At the same time, she forced her way into Barbara’s life at a point when Barbara couldn’t say no. For her part, Barbara not only accepted the mantle thrust upon her, she excelled in the role of caregiver. She did laundry, went along on outings with the “geezers,” entertained Mom at home, and baked her birthday cakes. She became “the good daughter” that Mom had always wanted her to be, and they both knew it.
Barbara also took care of me. She eased me into Mom’s decline, always seeing it more clearly than I did, but never forcing me to accept more than I was ready for. She was gentle with Mom and with me—forcefully, purposefully gentle. In assuming the brunt of Mom’s care, Barbara gave me the space to separate, so I could bear Mom’s death.
What Mom spared Barbara was the burden of remorse. I cannot know how Barbara would have felt if she and Mom had remained semi-estranged, because they didn’t.
So, what of my vow to make Mom’s life the best it could possibly be in the years after Daddy died? The task proved humbling. I had written academic papers on quality of life at the end of life, but as Mom declined, I could only guess at what “quality of life” meant for her. When she told us she didn’t need (meaning she didn’t want) a caregiver at night, did she mean she valued taking care of herself, by herself, more than she valued her own safety? Was she capable of understanding that distinction? Parenting an adult is not like parenting a child. Even when Mom seemed childlike, she retained the right to autonomy that children have not yet earned.
There exist no training classes for adult children caring for aging parents, and none for our overly independent parents to learn how to accept our care. Barbara and I did as well as we knew how to do, and so did Mom. Even our successes were often painful.
What sustained us after Mom moved to New Bern was a combination of devotion and duty—or maybe devotion to duty, even as those duties changed. During Mom’s final years, our roles in the Pratt Family Circus slowly altered. Mom went from consummate ringmaster to scary tightrope walker who couldn’t remember to wear a safety belt. I stepped back from my place as star performer and tried to adapt to a supporting role, punctuated by the occasional swing on the trapeze. And Barbara went from spectator to the most important role of all—the one who held the net.
BODYFLOW
BY BARBARA PRATT
After the tai chi moves,
After the sun salutation and Pilates core work
Comes the last part where the instructor speaks soothing words and the music switches from the wordless ambient swirl to The Beatles.
When I find myself in time of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And her head floats into mine – why now?
My mother’s name was Mary, but that’s not what she was called And this is not a time of trouble, in fact –
The trouble she caused me is now gone, and her own troubles too, whatever they were.
I wondered so often how her death would come, and especially when, how soon, how much longer,
And how will it feel, will there be pain?
How will it end? How will it feel? And when?
And how much of that questioning was about her, and how much about me?
When she came to live nearby at age 91, I couldn’t keep my distance anymore
At first I thought the burden would crush us both
I resented the new anxieties she added to the ones I had been cultivating all my life in the garden she helped me plant long ago.
She came to live nearby and her fears and needs came to live in my head alongside my own.
I often felt there wasn’t room.
My actions were exemplary, I flatter myself that she never noticed any flaw in the feelings behind them.
Her smile always showed the purest delight in seeing me, especially as she became less and less sure when she had seen me last.
I longed to feel that same delight, unsullied by any thoughts less worthy.
These days I pass the home where she died almost every day, and I often catch a glimpse of that smile.
The feelings it evoked have not yet distilled down to any pure essence.
But now, lying here on the mat, her other face floats before me, the one I gazed at that night and tried so hard to pay attention to, so that I would know and recognize the answer to my questions.
This is how it ends? This is how it feels?
And I still don’t know the words, only the pictures.
May 2012
Suggested Resources
Aging Life Care Experts: Professionals who can assess needs, facilitate difficult conversations, help connect families with local resources, and more. The website for the Aging Life Care Association (http://www.aginglifecare.org) offers a search function to locate a professional by zip code, city, and state.
Area Agencies on Aging: Established under the Older Americans Act in 1973 to respond to the needs of Americans sixty and over in every local community. By providing a range of options that allow older adults to choose the home or community-based services and living arrangements that suit them best, these agencies help older adults to “age in place.” On the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging website (http://www.n4a.org), you can enter your zip code to find information on any local Area Agency on Aging.
National Alliance for Caregiving: A non-profit coalition of national organizations dedicated to improving quality of life for families and their care recipients through research, innovation, and advocacy. Visit the organization’s website (http://www.caregiving.org) to read and download resources for caregivers.
COMPARE websites, provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): Websites facilitating comparison of the quality of specific healthcare providers in your area. Medicare COMPARE websites exist for nursing homes, hospitals, physicians, home health services, and dialysis facilities; new COMPARE sites are added periodically (Hospice Compare is scheduled for release in 2018). Search for the site you want—for example, “Nursing Home Compare” or “Dialysis Facility Compare.”
National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (http://www.nhpco.org/about/hospice-care) and State Hospice Organizations: Trade organizations for providers of hospice and palliative care. Contact them by phone, or use their websites to find information about hospice services and providers of hospice and palliative care in your community.
Village to Village Network: A national organization committed to helping members age in the place of their choosing with close connections to their community and with the supports they need. Visit the website (www.vtvnetwork.org) to search for a “virtual village” in your area, and to learn how the network supports local villages.
The Conversation Project: A grassroots public campaign spanning both traditional and new media to make it easier for people to talk about their wishes for end-of-life care. The Conversation Project team includes five seasoned law, journalism, and media professionals who are working pro bono alongside professional staff from The Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Visit their website (http://theconversationproject.org) for information, easy-to-use guides, and other resources.
Holding the Net website: I created this website (www.holdingthenet.com) to offer additional information and resources, including material submitted by readers.
Suggested Additional Reading
Byock, Ira, M.D. The Four Things That Matter Most—10th Anniversary Edition: A Book About Living. New York: Atria Books, 2014.
Casey, Nell. An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.
Gross, Jane. A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents—and Ourselves. New York: Knopf, 2011.
Hodgman, George. Bettyville, A Memoir. New York: Penguin Books, 2015.
Morris, Virginia. How to Care for Aging Parents. New York: Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 2014.
Pipher, Mary, Ph.D. Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.
; Sheehy, Gail. Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
Acknowledgments
WRITING IS SOLITARY WORK, but making a book is not. Two wonderful groups of writers contributed their time and talent to every chapter of Holding the Net. For invaluable feedback on the manuscript, I thank the members of my Miami writing group—Andrea Askowitz, Betsy Blankenbaker, Nicholas Garnett, Jeff Weinstock, Maureen Daniel Fura, Jeanne Panoff, Vanessa Michel Rojas, and especially Christina Freedman, whose belief in the project was a constant touchstone for me; and my writing group on Cape Cod—Hugh Blair-Smith, Tamsen George, Sandy Macfarland, and especially Barbara Sillery, who not only read multiple drafts of each chapter, but also shared publishing advice. I also thank the following talented authors whose workshops and classes helped shape my writing: Ann Hood, Les Standiford, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Dani Shapiro, and Joyce Maynard. I am indebted to Cathi Hanauer, who provided skillful editorial contributions and generously shared her expertise as my manuscript developed into this book. Thanks also to family and friends (my beta readers), who provided comments and suggestions along the way—especially Lea Roark, Kate Callahan, Irma Emery, my husband Klein, and, of course, my sister Barbara—and to Cathryn Lykes for skillful copyediting and proofreading. To my “retreaters”—Karen Steinhauser, Gwynn Sullivan, and Jeanne Twohig—thank you for fanning the embers of my desire to write until I could no longer ignore the conflagration. And to my dear friend Mary Porter, thank you for introducing me to Dede Cummings of Green Writers Press/Green Place Books.
Holding the Net: Caring for My Mother on the Tightrope of Aging
Book Club Discussion Guide
My mother and I shared a love of reading and talking about books via book clubs. I put together this discussion guide to help get the conversation started. If you would like to have me “visit” your book club by phone, or if you want to share what your book club discussed, contact me through melaniemerriman.com.
1. How did you experience Holding the Net? Were you engaged immediately, or did it take you a while to “get into it”? How did you feel reading it—amused, sad, disturbed, confused, bored?
2. Holding the Net features three main “characters.” How do these characters change, grow or evolve throughout the course of the story? Are there similarities to how people and relationships have changed in your family over time?
3. Do any of the secondary characters stand out for you? Why or why not?
4. Were there scenes or sections of the book that made you uncomfortable? If so, why?
5. Les Standiford, Director of the Florida International University Creative Writing Program, tells his students, “Nothing is interesting but trouble.” When does the trouble start in Holding the Net? What are the major conflicts in the story?
6. How, if at all, has this book changed the way you think about issues of aging in your own family or in society?
7. Did you learn anything new that you might use in your own life? Did the book leave you wanting to know more? If so, what kinds of questions did it bring up for you?
8. What else struck you about the book?
9. Were you glad you read this book? Would you recommend it to a friend?
10. Did this book make you want to read more work by this author? Why or why not?
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