Monthly Archives: March 2009

broken bonds, broken hearts

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Somehow, I always thought that family blood bonds could not be broken, no matter what. Every family has its dysfunctions; I figured ours were no worse than most.

Wrong.

My mother is with my brother, and I have left. Chances are that I will never go back there. I didn’t want to leave my mother, who has late-stage dementia:

Common signs displayed by people with late-stage dementia who experience physical or emotional discomfort include: increased agitation, fidgeting, or repetitive movements; tense muscles, body bracing; increased calling out or repetitive verbalizations; decreased cognition, decreased functional ability or withdrawal; changes in sleep pattern; falling; increase in pulse, blood pressure, and sweating. A good deal of emotional discomfort in dementia patients comes from difficulty sorting out and negotiating everyday life activities.

But as my brother’s rage against me escalated, I realized that harassing me was more important to him than taking care of my mother, even if the resulting vocalized tension increased her agitation and anxiety.

So I left. I broke my heart and I probably broke hers. But my presence in my brother’s house seemed to be a constant source of irritation to him — irritation that slowly built into outright rage.

Because I fought back, finally refusing the burden of the last bullying straw.

And so I left. I left my mother in pain and bewilderment. I left my brother in a rage at me for something that had nothing to do with my care of our mother.

Tomorrow, a live-in home health aide is supposed to arrive. I hope that she is kind to my mother. I hope that my brother is kind to her.

I might never know.

a day in purgatory

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Eight hours in the emergency room and12 in a hospital room with my mother. And brother.

It wasn’t hell, but it sure was as close to purgatory as I can imagine.

At my insistence and her doctor’s recommendation, we took my mother to the emergency room soon after I arrived on Tuesday. She had a minor fall just before the weekend, and the doctor wanted to get her an x-ray and also — as long as she was there — get the blood and urine tests taken for which she was long overdue.

The emergency room only had one doctor on the premises. And then it turned out that the hospital itself didn’t have ANY doctors on the premises when they finally admitted my mother just after midnight.

The nurses, however, were outstanding — except for one. But there’s always one, isn’t there.

While it turned out that my mother hadn’t broken anything, she did have a major urinary tract infection going, and they hooked her up to an intravenous antibiotic.

HOWEVER, they couldn’t hook her up until they could calm her down, since her dementia was in full swing and she kept trying to fight everyone off. Solution? Drugs, of course.

EXCEPT we have yet to find a drug that will calm her down. Stuff like Xanax has the reverse affect. They finally had to resort to morphine. As long as she was totally knocked out, everything was fine. (Well, fine for her. My brother and I got no sleep, and the most we ate in all that time were cheese sandwiches and potato chips from the nearby convenience store. My reflux was starting to protest.)

Recommendations from two neurologists indicated that she needs 24/7 supervised care. With relentless pressure from me, my brother has agreed to interview home health care workers from a private-pay operation that provides aides trained in geriatric caregiving. Taking care of a 93 year old with severe dementia and all sorts of aches and pains is not a one person job. “Just keep her comfortable,” one neurologist advised. (If only!)

When the Social Worker came in to tell us what our options would be for help when she got home, she suggested a place (private pay) that provided home aids that specialize in geriatric care. Being the assertive “bitch” sister that I am, I had her immediately call the head of the outfit, who came right over to give us the information even before we left the hospital.

One or two of the possible aides are supposed to come over tomorrow for interviews.

There is enough money available to pay for help with her care, but it’s not under my control.

My brother believes that I am a lying, controlling, manipulating bitch.

Whatever.

I’m just going to do whatever I have to do to make sure that my mother gets the compassionate care she needs to have at this stage of her life.

Now, at home, she often speaks gibberish, will fall down if she tries to stand up or walk by herself (which she constantly tries) and has a battery of meds that we all hope will make it easier on everybody. Much of the time she cries — one breath in and on the outbreath a two-note loud sigh. Over and over. For hours at a time. This is not new; it started months and months ago.

I can’t wait to get back to my home. And I want to make sure that my brother hires someone good to help him with my mother’s care. I just don’t know how long I can last here. My sciatica is really acting up from having to help her up and down.

There is no perfect solution to all of this. I’m just too ornery to give up trying for a decent one, for my mother’s sake.

ending entropy

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Entropy is a term used to define (among other things), a process of deterioration of a system.

In terms of technology, my life seems to be one big process of entropy. My old desktop died a slow death over the past several months. Last week, I totally fried the new laptop that I inherited from my once husband. (That frakkin’ Vista!) Now I’m on a old little laptop that does not hold the wifi settings that I need to get online. It’s only a matter of time with this machine as well. How do you end entropy?

I think the first thing for me to do is cut my losses. and not spend any more time and money trying to fix messes of machinery that have aready joined the slide into infinite entropy.

I have to start over, with an inexpensive CPU with XP that can keep me online. If I ever have enough money to get a new laptop, it will be a Mac. That’s a big IF.

And then there’s my mother, whom I somehow have to rescue from the entropy of her care by my brother. I’m leaving tomorrow, driving into what I know will be a battleground for what’s left of my 93 year old mother’s demented life. She deserves better than she’s getting.

She fell yesterday, and the doctor wanted her to go to the emergency room, but that didn’t happen. I want to take her there when I arrive tomorrow. It could wind up a fierce and legal battle if things do not change to her benefit.

Took a sleeping pill to calm me dowm.

TOMORROW’S ANOTHER BATTLE FOR FREEDOM AND INTEGRITY AND SELFLESSNESS.

the funk and flash of elder style

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A comment on my previous post led me to this site featuring stunningly attired elders.

Appropriately entitled “Advanced Style,” this site is constantly adding photographs that illustrate just how creative, funky, and individual elders can be in the way they dress. I can’t help notice that many of the photos are of people who live in New York City, where style is queen.

As a tease to get you over there to look around, here’s a look at three of my favorites.

The site welcomes photo submissions of elders in full regalia — or even just elders with remarkable style. Send to Advancedstyleinfo at gmail dot com.

—————————————-
At some point back in the early 70s I had a book called Native Funk and Flash. I wish I had held onto it, because here on Amazon, a collector’s copy is worth $100.

I copied several of the designs in the book into embroidered embellishments on clothing. I put one design on the bottom side of a denim skirt that I made. It was called “four faithful fish feeding on the bread of life,” with a circular braided bread image in the middle and four fish facing the bread, each positioned in one of the four directions.

My most elaborate project reproduced the rising phoenix (pictured on the butt of the woman on the front cover, above) to cover the whole back of one of my husband’s muslin shirts. I embroidered it all with various colors of metallic thread.

I still have that shirt in a storage bin in the cellar. I’m going to dig it out and post a photo of it because that glowing phoenix is one of the most beautiful things I have ever created.

Ah those 60s! Even though we were married and parents, we still had a lot of funk and flash.

(For images from the book: Native Funk and Flash, link over to Knitting Iris.

and now for something completely frivolous

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Everyone seems to be talking and blogging and reporting on the most recent Wall Street scandal — the AIG multi-million dollar bonuses. No doubt about it, we all have plenty of reason to be majorly upset. Our country is riddled with thieves, and try as he might, who knows if even the president can stop them.

But enough about that.

I am looking in the mirror and wondering if I should be wearing what I’m wearing — which is just about what I wear every day, home or away: jeans, layered t-shirts, sneakers. I’m wondering what is considered “age-appropriate” dressing for someone almost 70. While this issue is of absolutely no importance in the “Big Picture,” it is one that seems to periodically rise into my “little picture” consciousness.

Even though I asked my daughter to take notice and tell me if she thinks that I’m dressing too young for my age, she hasn’t yet done so. But I’m still wondering.

The problem is that I have always loved clothes, used them more as costumes, depending on where I was going to wear them. I had my ballroom dance clothes (nothing too fancy; mostly swirly skirts and dressy but comfy and washable tops), my fashionable work clothes, and my funky other items like embellished jeans and jean jackets. Also, dozens of pairs of really cool shoes, none of which I can wear any more. And, of course, attention-getting jewelry, some of which I had made myself.

Well, I got rid of my work clothes and packed up my dance clothes. I gave away my embellished denim and my cool shoes. What’s left is rather boring and ordinary, and maybe that’s the issue. I am not used to looking ordinary, certainly not like an ordinary older woman. It’s disturbing to me that I am finding myself so awfully ordinary.

I know that clothes don’t make the woman. But they can sure perk me up.

I try to search around the Net for what striking older women are wearing and realize there are no models out there — except for older actresses. So I begin to search out photos of older actresses — the ones who don’t look all plastic.

Judi Dench is 74 and looks fabulous with her gray hair and colorful accessories.


Lauren Bacall is 85 and dresses with classic simplicity.


Faye Dunaway is a year young than I, and she has her own individual style. I love her long hair and wish I had the patience to grow mine. (Of course, hers could very well be hair extensions.)

In my searching for “age appropriate clothing,” I run across a few forum comments that suggest that older women look much better than younger women in eye-catching accessories. As I was watching the new tv show Castle the other night (I got hooked on Nathan Fillian in his Firefly and Serenity days) I couldn’t help notice Susan Sullivan‘s outfits. She wears
unique and colorful clothes and accessories and looks smashing in them because they are not designed for 20-somethings.

When 80-year-old Doris Roberts played Marie Barone on Everyone Loves Raymond, she was dressed in black pants with a different printed shirt in every episode — sort of the typical and ordinary outfit for many older women who are not as slim as all of the others I mentioned above.

As herself, however, and dressed to the nines, Doris Roberts chooses fabrics and colors with flair and she looks positively stunning.

Well, my body type falls somewhere between Doris Roberts and the others I’ve mentioned.

So, what have I learned?

1. Slimmer women of any age look better in any kind of clothes.

2. If you’re not slim and older than 65 and you want to look striking, cover your arms, don’t wear anything too tight, and wear eye-catching accessories.

In another couple of weeks, I’m going back to my home town for my cousin’s daughter’s wedding, and there will be relatives there I haven’t seen in a while. I really want to feel good about the way I look. One of the things I’m going to do is go through some of the jewelry pieces that I made and see what might work. I might even make something new.

Black wide legged pants, a black, light-weight, scoop-necked, 3/4 sleeved swing sweater with metallic threads, and a necklace made of amber and silver. And metallic flat shoes. That’s what I’m thinking.

I wish I had a face like Judi Dench and a body like Susan Sullivan (who is only two years younger than I). But we all have to work with what we’ve got.

last night, last life

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Last night, as I sifted through some of my earlier poetry, I remembered just how therapeutic writing it was at the time. I was so young, unprepared for the realities of husband and child/children. And I married someone as unprepared as I. He dealt with it all through multi-media productions of his original scripts. I would sit in the audience and watch the characters he created speak to our relationship more poignantly than his face-to-face words ever did.

I’m not sure I ever showed him the poems I wrote as I slowly felt my own self lost in the wake of his magnificent obsession. I’m sure there were many young women like me. Some went mad. Some got mad.

I am no Sylvia Plath. These are not great poems. But they were, and are, an essential part of my story.

Patterns (1967)

I await the unexpected,
the unsought.
My life is a contradiction.

When the goal is set,
when conscious action
strips away the dream,
I turn off.

Because I am
(why?)
a patterned person,
I am surrounded, bound, bonded.

I don’t need any more directions to go
or any more goals to touch.

I wish I were the wind.

***

Nonessence (1973)

Change is what I
wear at the edge
(where I have the best perspective)
waiting for familiar whims
to coax me into shape
and coast me down
the deepening dayslide.

Essentially, I am
not.

Medusa, I
am stoned on my own reflection.
Words curl straight
from the hurt in my head
forming questions,
marked and mumbled
under a heavy heartless hum.

Pan (Peter), I
cling to the rings
of endless adolescence,
hanging tight
as the merry goes round

Zelda, I
run screaming
toward the dark and gathered things
that claw at the threshold
of darkest dreams
and dive naked and dancing
into the fountained pool
behind my eyes.

not yet spring (1999)

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All kitchens should have windows
double wide and Windexed clear —
if not into sunny vistas,
at least into frames of sky
beyond a stand of trees marked
by clumps of day lilies,
maybe a lilac bush
or two —

certainly a bird feeder
filled with lilting movement,
and a wide indoor sill
where green seeds sprout
even when winter still
shrouds the view.

copyright Elaine Frankonis

4 am, Friday the 13th

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I tell myself that it’s a dream and I can wake up. But I don’t wake up.

I have gone back to my apartment building, but I can’t find my apartment. It’s no longer there. Everything I own is gone — my clothes, my cell phone, my car keys. I have to call my daughter, I think. I can’t remember the last two digits of her phone number. But I don’t have a phone anyway.

I run down to the lobby. I don’t know anyone. I ask various people for help, but no one will help me.

It’s dark out now, and raining. I run out into the street, go into a store and ask for help. I ask them to call my daughter at ….. I can’t remember the phone number.

I am crying now, running down the dark wet city streets. I find a police station and run in, asking for their help. They ignore me. I go to reach for the phone on a desk, but I can’t remember the phone number anyway.

I run back out into the street, lose one shoe, keep running and crying,

Part of me says it’s a dream. You can wake up.

But I don’t wake up.

I run farther, shivering in the cold rain, without a coat, with only one shoe, and with no way to find a safe place. I run and cry.

I can wake up. I can wake up. This seems so real, but it can’t be real. I can wake up.

Eventually I do wake up. It’s just about dawn, and I am in my bed with my cat sitting on my head.

While I was in the dream, it was so amazingly real — the fear, the abandonment, the isolation, the cold rain. At the same time, I was watching myself in the dream, telling myself to wake up.

I wonder if I had been having my mother’s dream.

Maxine sums it up

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maxine1

My grandson helped his mom make a delicious carrot cake for my birthday.

Got lots of birthday wishes from friends and relatives.

My new printer was delivered today; my old one finally died.

It’s raining and I’m expecting another kind of storm.

As birthdays go, it wasn’t bad.

I wonder how I’ll feel next year when I’m 70.

maxine22