Sunday Re-Run: A son's Mother's Day lament

Happy Mother’s Day! I’ve written so much about my Mom in the past four years. She’s still cheerful, but diminished. The situation leaves me feeling alternately sad and exasperated. The good memories have to struggle to cram their way in there. Here are a few of them . . .

(717 words)

The woman sounded alarmed. She called to tell me she thinks Mom, 81, is really slipping.

“She asked me to take her to the dentist the other day,” she said. “I told her to meet me in the lobby. When I got there she smiled and said, ‘Do I know you?’ She wasn’t joking.”

That Mom’s asking people I don’t know to ferry her to the dentist alarms me.

The woman’s one of Mom’s neighbors in the condo where she’s lived the past 12 years. My second cousin’s been living there with her the past two years, but the busy girl has a boyfriend and Mom doesn’t see her much.

I sensed the kind woman wants me to move Mom out of there into someplace where she could get more care.

Mom dreads the thought. She’s comfortable where she is.

Me, I’m like a third string quarterback with a fourth quarter lead. I’m just trying to run out the clock and not make any stupid mistakes to infuriate the fans.

I didn’t tell the woman that financial considerations are in play. We are in no position to add any level of elevated care for her.

I didn’t tell her caring for her has led to a profound estrangement from my absent older brother, someone I used to lean on for advice and support. We haven’t spoken for three years and any thaw seems unlikely. It’s something I should have seen coming, I guess. 

Fifty years is a long time for a conservative to love anything that doesn’t have to do with gun rights.

I didn’t tell her I know I should feel more ashamed that I think it would solve a lot of problems if Mom just dropped dead of a massive heart attack. 

I didn’t tell her any of those things. Instead, I just thanked her for her call and concern.

“Sure,” she said. “I really love Rachel. I just thought I should tell you about your mother.”

Tell me about my mother?

Let me tell you about my mother.

I always think of her whenever I see Carol Burnett.

It’s too bad they never met. They would have been great friends. They had the same preposterous sense of humor. It enriches the lives of all who know her.

I’ll never forget the day Mom did a sit-up.

One.

I was probably about 15 or 16. It was the summer that she for some reason decided to take up the fitness kick.

She lay down on the floor and asked me to secure her feet. She put her arms behind her head and raised up to her knees.

Then on the reverse as she was trying to strengthen some muscles in her body, other key ones loosened. Her body became a bellows.

There, about a foot from my face, she blasted out the kind of fart that would have drawn cheers in a fraternity house.

I don’t know how your mother would react, but here’s how mine did: she howled with laughter. It may not have resulted in the desired weight loss, but right there she laughed her ass off.

I did, too.

It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

She grew up in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Yes, she and Groundhog Phil spring from the same ground. But unlike Phil, she’s never seen a shadow.

She’s one of the most sunny people I’ve ever known. 

A friend of mine told me it was his experience that a person with dementia becomes the opposite of what they were prior to onset. He said his once-darling mother became a mean old bitch before she died.

I don’t see that happening, and it will surely kill me if it does. If anything, she’s become even more childishly cheerful as her mental capacity is decreasing. Next to her, the late Fred Rogers was a cranky sourpuss.

Today’s not the day to write a eulogy for a woman who, if she lives as long as her 97-year-old father did, will endure until, gulp, 2030.

So today I will simply wish you and your loved ones a Happy Mother’s Day and share with you a lesson I learned at the feet of my dear, sweet mother:

Remember to try and always laugh your ass off even during the times when the situation really stinks.

Related . . .

The reason men dislike excessive tattoos

Doc says Mom not crazy (2010)

Mom’s making crazy contagious by a nose (2011)

Doc says Mom's not crazy

I took Mom to the doctor’s office to see if, as she suspects, she’s losing her mind.

My amateur diagnosis is no, she’s not crazy and that her forgetfulness has become her schtick. At 77, she’ll forget one of her 12 passwords to one of her 12 computer functions and she’ll insist she’s losing her mind.

No, she’s just lost amidst her clutter the slip of paper listing the 12 elusive passwords.

Like my dear widowed Mom, many seniors reflexively self-diagnose Alzheimers anytime they forget to include milk on the weekly shopping list. It’s a legitimate fear and she’s forgetful enough I thought a professional opinion would put her mind at ease or instigate any necessary treatment.

Really, it’s a miracle anyone’s sane these days. It’s like the old obesity standards. The Centers for Disease Control reports the average American weighs 25 pounds more than he or she did in 1960.

People who used to be considered ample are now average.

I believe we’ve gained an equivalent amount in crazy weight. We just have too much to remember. Author Larry McMurtry remembers growing up in a small Texas town where his first phone number was “9.”

Like him, Mom was raised in a small town -- Punxsutawney, Pa., home of Groundhog Phil! Now she has more Facebook friends than she knew in the first 20 years of her simple, happy life.

But in the rare role of good son, I agree to go to the doctor with her to help answer health history questions and provide anecdotal support.

First of all, the doctor wants to know why she’s here.

She has no idea. Neither do I.

His eyes light up like he thinks he can get away with charging us double.

A friend recommended him, we finally agree.

He says she’s duplicating what her regular doctor is already doing. Yet we decide to press on.

He asks all the usual questions about smoking (not for 30 years), surgical history (breast cancer survivor since 1983) and family health history (excellent).

He even asks unsettling questions about parts of my mother that haven’t concerned me since she gave birth to me 47 years ago in that very hospital.

He takes us down the hall to a room where a nurse will administer a memory test. The nurse asks if she’s had one before.

She says she can’t remember.

That’s Mom. This woman whose endearing sense of humor will always remind me of Carol Burnett is either making a deadpan joke or something’s wrong.

The test is really simple and, surprisingly, a sound indicator of advancing Alzheimer’s.

They ask about the date, the year, the season. They ask her to start at 100 and subtract a series of sevens.

“100, 93, 86, 79, 71, 64, 57 . . .”

Damn.

They ask her to repeat the following three words: apple, table, pencil.

“Apple, table, pencil.”

They ask her to write a simple sentence on a sheet of paper. She writes, “It’s a beautiful day outside!”

Again, that’s Mom. Take away all her concerns and she’s a lovely and sunny person. And, yes, it is a beautiful day outside, which makes her answer even more euphoric.

I make a mental note to remember if I’m ever given a memory test to write, “I enjoy screwing beautiful nurses!”

In my head, I’m thinking . . . apple, table, pencil, apple, table, pencil . . . and hoping I can psychically transmit
those three nouns four feet across the examination room from my brain to hers.

She asks Mom to fold the paper and set it on the floor. She does so. She asks her to pick it up. She does so.

She asks her to draw two odd geometric shapes on the page. She does so.

She asks her to repeat the three words she asked her to remember. I squeeze the muscles of my face together to kick my brain into a higher gear . . . Apple! . . . Table!  . . . Pencil!

Maybe she’s not my real mom because she cheerfully blurts out, “Apple, table, mirror!”

The nurse says, “Well, you do not have Alzheimers.”

She tells a heartbreaking story about how people with even the early stages of the dreaded disease are unable to understand a simple request like, “Fold this piece of paper, put it on the floor and pick it up.”

Mom scored 26 out of 30 on the memory test and those are numbers I’ll remember with loving relief for a very long time.

The nurse says she just finished a revealing book called “The Myth of Alzheimers: What You Are Not Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis,” by Dr. Peter Whitehouse. She says the book tells us the aging brain is going to struggle to remember so much thrown at it these days and none of us should panic about forgetting all the unnecessary minutia inundating us.

Unlikely, I think. It’s been four hours and every ten minutes my mind is still chirping . . . apple, table, pencil.

She hints we’re raising a generation of addle-brained morons who will slide across the surface of their lives thinking multi-tasking isn’t harmful to learning.

She says the surefire ways to keep all our aging minds supple is to exercise our bodies with sunny strolls and exercise our minds with reading and puzzles. It makes a difference.

I hope this puts her mind at ease. I hope she remembers to not be so hard on herself if she carelessly calls my daughter by her sister’s name.

That’s not a symptom. It’s a slip of the tongue.

Thus ends my adventure with Mom at the doctor’s office.

And, yes, I’ll go again anytime she needs me. I want to support this still vivacious woman even in trying situations.

Make that, especially in trying situations.

I’m just not all that crazy about the whole idea.

Groundhog Day edition

My mother is a graduate of Punxsutawney High School, class of ‘50, so I’ve always felt a special kinship to this stress-free, offbeat holiday. Every year on February 2 my Mom makes Groundhog cookies. I want to stress: There’s no critter in groundhog cookies.

• Why the 1993 Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day” isn’t considered one of the best American movies ever is a reflection of critical snobbery. It is hilarious, romantic, inventive and when Murray’s Phil Connor character decides to save the decrepit homeless man he’d been ignoring the previous several hundred days or so, it shows something many other more critically acclaimed movies never show: it shows heart. His soulful pivot from selfishness to selflessness is as timeless a tale as anything conjured by Charles Dickens.

• In 2010, overseas wars will continue to rage, famine and natural disaster will reap a bitter toll on luckless unfortunates and many, like me, will struggle to earn a living. But if news reports prove correct and Pittsburgh Penguin owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle manage to pry the Pittsburgh Pirate franchise from the miserly hands of current owner Bob Nutting, I will consider this a year as joyful as the ones that saw the births of my children.

• Pittsburgh Magazine continues its flattering mentions of www.EightDaysToAmish.com by in its print edition saying it’s one of the best of the ‘burgh blogs. As I always say, I can’t eat such praise, but it does nourish.

• Equally pleasing was a lavish mention in the Thailand-based The Caffeinated Globe. My new friend January Asia, whom I mentioned in my New Year’s Day e-dress, turned over to me a large part of her post Whoopie Pie and Eight Days To Amish. In it, she allows me to explain about the origins of Whoopie Pie or gobs (otherwise stolid Amish farmers would see them in their lunch boxes and say, “Whoopie!”), about my travels to the Lancaster County village Intercourse, Pa., and how the place got its name. It was all in good fun. Plus, I like it anytime I get to mention Intercourse because I get to recall the bumper sticker I saw there that said: “Virginia May Be For Lovers, But Pennsylvania has Intercourse.”

• My hatred for Bob Nutting and his infernal role in 17 consecutive years of losing Pirate baseball is unrivaled in sports history. I ran into him this past summer at a Bob Dylan concert. When I said his name and asked what he was doing, he approached me in the beer line hoping, I guess, for an amigo moment. He stuck his hand out and said, “I’m doing fine. How are you?” I told him I didn’t ask how he was doing. I asked what he was doing. Then I lit into him for three minutes about his cheap mismanagement of the once-proud team I love. He sheepishly began backing away and stammered that, well, he was at least glad I still cared. I snarled back, “I stopped caring the day you traded Nate McLouth!”

• If it comes across as disparagement, it is unintended, but “Groundhog Day” is to Groundhog Day movies what “It’s a Wonderful Life” is to Christmas flicks.

• I hope I ruined an otherwise fine Dylan show (John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson performed, too) for Nutting. He’s certainly ruined many, many nights for me. I wonder if in moments of doubt he wonders, “Gee, maybe that wobbly drunk from the beer line at the Dylan show was right. Maybe I should spend more on player development and sign young talent to long-term deals. Hmmm . . . .”

• Yes, I understand the "www" stands for “world-wide web” but I’m still tickled to realize that a number of people wake up in farflung Thailand and think, “I wonder what that guy who works above the little family tavern in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, thinks about the great Lemieux’s efforts to buy the Bucs from that jerk Nutting.” I wonder if I have more readers in Thailand than I do in Latrobe.

• Still, if you combined all the readers I have in Latrobe with all the readers I have in Thailand, you’d probably have about a meager total of 25, or about the same number of people as on a professional baseball roster.

• I’ll bet a team of my combined readers in Thailand and Latrobe could kick the asses of Nutting’s sorry Pirates. I’d like to see that humiliation.

• I’m enjoying contributing to Twitter more than I thought. I now have 50 posts so, please, check it out at http://twitter.com/8days2amish. I think my tweet of the week so far is: “Civilization will descend into chaos within two years after someone, and it's bound to happen, invents an iPhone lie detector app.”

• Look for me to tweet that line about Pennsylvanians having Intercourse several times in connection with Valentine’s Day.

• Groundhog Phil saw his shadow and that means six more weeks of winter. In commemoration of this great stress-free holiday, try and do something nice for yourself and nice for someone else. Then do it over and over and over, again and again and again.