Grandma Helps Me Practice What I Preach
When I was in my 20s and beyond broke, I had a cat who nearly bankrupted me from frequent emergency room trips to resolve his urethral “obstructions” (that’s vet-talk for stuff stuck in his junk).
Twenty years ago the cost just to walk IN to a veterinary ER was $500. My extended family was so frequently subjected to my upset about each episode that my young niece asked one day, “Is Joey dead yet?” That pithy query has been reused in the decades since, most recently (last Friday) to inquire about my mom.
In the past few weeks I had a feeling something big was about to happen. I’m not a religious person but am opportunistically superstitious, i.e. when it can help explain-away things that otherwise knock me on my emotional a**. So when a VERY black cat ran in front of my car, and then a few days later a baby sparrow died in our dilapidated birdhouse (because I convinced myself he was “practicing” flying when in fact his foot was stuck in twine I used to hold it together) I chalked it up to the evil omen.
But of course, we all know that sh*t comes in threes.
As a result, when I got a call from my mom’s rest home last Wednesday saying they were sending her to the ER in an ambulance — the second time in a month — I thought “Whoomp! There it is!” and assumed she was a goner. But then I found a dead baby cardinal in our yard. And in what seemed like good news for Mom, I saw another dead baby bird while on a run. But in the end, I decided only the birds dying at home on my watch qualified for the trio tally.
As I was selfishly mulling over all this blog fodder, I was tempted to call the Winter season of elder end-of-life as cruel as the Spring season of new life. But in truth, the tragedy of a life cut short cannot be likened to a life long-lived. It’s BECAUSE my octogenarian mother and I have had my 48 years together — along with plenty of recent practice negotiating her body breaking down organically — that I could seamlessly step in to the near-death events of last week, confident that I was accurately communicating her wishes about interventions like intubation.
And then when she stabilized and the tube came out and she could talk again, I took FULL advantage by asking, “Would you want to be intubated again?” Turns out that while it looks awful to the observer, from her POV it was MUCH preferable to the super uncomfortable alternative face mask, because on the tube she was so sedated she didn’t remember a thing.
It was fascinating, and validating, that every doctor I engaged with over the last five days commented on “how refreshing” my and Mom’s perspective was, and how versed I was in the process, and how practiced I was in translating medical speak in lay terms for the patient. Most of all, I am glad Mom lived to see another day. Because even while my own pragmatism kicked into high gear, the tears in my son and husband’s eyes and the sob-choked sentiment of friends and relatives who talked to her when she was unable to respond proved that no one else was ready for Grandma to go.
As for Mom, when I revealed the next day that everyone thought they were saying goodbye, she rolled her eyes and croaked from her tube-traumatized throat, “Yeah, THAT was pretty dramatic.” I think I now know where I get my irreverence.
Mom’s wings may be clipped, but she’s not dead yet…!