(4 weeks)
In the first year without my dad, I called her every single day without fail. Because she liked to take long walks, I bought her a cell phone and added her to my plan. I probably should have done a better job teaching her how to use it.
“Mom, where were you? I tried calling a few times.”
“I was out for a walk.”
“I bought you a cell phone, so you could take it with you.”
“But it’s not plugged in.”
I made sure she had lots of fun experiences with her daughter and granddaughter, planning lots of activities that first fall. She came trick or treating with us. I brought her to Philadelphia for Homecoming and a La Salle University football game (at the tail end of the school’s decade long revival of the football team that had been dormant since the start of WWII). I think that was her first time back on campus since my graduation weekend.
I took her to lunch at one of my favorite spots on her 80th birthday, and in June that year she came to watch her granddaughter while I ran a 5k to distract her from it being my dad’s birthday, the first we couldn’t celebrate without him.
When I realized that it might be better to keep her closer, I moved her in with us. It became clear her memory was fading, although, while forgetting more recent history, she dug up memories I had never heard about before.
She played hide and seek with her granddaughter. She put a ridiculous amount of money under the kid’s pillow when playing tooth fairy. She’d walk to daily mass. On the way home she’d stop at the library to read the New York Post cover to cover. Then on the final leg home, she’d stop at Brady’s at the Station on Main Street for a late lunch.
That part of our lives was short-lived. I realized we were over our head in providing her with the care she needed. Sometimes she’d wander off and I’d get a call at work. The difficult decision was made to move her to an assisted living residence. Among my regrets is that I couldn’t do more for her and keep her with us. But the dynamic between me, my mom, and my husband was complicated.
After the move, the church never called to see what happened to the elderly women who sat in a pew every morning for close to nine months. The library must not have noticed her there reading each day and didn’t seem to wonder why some books were overdue. The waitress at Brady’s missed her though. She came by the house one day looking for her saying how much she had enjoyed her company and stories and how she had often given her a ride home at the end of her lunch shift.
She lasted a year in her first assisted living before she needed more care than they could provide. That was followed by close to two years in a memory care facility. Then a doctor suggested hospice. We found a lovely place where she could live out her days. Except days turned onto months.
She came up on the top of the waitlist for a bed at the Veterans Home. That’s where we spent her last birthday together. April 17, 2012. She was 85. I saw her last on Father’s Day that year. When I visited, she was alert and happy, more lucid than she’d been in months. She seemed excited saying that my dad would be stopping by to pick her up and take her home.
She was gone before dawn on Tuesday.
Please help me support Mercy Home for Boys & Girls with my 60th Birthday Fundraiser. I will be running the United Airlines NYC Half on March 16th. This will be Half Marathon #54. My goal is to reach Half Marathon #60 before the end of the year. Please help me stay motivated, and make sure the children of Mercy Home are provided the care they need. To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.
