The Case of the Missing Fruit

With no teeth, my mother-in-law finds it difficult to fulfill her favourite occupation: eating.  In particular, it is very difficult for her to eat fruit.  The matriarch likes to keep fruit up in her room to let it ripen, soften up; then, she peels whatever and eats it.  Not really a problem, one thinks.  However, as her gums are softening, the fruit is becoming harder to eat.  My husband, home for two weeks holiday, tends to agree with his mother and this has become quite the bone of contention between us. However, I know he has noticed that even soft bananas can be too hard for the matriarch.  But, the sad truth is there is nothing we can do.  It is only a matter of time till my mother-in-law is no longer on a solid diet and, as a fully functional adult, she must hate this reality.  I know I would.  But I also think my husband finds this truth unbearable; the bread I buy is too dense; the fruit is not ripe enough; the vegetables are not cooked thoroughly; the meat is too tough.  Yet, he knows as he watches her struggle through dinner that I am right.  Her favourite foods tend to be cereals, defrosted strawberries or raspberries, and soups or stews.

The matriarch puts him through a particular type of hell when she tells him she really can't wait for the McIntosh apples to come in; the Galas, the Red Delicious and the early Macs are all too hard and don't ripen and he tries to assuage her by saying the 'real' Macs are on their way.  But I really don't think they will be any different; this year's cantaloupes were too hard and homemade Danishes were too densely baked.  I don't really know what that means except they are, yet, one more thing she cannot eat.  Nectarines and Peaches age in her room, almost to the point of softness and fruit flies, and then she eats them. It is uncomfortable to tell my mother-in-law only a couple of pieces of fruit at a time in her room; I'd rather do the double duty with the bowls of fruit every morning and afternoon then worry about the soft fruit turning to rot.  I think she knows, too, the fruit can't keep but it is an elephant in the room we don't mention.

It is What It is

My mother-in-law comes down most mornings happy; she wears a smile on her face and we can all see it.  My husband figures her presence here is a success if for that reason alone.  I must agree.  It is awkward and tying down but really to make a person happy the last years of her life, it is not that difficult.  My children are learning something from this experience.  Compassion and sympathy.  I am learning patience.  At the moment, as my husband and father put a washroom in the basement, my partner is learning to drywall in a small space.  Sometimes, men just have different priorities.

Chocolate Crisis

Chocolate is a great saviour.  In the middle of the night.  In the afternoon.  Before breakfast.  Today has been one of those rampaging, open-up the chipits bag and scarf down chocolate before I kill someone kind of days.  It is not like anything is different: drops in the eyes, children's breakfasts, mother-in-law's breakfast, bring a glass of water upstairs to her room, bring fruit upstairs (wonder why I couldn't have brought both up together), get annoyed for no apparent reason and wish I wasn't so immature, do the lunch scene, repeat water routine with the same fruity questions and begin to regret this whole situation.  The children are so very helpful to their grandmother, my husband is so very patient and I am the one being driven crazy and I know, I really and truly know, it's not that bad.  I personally know people in worse situations with ill seniors and angry family members and who get a whole lot more frustrated than me.  This is a good place for my mother-in-law.  I know this.  But sometimes it really sucks (I honestly can't think of a better word.)

I would love to say this post was inspired by some awful event, that my mother-in-law has been inordinately selfish, that the children went wild and out of control, that my husband is some ignoramus, but we are all trying and some times it is just hard.  It is not polite to say the whole family is waiting for my mother-in-law to die but as she retreats into her room and her memories, it is what we are doing.  Unless, of course, she is in a mood; in which case, I am perfectly justified in resenting the current situation.  It becomes frustrating in the not-knowing: I don't know what my mother-in-law wants.  My husband says to leave her and if she wants something, she'll tell us.  But every time I pass her room, she looks out at me and I know she wants something, so I ask, "Do you want something?" A hundred per cent of the time, she does want something: water, fruit, chocolate cake....

Just on a tangent for a moment, we are now going through 4 kilos of sugar a month.  My husband couldn't believe it when we ran out of sugar for the second time this summer.  I have told him his mother eats a lot of sugar but he wouldn't believe me.  Now, he knows.  For sure, his mother eats A LOT of sugar; my children don't even put sugar on their cereal!

Anyhow, thanks for the release.  Somewhere out there in cyberspace, I know another woman is taking care of her mother-in-law and feels a moment's respite just knowing she is not alone....and she can feel guilt free munching on a Coffee Crisp or Hershey Bar or O'Henry or chocolate chips from the bulk store...

Things We Don't Think About....

My children still like to be read to and at night, my husband or I read to them before they go to sleep.  We have done it since they were born and will do it for as long as they want.  Now, my mother-in-law tends to go to bed at the same time as the children, sometime between 9 and 10.  Thus, she now listens to whatever book we happen to be reading.  The children are big fantasy fans, my mother-in-law is not.  I like classics, my mother-in-law does not.  She does, however, love Stephanie Meyers.  When the children first got into vampires, my mother-in-law used to shake her head and find it unbelievable they would waste their time with the subject.  But as we progressed into the novel, she would call out to me from her room to ask me to read louder or clearer.  I think she has a thing for Edward.  She has listened to all four of the Twilight series and was only unimpressed with the last one:  "Vampires are dead.  They can't make babies."

I don't like the quality of Stephanie Meyers' writing; I can't believe she made a fortune rewriting Bram Stoker's Dracula as basically a Harlequin romance.  But, my mother-in-law loves her.  Of all the books we have read over the past year, my mother-in-law still asks about Stephanie Meyers.  I introduced her to the television series 'True Blood' but it didn't quite have the impact on her imagination 'Twilight' had; Bill is no Edward.  It was beyond funny to listen to my husband read Stephanie Meyers to the children and his mother and know the matriarch was infatuated with the hero. ( Of course, I could be wrong, but it was still funny!)

Questions

Dinner at a Steakhouse with someone who has no teeth and is out to prove to her family, nieces, nephew and in-laws, she can eat like the best of us...Thank God, everyone came prepared in their knowledge.  Maybe it's wrong to be embarrassed but my husband thought his mother was out to prove a point: old does not mean incapable.  My 98 year old mother-in-law ate 2 racks of ribs-the big ones with only 2 ribs leftover, fries, bread and butter, tomato juice and a slice of ice cream cake plus her tea.  My children did not eat as much.  I honestly dreaded coming home because I thought she would have thrown up.  No, she ate and digested it all.

But my husband's cousin did bring up a point about homecare we have not considered.  Everything is very easy when an aged one is just old; what would our opinions be like should we have had a bed-ridden child?  My husband is almost 60, would he be able to lift an invalid adult male in 10 years?  My husband is a great guy and a very decent man; he figures our child would have grown up with us and our capabilities and we would make do the best we could.  I don't know what we would do...I am younger but in some ways not as strong as my partner.  But, then, I do most of the work with my mother-in-law and my children and I don't think a parent thinks about it; what has to be done, has to be done.  I did homecare for my mother-in-law for seven years before she came here; for the old, I think independence is a huge issue and I tried to facilitate my mother-in-law's independence for as long as I could.  For a child, growing up with challenges, I guess acceptance is the most important issue; a child must be accepted into a family and a family must accept a child.  It scares me to think of a family alone with no support to help an ill child, but it scares me more to think of a child alone with no family or any kind of support in some sort of institutional setting.

Waiting

This blog is supposed to be about living with an old woman who is waiting to die--except she's not waiting, which is a good thing, but, then, all the time she is waiting.  The other night, a niece promised to phone the matriarch at 9; my mother-in-law sat by the phone from 8:30 waiting.  She just sat there and waited for the phone to ring.  The niece phoned, no problems, but the matriarch spent her evening waiting.  On Saturday, my husband told his mother he would take her for her regular luncheon with him; she got up at 6 am and waited for him to take her to lunch.  Lunch.  She spent 6, make it even less 4, hours just sitting there waiting.  She had her shoes on, her purse ready and she waited.  I used to think this was behaviour typical of someone who has nothing better to do but, apparently, this is what my mother-in-law has always been like.  And, it could drive me crazy except there is not a thing I can do about it.  If my mother-in-law has a doctor's appointment at 3 in the afternoon and she gets ready at 6 am, that is her choice.  It makes for some strange instances.  My father has found her at the door waiting to go out and has offered to take her to wherever her appointment may be only to realize it is not for another 3 or 5 hours.  It's not like time can be rushed.  Time can be filled but she chooses to sit there.  We have offered to take her shopping, for a drive, some form of diversionary activity so she is not sitting there but she prefers to sit.  One really doesn't know if I am supposed to justify or excuse her habits.  I keep telling myself they are her habits.  The children seem to take it in stride.  They know if Grandma is sitting by the door, she is going somewhere; they know if I am not dressed, she is not going soon.  This evening, we are going to The Keg for a family dinner with my parents and my husband's cousins and my mother-in-law is upstairs getting ready; it is 9 in the morning.

Regrets

The matriarch has no regrets but one of which I am aware.  And that regret has nothing to do with her family or my husband or the distant past.  My mother-in-law has quite a history when it comes to men: she has been married 3 times, once divorced, once widowed and once separated; the last separation did not evolve into a divorce because her former husband died.  She was 92 and he was in his late seventies; I think she truly loved him but couldn't live with him.  I can't imagine getting married in one's eighties and then getting divorced in one's nineties, but when one has lived so long, you may as well choose the life you want.  Which makes me wonder about her regrets...Of all the things in her life, she has told me a niece's attendance of her third wedding with her son rather than her husband bugged her the most.  Of all the things.  We were not at that wedding and it drives my husband crazy when the matriarch starts to complain about it.  The groom is now dead.  The marriage is long over.  Yet, my mother-in-law still regrets her nephew's absence at the wedding; she doesn't dwell on her son's absence.  That wedding and marriage cost my husband a tremendous amount of angst and the separation cost him a lot of money.  It reveals the kind of mother my mother-in-law was when my husband was growing up.  It tells me people don't really change; I mean, of course they do, but they have to want to become different people.  Individuals get stuck somehow when they remain oblivious to the past; they are doomed to repeat it.  When my mother-in-law tells me God has left her here because she still has something to accomplish, I look at her and feel so much pity.  My husband tries so hard and she still regrets a nephew's absence over his....