough dose of morphine to “snow him under.”


My dad does me a huge favor and waits until the day after my birthday to die. He has the last laugh, passing away quietly when everyone in the house has dozed off. He wouldn’t have wanted all eyes upon him when he took his last breath. He was much too private for that and did things his way one last time. Good for you, dad.


I stare at the all-too-silent man lying in front of me. His bushy eyebrows still hang precariously in his eyes, eyes that remain wide open as if ready for the next adventure. I’m grateful for the chance to see him so peaceful after his eight-day struggle to die. It wasn’t pretty, and the images will haunt me until time plays its magic trick and erases from my mind the moans, the labored breath, the frightfully fast destruction of his physical body. Tears come easily now. There’s no longer any need to stay strong. As heartbreaking as it was, we did as we were asked and upheld my dad’s wishes to die at home without any intervention to save him. My siblings and I were a team and now, having lost both of our parents in the space of weeks, it is our turn to break down and mourn.

True Love?

Okay, my readers. You may number one or two, but still I feel an obligation to keep my blog as interesting and current as possible. And, hey, who wants to read about death and dying? That gets maudlin very quickly.

But I do want to share a common response I'm getting when I mention that my dad died less than four weeks after my mom. "Well," they say. "At least, they are together again."

And I want to say, "Well, maybe they don't want to be together again. Maybe they did a lifetime together and want some space or the chance to meet someone new or, heck, the chance to sit and stare at the wondrous images up there in Heaven.

But, of course, I don't say a thing. That would be sacrireligious, blasphemous, or something. How can I diss my parents' relationship or make the judgment call that my mom in particular was probably hoping for a reprieve? It's not that she didn't love my dad. She did. But certain hurts, misunderstandings, and who knows what built up over almost 68 years, and I figure she was just plain out of steam.

I know we all say things we don't really mean. Hey, I'm married, too. But when my mom told me a matter of months before she died that she'd like my dad to take a permanent golfing vacation, I got the feeling that she meant business.

And as she was in the final stages of dying, it appeared that she'd pretty much shut him out. Yes, there was that morning when the hospice care worker found them talking softly to one another. They were apparently holding hands and whispering sweet nothings. I think my mom realized that it would be terribly unfair to leave my dad without some words of love and comfort. I suspect that she'd worked through whatever had come between them and wanted to part on a good note. That was the least she could do.

So, when friends and strangers comment on the close death of my parents and how much they must have loved one another, I don't buy it. Theirs was not what I would label a happy and loving ending.

Loss

It's toughest in the mornings. Upon waking - when the first conscious thoughts flood into my head - I feel last month's loss of both of my parents more than almost any other time of the day or night. This morning, I saw my mother laid out on the bed in which she'd died only minutes before. She looked lovely, washed and dressed in her favorite purple silk pajamas. The mid-afternoon summer sun bounced off of the silk and highlighted a peaceful face that looked so much younger than that of most 91 year olds. Her full hair, not yet completely gray, held its natural wave. I styled it one last time.

She died with her left eye slightly open. And as the time passed before her body was picked up, my sister and I got a bit spooked. It was if she were going to keep an eye on us, even in death. "It's okay, mom," I said. "We'll be fine. We promise." Before long, we started to laugh every time we walked past her. We felt like school girls under the watchful eye of our favorite teacher.

Some mornings, I try to erase the images from my mind; other mornings, I dive into them, knowing that the only way to make it through this sad and lonely time is to acknowledge the full spectrum of my emotions. I'm a middle-age woman who was blessed to have had my parents for so long. But losing them so late in life doesn't make their deaths any easier. In some ways, it may be even more difficult - I've relied on them for their love and support longer than most. It's tough to let go now.

I wear a piece of my mother's jewelry every day. It helps me feel closer to her and reminds me of her exquisite taste and her sense of beauty. This morning, I've put on a gold and quartz ring that she had custom designed. I wear it on the middle finger of my left hand, a proud badge of a close and loving mother/daughter relationship.

What does a freelancer do in her free time? She takes a Photoshop class.

Who knows - maybe I'll illustrate my own writing some day. Or maybe I'll toss the pen aside for a camera.

My best writing has always been highly visual. "Show don't tell" is one of the proverbial tenants of successful writing. So, in the absence of any new writing projects, I've turned to my camera and all the neat things Photoshop can do.

Here is a sampling of what I've been up to. Alas,
the more involved collages cannot be uploaded. I'll
try to solve that problem another time.

Enjoy.

Brothers and Sisters

Yes, I wrote a book about brothers and sisters. But that was years ago; since then, I've written another book that explored love and sex during World War II and the significant changes that war created in relationships between men and women.

Out of the blue, a reporter from the Toronto Star contacted me. She was writing a piece about siblings and exploring her premise that, as they age, Baby Boomers will take a closer look at their sibling connections. She'd found my book while researching the subject and wanted to talk.

I wasn't sure what I could add to her story; I'd been off the sibling stump for a long time. I was rusty. The note cards I'd used for book talks disappeared long ago. The talking points for the media - whether print or television - were a mere memory of another time when I was primed and ready to go.

But a funny thing happened. The minute I started to respond to the reporter's first question, I shifted into overdrive. The reasons for writing the book, the surprises along the way, the results of sibling research all came back to me like a pet who'd run far, far away and miraculously found its way back home.

I was in my mid-40s when I wrote Brothers&Sisters. In the intervening years, I've learned a thing or two but have not changed my mind a whit when it comes to the importance of our siblings and the many ways in which they impact our lives. I wrote a chapter about the illness and death of parents and how those seminal events impact siblings. When I wrote that material, I depended upon research and upon the stories of others. Now, I could revise that chapter from personal experience.

My brother, sister, and I have worked together as a well-oiled team in the care for my seriously ill mother. Normally, that charge falls to the oldest daughter in the family - often, on her shoulders alone. But it is my "baby" sister who is leading the charge here and who suggested to my parents that they relocate from Florida where they'd lived for years to a small college town in Ohio just ten minutes from her home. My sister works in hospice care, feels compelled to work with the dying, and is surrounded by a large support system for both her and my parents.

In truth, I was relieved when my sister made the offer and my parents accepted. I'm not blessed with a half dozen friends who would make it their business to help tend to my parents almost daily. I have a husband, a son living close by, and a job, albeit not full-time.

Before my parents moved to Ohio, my siblings and I took turns visiting them. After several back and forth trips by my sister and me, my brother arrived from France where he lives full time and stayed for a month. Whatever misgivings I'd had from the past melted away when I realized his strength, caring, sense of responsibility, and willingness to keep me in the loop daily. I told him as often as I could what a terrific job he was doing and how much I appreciated him.

I'm blessed to have two siblings who, despite childhood misunderstandings, have put all the baggage aside to care for my parents. I can't imagine what it would be like to be an only child or to have siblings who are unwilling or unable to participate in the end of a parent's life. No one has more shared memories than siblings; no one understands the family dynamics better than those who lived together under the same roof and who spent so much time together.

I don't know how well I communicated all of this to the lovely reporter from the Toronto Star. But talking to her reminded me of why I wrote the book in the first place: I knew that, despite all the emphasis on relationships between parents and children, the sibling connection was supremely influential. And the interview reminded me that once an author, always an author.