Tag Archives: Aging

Voices Barely Heard

02 Sunday Aug 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Daddy has no voice but what other’s give him.  And in the fertile ground of nursing home life, Daddy’s need of voice has grown big.  What will this need deliver?  

For better and for worse, my sister and I give Daddy a voice.  So after a string of better weeks, the worst showed up early last week, leaving my sister and I with no ability to make heads or tails of Daddy’s jumbled whispery sounds.  To be sure, it’s a little easier in person.  Then Daddy and I can resort to using our home-grown sign language, where I ask questions and then give Daddy a multiple choice quiz.  If Daddy holds up one finger, I know he wants the first alternative; two fingers the second and I try not to cloud the issue with three or four choices.   Better to keep the choices etched in black and white, otherwise Daddy finds it hard to make a choice at all.

I’m no better at making decisions than my father.  In Myer’s Brigg talk, I’m an INFP, which (in part) means I dislike being hemmed in by predestination, even if at my own free-will hand.  What sounds good now may not a few hours later.  Reading between the lines, I’ve sort of picked up that this indecisive tendency of mine drives the decisive- J-types in my life just a wee bit crazy.   

If I lived  by my lonesome, I’d simply bask all day long on the sands of indecision and perennial lateness.  Maybe I was born to be an island girl, where the sands of time slip through the fingers of curled water and drift slowly back to the ocean floor, to be pulled back at some future great wave.  I love going to the beach, where I can listen to the gulls and smell the salt on my tongue, then forget my cares and get lost in time as I gaze off the shore to find that fuzzy point where sea meets sky.  There’s no urge to rush; I know real life will wait.  

But wait!  Isn’t this the kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ that caught the nursing staff off-guard on Tuesday, when I arrived to find Daddy with cracked lips and fuzzy mouth, dehydrated before blind eyes?  It is because of Tuesday that I now know actions do not always speak louder than words, especially for elder care, when those  in charge fail to take charge.  When signs of disturbance go unseen, undercurrents lurk just below the surface of everyday routines to pull down the Daddy’s of this world.  It takes a watchful life guard to help someone like Daddy speak volumes; to hear a cry for help from a soundless parched mouth.   

I’m no life guard.  But even for an indecisive girl like me, it was easy to see Daddy was beyond thirsty.  So I set about to make the nursing staff aware of  Dad’s symptoms, expecting someone to jump in and offer my father a life-line.  Instead, the nursing staff shrugged and went on its merry way, sometimes offering me a little song and dance for my trouble.  I heard something eerily akin to that whistling island talk ditty:  Don’t worry.  Be happy.  Then for an encore, I listened to some stanzas of false optimism, in words that called to mind that special Broadway musical… 

“The sun will come up tomorrow, bet your
 bottom dollar, tomorrow, there’ll be sun.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.  And the thoughts singing and dancing between my ears were just as incredible.  

Yes.  There will be sun tomorrow.  But what about daddy?  Will Daddy still be around to see the sun come up tomorrow?  Hey.  Just so you know.  I’m worried.  And I’m not happy.  Can anyone hear me?  Or have I washed up on La-La Island?  Are there any decisive-J’s working at this center?  If so, please report to Mr. Pappas’ room.  Now!  Mr. Pappas is in desperate need of a nurse who can connect dots and connect Jack to an IV. 

Time didn’t stop, though it seemed to.  Nothing productive happened for six crazy hours.  The nursing staff went around its routine business, but meanwhile in my father’s room, all was far from routine.  My brother and I got  little liquid into Dad by mouth, while worse, the nursing staff could get no liquid out, even by catheter.  So four hours into our visit, with my brother’s J-support, I drew a line in the sand.  I asked for Dad to receive fluids by IV. 

Can you believe the doctor said no?  He said, let’s wait and see how Mr. Pappas is doing tomorrow.  The doctor refused to issue an order to permit nursing staff to give Dad an IV and then refused to issue an order to send Daddy to the ER.   It took two hours for the ER call to be made.  And it came with my stubborn refusal to leave the nursing home premises until Dad recieved an IV.

All this came after my meltdown.  After the 911 dispatch attendant told me I had no power to call on Daddy’s behalf, in spite of having a medical power of attorney, as Daddy was under a doctor’s and nursing home center’s care.  Ha!  If they only knew.   And it came after I glared and spoke a few curt words at the poor girl–in the wrong place at the wrong time–who was sitting behind the nurse’s station desk.  And I glared until she made the decision to give me her voice.        

The gift of voice has nothing to do with songs and dances and everything to do with the quality and quantity of everyday life.  We live impoverished until someone takes time to forget the sands of time and listen to our stories.  And if we have no one to helps us listen to our lives, we might as well live life on the sands of some deserted island.

But I wonder:  What happens to those elderly voices, that are feeble and past their energetic prime–like those of Daddy, and Miss Alpha and Marie–that take time to birth, and that even after a hard labor, come out barely there and hard to recognize as words?  To be heard at all will require the listener to be willing to operate on island time.  In the scary world of nursing home life, for these barely heard voices, it’s a matter of life and death.  

The Spirit is Willing

30 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Mom was always a little blue on dreary days like this.   But rather than fight it, Mom simply followed the sun by going undercover as she put aside her normal productive activities to stay in bed with one of her treasured Harlequin romances.  Mom’s books were a lifelong passport to happier places, even if only to the land of sleep and dreams.     

What is it about the dark that inspires us to rest, like a bear hibernating for the winter?  Last Saturday I walked into my father’s dark nursing home room in the middle of the day to find him curled up in a recliner sound asleep.  These days our roles are polar opposites; where Daddy once woke me back to life, it is now me beckoning him to do the same.  I reached out my hand to open the blinds to invite in the bright sunny day, then for added insurance, I reached out my hand to turn on Daddy’s bedside lamp to flood the space with soft reading light.  Finally, I reached out my hand to softly touch Dad’s shoulder. But the hand that worked so well to bring light and life from the blinds and the lamp fared less well with Daddy.   

As peaceful as a young babe, Dad’s face was wiped free from the cares of living, where unable to exercise his own free will, Daddy is shuffled and wheeled and carried about like a fragile piece of antique furniture at the wills and occupation of others.  As I remember Daddy trying to wake up, I liken it to the truth of those ancient words–the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak–spoken by someone greater than I who was very much in the know.  While Daddy was glad to see me, he could not will his vacant eyes to stay open.  And rather than helping Dad fight it, I surrendered my father to the healing powers of a warm blanket and the cover of darkness.

As I watched Daddy sleep, I wondered where his dreams were taking him.  I hoped for some happier place, to that mystical font where deepest dreams come true.  Lately my dreams have consisted of unhappy places; I find myself stuck in a turnstile at an airport with heavy luggage that–though too large to carry on board–I refuse to relinquish.  And while I keep missing flight after flight and feel anxious to reach my unknown destination, I am stuck between that proverbial rock and a hard place.  I refuse to give up my precious bags and I refuse to give up my journey.  So I struggle for something to jar me loose, like a needle struck in the groove of a scratched LP record I wait for that helping hand to shove me through the turnstile so that I can play the next ring of the tune, until I know how this dreary dream will end.      

What seeds of experience or longing breed such dreams within us?  And of those of my beloved father, who hopefully sleeps without memory of the clumsy and unsteady feet which hold him back from his own hoped-for destiny of his home on the hill?  Here of late, I’ve been left to wonder whether my recurrent dream has anything to do with Daddy.  While I am no interpreter of dreams, I suspect that those precious bags I refuse to part with are full of my hopes and dreams for Daddy’s recovery.  And that I am in some fruitless tug-of-war for Daddy’s spirit, engaging with the invisible powers who wait for me to graciously turn over my bags to their safe care and handlng.    

Even now, I sense those spirits of the invisible world may be calling Dad’s spirit home, far away from the home that I have in mind.  Like St. Paul, Daddy has indeed fought the good fight; Dad’s past month’s progress is proof of what sheer willpower can do.  And while Daddy may not yet be ready to join Mom in the happily-ever-after, Saturday’s visit was a reminder that the human spirit is both strong and fragile; capable of great hope and susceptible to instant despair.    And though I did not suspect it  at the time, the spirit I called sadness that day was instead a precursor to yet another medical setback, as today, Daddy is resting alongside IV tubes at another hospital in Seminole.   

Whenever Daddy lands on the space called ‘Hospital’, I always fear that the biggest good-bye of them all is waiting just around the corner, a few steps beyond the turnstile.  When I’m finally shoved through, will I then gracefully release my precious burden for its journey, and like the not-so-big girl that I am, just cry and wave my hand good-bye.  No, probably not.  I’ve never been good at saying good-bye in my life.   And the mere thought of Daddy being among the ‘dearly departed’ is not something I’m yet ready to grasp.  My flesh is weak and my spirit unwilling.   

The Gospel of Daddy

14 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Our empty nest home almost never receives a phone call past eight o’clock at night — unless it’s Monday evening  at nine-thirty, when my brother Jon calls to coordinate our Tuesday visit with Daddy.  So late phone calls– especially in my life here of late–inevitably mean one thing:  some sort of bad news about Daddy.  So last night at nine o’clock, I steeled myself for whatever bad news was coming my way when the phone rang and I looked down to see “Seminole Estates” on our Caller ID screen. 

It was Nurse Patty on the other end, letting me know my father had asked her to call me.  Wow.  I admit Patty’s words robbed me of speech.  Daddy wanted to talk to me?  Even in Daddy’s prime, Daddy rarely picked up the phone to call someone.  And I can’t ever recall Daddy picking up the phone to call me.  In our shared past, whenever Daddy wanted to check up on ‘us kids’, Daddy would ask Mom to call us.  So I was left to wonder what great need had inspired Daddy to break out of his life long habit–this Daddy of mine who ironically worked for the phone company for over thirty years– to finally “reach out and touch someone”, to borrow that same company’s late twentieth century campaign slogan?” 

In the seconds it took Patty to hand the phone receiver to my father, my mind was racing with all sorts of possibilities.  Looming at the top was the thought that Nurse Patty had likely called the wrong daughter.  It was a logical conclusion to make, as every time I visit, Daddy struggles up a few slurred words to ask me to call Christ about Taco and Eve, the latest two strays that are receiving a second chance at life in Daddy’s home because of my sainted sister, St Francis of Rock Creek.  So every time I visit, I try to put Daddy’s mind to rest by calling Christi for a dog report and whatever cute dog stories Christi wants me to share with Daddy.

But last night when I asked Daddy if Patty had called me rather than Christi by mistake, Daddy did not respond.  I’ve learned that Daddy only answers what is worth his while to answer.  He refuses to waste time or words on bad news.  Which is why he refuses to talk about those long ago years of his childhood past, when he was treated like an unwanted stray dog by his mother’s family.  And as I think about all the years I’ve known Daddy, I see Daddy has never been able to deliver bad news–whether in the name of childhood discipline or tough love or whatever flavorful phrase society chooses to call it at the moment–even if it was for someones supposed ‘own good’ .  The thought that bad news could be good news just never held water for Daddy.  So tonight, even if I had been called by mistake, I was never going to hear about it from Daddy’s own lips.  

So giving up that ghost, I moved on to ask Daddy how he was doing.  “Oh….pretty good”, he said, as if wrangling three words together was no mighty feat if I hit on a subject matter worth talking about.  Shaking my head in amazement at Daddy’s short of miraculous comeback over the last three weeks, I began to remind Daddy that I would be down this afternoon and that if Jon wanted to come, I would bring Jon with me.  I asked Daddy if there was anything special I could bring him?  Sometimes  I bring Cosmos, our new little Scottie girl.  Sometimes I bring a chocolate milkshake or some ice-cold V-8 tomato juice for him to drink.   But again, with a little bit of hard work, he offered me five more words to treasure:  Clear as a bell, he said, “Nothing I can think of.”  

Wow.  Minor miracles all.  A late phone call that brought good news by Daddy’s own mouth.  I enjoyed a couple of more exchanges before telling Daddy how good he was doing and how happy I was about his progress.  To think that four weeks ago I had begun exploring long-term nursing home options, preparing for the thought that Daddy might never come home.  And now, here I sit envisioning the opposite — the miraculous possiblity that Daddy could be home by summer’s end.

I give the credit to Daddy’s deep down desire and hope, which for me, is another way of saying God.  Daddy’s eating good, with nary a strangle, to regain weight lost a few months ago.  And according to his rehab team, Daddy’s working hard to regain his balance and swallowing skills.   But what about this reaching out to nurses to help him connect with his family?  I mean, who is this masked man?  It seems Daddy’s progress is not only helping him regain his recent physical diminshment, but also healing some old emotional wounds along the way.  

This gospel story in the making of Daddy’s summer progress is the best sort of goods news.