Michigan Women

Here they are; three generations: Tina, Nikki, Emma. Mother, daughter and granddaughter. Flanked by helpers Ewa and Gina at Nathan’s Place. Their skill and capabilities are amazing. They create the Thanksgiving holiday for their adult foster care residents, an extended family come together in the frailty and desperation of old age. They produce a community out of American traditions. It is the Michigan women’s first Thanksgiving as an adult foster care home.

Wikipedia’s history of Thanksgiving shows how constructed this American holiday is, created out of relief at having survived, having had enough to eat or having escaped being killed, having found dry land, or being able to stop trudging and rest. For Anglos, the Virginia colony and Plymouth plantation; for Spaniards, St. Augustine, Florida, and San Elizario, Texas. They were all just glad to be here and be in one piece and not too hungry. All stories of desperation.

Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t the only holiday of deliverance, of being spared by the Almighty; Passover precedes it by millennia. But in addition to its etiology shared with ancient religions, Thanksgiving has had a special national utility. Witness the Wikipedia-cited proclamations from Washington and the Continental Congress, through Lincoln and the Civil War, FDR and the Depression, to Truman and the turkey pardon. No American president can omit Thanksgiving which enjoins even the most dysfunctional family or nation to practice an hour or so of mealtime civility.

And so here we are, my Mom and I, along with several other adult children and their spouses and elderly parents. We have been desperate too. Trying to find good care for a surviving parent. And now the Michigan women have put together a Thanksgiving meal that rivals most I had growing up or helped prepare myself. My mother (in her younger years critical and demanding) would have been impressed. Food is laid out artfully in the small kitchen, plates and silverware all to hand. Tina serves the residents who cannot fed themselves; a system for everything. One resident has snoozed off, another claps and sings, my Mom periodically calls out with the involuntary cries that result from stroke. Bonnie, the violinist, plays carols and Bach. The most alert resident smiles in enjoyment at the grandchildren who move so effortlessly among in this collection of humanity.

Several weeks later when I was packing Mom’s things after her death, I had to bid Tina a temporary farewell. Her words as I left were, “thank you for trusting us with your Mom.” I thought, thank you for the nicest Thanksgiving of my Mom’s life. My life too.

First in line

Some weeks ago a student in class mentioned to me that his daughter was disappointed about school being cancelled because of snow. Why? That day was her day to be first in line. Cupcakes were involved as well. I can recall grade school life and these “firsts.” The elation of leading everyone else, of being called by name and moving to the front of the line.

Now that my Mom passed away the idea being first in line seems entirely different.

I now realize how close to death my Mom was in the last weeks. Seeing her often, I noted small degrees of decline, but somehow thought she was really as she had been, only diminished. The hospice physician listed coronary heart disease as cause of death. My mother suffered from chronic hypertension, a symptom of cardiovascular disease. Medication helped keep her blood pressure down. After she’d retired, she sold her house in Mill Valley, California, the 1980s. She returned to the city where she grew up, Portland, Oregon, where as Virginia van Hyning she graduated from Washington High in 1934. She moved into an apartment with a panoramic view of the city and the river. Life was good.

Then suddenly she learned that the new owner in California was suing her over damage from cypress trees on the property during a storm. Mom was beside herself; she went to court and during the hearing suffered a stroke. Mom recovered and the case settled, but damage was done. Chronic hypertension remained and became her nemesis. No longer able to live on her own by 1998, she moved to Michigan---and so began ten years of life with Virginia for me and my son Chris.

Calling elderly friends proved difficult. I have to speak loudly into the phone, repeat my phrases. Then the phrases have to be abbreviated. No modifiers, nuances. Details of my Mother’s decline are lost. The conversation is too simplified to satisfy my need to convey to Virginia’s old friends how it was for her. The elderly high school classmate in Portland sounds both philosophic and forlorn. She too is unable to share shades of feeling. It’s unsatisfying.

The days since Mom’s death vary. Small stabs of grief or loss or loneliness unpredictably puncture the last days of the semester. Just get through; I know that Christmas is coming. It seems like a custom from another culture. More importantly, Dennis arrives December 17. The initial disorientation is passed. People remind me that a new life is beginning. I am first in line.