Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2: The Pond (My Last Days with My Mother)

 Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2 The Pond (My last days with my mother)

Every nursing home tries to find a way to make itself unique, to set itself as being different from all of the others.  Jeff spent a lot of time picking out just the right place for his mother.  Cost was a major factor that he had to consider, but the ambience of the place was also important.  The nursing home that he chose was different from all of the others that he visited in that it had an outdoor park set right in the middle of a vast complex of residential buildings.  It had a pond as its centerpiece.  Since it was an open-air park, ducks have found their way into this area, and they could often be seen flying in from the overhead skies to land in the alcove.  Aside from the ducks, there were fish and turtles in the pond, and the wildlife made the park very welcoming.  A final nice touch was when the management planted all sorts of fauna around the pond and the lush, green area made the residents feel like they are in a public park.  A walking path led to a gazebo and the whole area was wheelchairs accessible.  It was all laid out so perfectly that the pond invited anyone who had leisure time to come and visit for a while.  This oasis was a place of peace and tranquility

Whenever a visitor came to The Masonic Home, they must stop by the front desk to sign in and get a visitor’s nametag.  The receptionists always stopped Jeff on his weekly visits to ask, “How is your mother.”  It was the same question that she asks every week and Jeff’s inevitable response was “She is not going to get better but will only get worse.”  It was a dark statement and the receptionist looked glum whenever Jeff said it, but he was tired of the forced concern by some of the staff and decided the way to cut them short was to tell the truth.  Honesty always through them off and the eldest son was free to move on from the foyer to Sally’s Garden where Gail was committed to stay.        

As soon as Jeff enters his mother’s bedroom, he immediately tells her to get ready to go for a walk.  If Gail was given a choice as to whether she wanted to leave the room or not, she would always pick staying put.  He helps his mother into the wheelchair and then pushes her out of her room and through a maze of corridors.  After a short walk, they find their way to the pond and parks themselves next to the water.  The morning sun shines in and it feels good on their skin.   Since Gail doesn’t get out of her room very often, much less leave the wing, she almost never gets to go outside.  As a result, her skin is pasty white and the pallor of her face is grey.  Jeff locks the old woman’s wheelchair into place so that Gail doesn’t accidentally go tumbling into the water, and he takes a seat at a bench. Mother and son sit in silence.  There is no need to interrupt the respite with conversation because nothing new can be added to the conversation that they have already had on previous visits.  They close their eyes before lifting their faces towards the sun.  Their pale skin begins to burn but, almost recklessly, they two do not move from their perch because the moment is too nice to give up on easily.  The waterfall provides a constant tinkling for ambient noise and, when they tire of the sun, they open their eyes to watch the goldfish swim in the pond.  If they are lucky, they get to watch baby chicks following their mother in or out of the water.  Ducks take off and land from inside the confines of the building that surrounds them.  The whole environment is so inviting that neither one of them seem to notice the time passing.

For just a little while, Gail seemingly escapes the doldrums of living in a nursing home.  For the time being, mother and son had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so they may as well sit and enjoy nature for awhile.  Yet when the baby chicks no longer distract them and the ducks have flown away, Gail and Jeff look around the residential buildings that surround the pond and become conscious of the fact that they were being watched.  They see old people looking out of their windows, spying on the middle aged man and the old woman, and Jeff knew that the nice feeling of having escaped the confines of the corridors and rooms of the nursing home had vanished.  In their imaginations, they were on a lakeshore, or somewhere in the wilderness, but now reality hit and they knew that they were back at a retirement home.  They didn’t like the idea of being observed and so the two walk and wheel their way back to Gail’s room.

When it became time for Jeff to leave, he had slipped into the habit of kissing his mother’s forehead before he found his way out the door.  This was something that he had never done while growing up and certainly could not have done it in adulthood.  He had seen one of the caregivers hug his mother’s head and was expecting Gail to explode in rage at this act of unwanted familiarity.  Instead, the old woman obviously enjoyed the human contact and was not defensive or angry at all.  It was a little embarrassing that a complete stranger had to teach Jeff how to show a display of affection towards his own mother, but from that point on, he determinedly gave his mother a kiss on the forehead as he left her room.  Gail always smiled bashfully at this act of love.

Mother and son settled into this routine and enjoyed the best relationship that they ever had.   Part of the reason why the two became close was that Gail became completely dependent on Jeff, and she knew it.  There was always a glint of recognition when Jeff entered her room; sometimes Gail would exclaim “Jeffrey” when she saw her son, and then he wheeled her down to the Sunday service.  Although she was never particularly religious, now that Gail was on the decline, one of her few coherent thoughts was that she wanted to go to mass.  As they waited for the nondenominational service to begin, Jeff pulled up a chair and talk to his mother for a while.  It was mostly idle talk as he verbally checked off a list of his siblings, and their children, but most of this was old news that Gail had heard before.  Once the service began, mother and son usually fell asleep, just like almost everyone else in the hall.  The preacher wasn’t discouraged and carried on with the service.  He reads some scripture, uses some talking points that he found online for his sermon, and the whole insufferable ritual is over in twenty minutes or less.  When he is done, and the service is over, the caretakers must wake everyone up and send them to the common area for lunch.  Jeff wheels his mother to the dining room and read to her from the newspaper while they waited for her fried chicken, the special on Sundays, to arrive.  Once she was served, Jeff took his leave, because that was a good break off point.  On his way out of the door, he promised that he would visit again in a week.

The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years.  Gail came to expect that Jeff would visit on Sundays and that was how she marked time.  When she saw Jeff the first comment that came out of her mouth was, “It must be Sunday!”  That was the most emotion that she would display unless something was bothering her.  For example, one time when Jeff entered the room, he found his mother crying.  When he asked what was wrong, she whimpered, “I have enjoyed my time at summer camp but I am ready to go home now.”  Dementia shrouds her memory and she walks around in a fog, trying to figure her little world out.  One week she may remember that her father fought in WWI but she won’t remember that her husband was dead.  Sometimes she confused her son for her deceased husband.  She furrowed her brow as she tried to remember who her brother and sisters were when Jeff mentions their names.

Gail’s tablemates at meal time are Eloise, MaryAnn, and Helen.  If this were a country club, or even a normal restaurant, then the room would be filled with chatter.  But this is a nursing home and the residents do not talk to each other while they eat.  They don’t even want to come to lunch and have to be coaxed out of their rooms.  Out of the three people that Gail has to share a table with, Maryanne looks the most normal because she vibrant and takes pride in her appearance.  However, when forced to engage in conversation, it becomes immediately apparent that Maryanne has no short-term memory at all.  Sitting between Gail and Maryanne is Helen, who is prim, proper, and so polite that she introduces herself to her tablemates every time that they sit down for a meal.  When the meals are over, and before they are wheeled back to their rooms, Maryanne whined pathetically to no one in particular, “I want to go home.”

Eloise had rounded out the table of four, but then something went horribly wrong for her because one day she stopped showing up at the table.  Her room was vacated and she was transferred to Judy House, the part of the complex reserved for the residents who cannot feed themselves or do their own toileting.  Even after sharing meals with Eloise three times a day for a year and a half, Gail did not notice when her former tablemate disappeared.  Artie, who doesn’t respond to anyone who tries to get her attention, replaced Eloise.  Meanwhile, in the background, there are some residents who should be sitting at a table but refuse to associate with the others.  Snooks acts just like a little kid and steals food to take back to her room when no one is looking.  George moves so slowly with his walker that he always arrives late and the rest of his table is finishing up by the time he arrives.  The main reason why he was so slow was that he used a walker and his pants would often accidentally drop to his ankles.  He had lost so much weight that none of his clothes fit him anymore.  Since he had to use both of his hands to hold onto his walker, he couldn't reach down to pull his pants up.  He had to wait for someone on staff to help him.  In the corner of the dining room is a woman who nobody seems to know.  She complains about everything; the food, the temperature, and the fact that no one comes to visit her.  “All we do all day is sit on our butts all day,” is her favorite line and the staff goes out of their way to avoid her.

Once he drops his mother off at her room, Jeff walks down a long corridor to the exit.  As he does, he sneaks a peek into the rooms of the residents if their doors are open.  Most of the old folks are either sleeping or watching television.  One passive aggressive man blares his television as loudly as possible because he doesn't want to wear his hearing aide.  Everyone in the hallway has to listen to whatever he is listening to because the volume echoes throughout the wing.  Finally, as he makes his way through the foyer, Jeff waves goodbye to the nosey attendant who is still staffing the front desk, and he makes his way out the front door.  On the stoop is an old man sitting in a wheelchair.  He stations himself in the exact same spot every week and spends his afternoons sunning his bones.  “Not a bad way to spend the final days on this earth,” Jeff thinks to himself as he gets into his car and drives away to begin working on his weekend chores.