A helpless mother

 

February 2, 2002

 

            I think I knew things were over for my mother when we returned from our annual trip to Cape May in October 2000 and found that she had urinated in our bed. In a review of the year or so that led to her death, her additional decline became central to my activities.

            Previous to that moment, my mother had enjoyed some of the better moments in her life, more than a year in which she felt at home in society. After a week's stay in St. Mary's mental ward, she was given an outpatient service in which she had to attend regular senior functions at St. Francis Hospital in Jersey City, and then, the transition to Happy Days, near the Jersey City Medical Center came easier.

            Perhaps she would have continued her success even beyond the time she did if Happy Days hadn't taken over her pickup in the morning as well as her drop off at night. The morning ritual of my taking her to Happy Days proved among the happiest days of our lives, my role as son complete for the first time, helping her in and out of the car, helping her up the ramps to the facility's door.

            Perhaps, she was failing already. She could not climb stairs when she got home after his trip to the place, and, at one point, the driver abandoned her on the street side of an icy sidewalk, and she fell as a result. After that, she made excuses not to go, and grew more helpless.

            Since I had progressively taken on more and more duties at her apartment, starting with the purchase of groceries, then doing her cleaning and dishes, and finally her laundry as well, I noticed the stains on her floor from where she had failed to make the toilet the previous night. At one point, I had to purchase a new mattress for her because the fabric had become too soaked for her to sleep on. The attempt to provide her with a plastic cover failed because she tended to rip it off during the night in her struggle to get in and out of the bed.

            My mother's helplessness became much more obvious during the next two holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when we had her over. She could barely climb our stairs, and could not manage easily trips to and from the toilet. Maybe in the back of my head I knew that her calls to distant relations would be among her last. As January came along with its additional foul weather, she resisted leaving the house, and we attempted to bring to her aides who might handle some of her increasing duties such as dishes and laundry. Each aid proved dishonest or worse, bullying, and she returned to her lonely existence, a prisoner of a building in Hoboken where many of her neighbors were dying off or being driven out by welfare reform.

            Because my life had become so wrapped up in work, it was difficult for me to perceive the year 2001 as much different from the parade of years before it, the sequence of events centered on my municipal coverage, not my personal life. I missed a trip to see my kid in Pennsylvania, my life had become so much a daily grind -- not just my mother, but in every other aspect of living. I was stuck in Jersey City and could not escape.