I Spent the Night Shopping with Mom

After Mom had her heart attack three years ago, her doctors would always ask her, "Are you still smoking?"
She would smile and reply, "Only in my dreams."
Mom smoked for so long and probably missed it so much that she told me she often dreamed of having a cigarette. "And that's good enough," she would say when I would ask if the dreams made her want to light up again.
I've dreamed of my mother often since her passing. Often, I cannot remember the dreams, but sometimes, as I did this morning, I can.
Mom and I were shopping at J.C. Penney at Indian Springs (for those of you who don't live in K.C. Indian Springs mall barely still exists and J.C. Penney is long gone) as we had many times when I was a child into young adulthood.
We were looking at a whole new wardrobe for Mom as we had spent the time before going to the mall throwing out all of her old clothes that were drab, worn and old. Still, Mom chose the exact same wardrobe, only the clothes were new and bright. As we did in life, we had a fabulous time picking out this whole new closet of clothes for her for an important trip she was taking.
We all interpret dreams differently. Some people don't believe they're anything but our minds remixing events of the past few days. This could be the explanation for this dream as the other day at another mall, I was shopping for clothes while missing my mother terribly.
But Mom believed dreams have meaning for us. For example, another dream I remember since her death involved us driving to our house in the Ozark Mountains. We had planned on moving there this year and taking Mom with us. In the dream, I'm taking Mom there for the first time and we encounter an avalanche of snow. We weren't frightened and it didn't hurt us, but we were in awe of its beauty. In my Dreamer's Dictionary, a book my mother gave me to help interpret symbols in dreams, snow avalanches means that you will embark on a beautiful journey, but in a different way than anticipated.
Exactly the way I see my journey with my husband to our new home this year - we're still going, only without my mother's physcial presence. My mother is also on a journey we didn't anticipate, but that doesn't mean we're not still together.
I couldn't come up with a meaningful explanation of my dream last night in my book, but my intuition tells me that the clothes represents her old life in her physical body and her new clothes her new life in her spiritual one. The mall represents the past that we can still visit and draw on our good memories.
And like Mom with her cigarettes, as long as I can still be with her in my dreams, I will take that as comfort.

The Unsinkable

I attended a writing workshop on Saturday and three of the seven members had essays and/or chapters they intend on turning into a book about giving care to an elderly family member. In discussing our work, others chimed in about their own experiences.
That did not surprise me, as many baby boomers are dealing with this issue. What I did learn was that anyone who’s given care to an elderly family member usually has something that reminds them of the helplessness of both their loved one and themselves – and the memories aren’t good ones.
For a couple of women, it was a talking clock that signaled their loved ones were up. For others, it was bells on a walker or bells their loved ones could ring when they needed help.
During the three days my mother was here with us, we had to have her in our downstairs family room for several reasons. That’s where the satellite television is, where she could watch her beloved CNN and it is also the only level in the house where we could get her in a wheelchair – and she was also right next to the restroom.
However, Mom and I both didn’t trust that she was strong enough to even take the 4-5 steps to the restroom without falling, so I needed something as a signal. I searched high and low for a small bell or even something she could bang and the only thing I could come up with was a replica of the bell on the ship Titanic that she had once given me as a Christmas gift to go with the lighthouse/ocean ship décor of our master bedroom.
The bell was heavy, but Mom said it would be ok and during those three nights, the ding-dong awoke me several times as a signal Mom needed to get up.
Sometime after Mom passed, my husband picked up the bell while moving it out of the family room floor near the chair where Mom sat helpless for those three days.
Ding-dong.
He rang it as a joke.
“I don’t think I ever want to see that thing again,” I told him. The look on my face told him it wasn’t funny and the look on his face told me that he too realized the irony in the word “Titanic” etched into the brass.
He put it away so I don’t have to look at it – at least for awhile.

Shades of Jade

I’ve never had a green thumb as my mother did. When she was younger and able, spring and summer was for planting and pruning the mix of perennials and annuals in her many gardens in the yard of our home.
Although I can plant and keep potted annuals on my deck (which I have received compliments on), I don’t have an eye for landscaping, and with three dogs, our yard is a disaster.
When Mom moved to her apartment this time last year I inherited three hanging indoor baskets from her. It was only supposed to be temporary while we waited for a maintenance man to come and hang some hooks from the ceiling in her living room. When he finally made it, she decided it would look too crowded with the plants and she told me to keep them.
The reluctant gardner that I am told her I would do my best. And I’m happy to report that I’ve kept these plants alive for an entire year.
Cacti are my thing. I think they’re pretty and best of all, you can ignore them for months and they will stay alive.
I’ve had a jade plant that my mother in law gave to me some years ago. Each summer when I place the plant outside, it thrives – even losing half of its plant during a sudden hailstorm several years ago didn’t kill it. Each winter, when I bring it inside, it start to lose some of its little green leaves and always looks a bit under the weather by the time I can put it back outside (usually after fear of frost around May 1).
This year, however, has been different. Like the turn of events that took my mother, the jade plant became sick fast this winter and I’ve fought to keep it alive.
I’ve talked to it and told it to “hang in there,” my aunt even talked to it while she was here. But it seemed, the more attention I paid to it, the sicker it became.
And although I’ve inherited even more plants (I already killed one of the sister plants Mom gave me to one of hers a couple of years ago), saving my jade has become a never-ending quest.
I even dreamed that my mother told me to water it more – something I now realized probably did it more harm than good.
The weather has finally turned warm enough this week to put it outside and I will be able to keep it out probably now through the end of the week.
But I have to wonder, if like humans, plants may not have a lifespan too. Do they grow old and week and tired, despite our best efforts to keep them with us?
Only time will tell now if my jade will perk up with the warmer spring temperatures or if its time has too come.

The Unexpected

It's the unexpected things that I've come to expect.
The other day my husband and I went to the grocery store for the first time in weeks. My mother had been a part of this outing with me for 20 years - most of my adult life. Because she has lived near me and didn't drive, we always went together. And although she hadn't been able to go to the store with me for about a year and a half, I still shopped for her.
My coupon book contained old lists in her handwriting, scratch off lottery tickets to be cashed in and her coupons. I eliminated all and laid the paper on the dashboard. My husband gave me a questioning look.
"I don't want to have a meltdown in the store," I told him.
As I set out on the produce aisle, I listened to the Musak blaring and pushed thoughts of my recent loss from my head, concentrating on what I needed to make a week's worth of dinners.
On the second aisle, as I put the canned fruit into the cart, I realized I was still arranging the goods into "Ours" and "Hers."
I teared up. Grabbing for a tissue, which was under my purse and also under the cloth bags Mom and I bought together to help save the planet, I realized it will be the unexpected things I will have to come to expect that will work me up.
There is no way to purge the bits of memories from my mind or my life until they change from painful to comforting.
I finally gained my composure and realized 3 of the 5 recipes I had in my hand came from my mother.
I chose them because they are a combination of my favorites and my husbands.
Comfort foods

What is Normal?

When I emailed my list serve the morning I announced my mother's passing, I told them that my journey on the daughter track had ended.
What I should have realized even then was that it had only changed. Mom might be gone, but her bills, her apartment, her utilities and remnants of her life remained.
I had in effect, put on hold the daily routines of our lives when it was apparent that Mom wouldn't beat this latest health crisis as the others had been whipped. My husband and I ate fast food and from the hospital cafeteria, only coffee cups and a few spoons littered our kitchen sink. My dogs lay patiently by the windows waiting for some type of normal routine to take over again. The bills that were due got paid, the rest hung in our bill board, a crafty creation Mom made. Laundry piled high in our spare bedroom and the light on the phone indicating messages continuously blinked and were left unreturned.
When Mom left this world 12 days ago, a soup bowl sat in her kitchen sink, her last pot of coffee aged in her table-side thermos, neglected plants sat wilting and mail that didn't need immediate attention littered her sofa table. All reminders that five weeks before I had talked her into going to see the doctor and from there, he talked her into the hospital.
Remnants of both of our lives lie waiting for us to return in our respective homes.
It took us five days to clear Mom's apartment of her life. My aunt pitched the soup bowl and its fowl water. I took home and stored quite a bit, not yet able to rid my life of some of the things she loved. I distributed what she had on a list according to her wishes in her will.
We sold the rest.
Since Monday, I've been trying now to restore some type of order - some sense of normal - to our own house. Some things were easy. The dogs made some things simple, like our morning feeding and treat routines. Some have taken me days - that pile of laundry never did wash itself. Others I still haven't had the courage to face such as the mounting pile of bills (it's hard when you haven't been working full time for more than 4 weeks to open those envelopes). And we continue to work on other things. We're still eating what we have cooked or warmed up here on paper plates a friend brought when he brought some food over. We finally went to the grocery store yesterday and I planned a week's worth of meals at home. Other things involve getting used to what I won't be doing anymore: calling my mom every morning at 10:30 to make sure she was ok and ready for another day; taking her dinner over to her apartment, greeting familiar faces in the lobby and then chatting about her day and the day's news (yesterdays Libby trial would have been a biggie) or watching "24" with her, or calling her after the show if I wasn't there.
These are the first words I've written since her obituary. I took one writing assignment this week, maybe just to prove to myself I could.
Getting back to routine when something so out of routine has occured is not easy.