Coffee with Mom

by Mike Glenn

  “Well, he never talked to me.”

  “You wouldn’t let him. Anytime he would talk about dying, you would change the subject. Dad never got to talk about what he wanted to have happen when he wasn’t here.”

  “But, Mike (yes, she’s changing the subject), I couldn’t let your dad think about dying. He would give up, and if he ever gave up, he wouldn’t have lived through the night. I just couldn’t let him give up. It was his will to live that kept him alive. Not his heart, it was his will. Your dad was a very strong man.”

  “And your will. You’re a strong woman, and Mom, I’m going to take care of you. Dad gave me the plan, and you’re going to be fine. You took care of Dad for a long time, Mom. Now, it’s my turn to take care of you.”

  (And she would change the subject again.) . . . “I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t need you to take care of me. I’m fine. I can take care of myself. I’ve taken care of myself since I was fifteen years old. (Her age would always change. Sometimes it was fourteen. Sometimes it was fifteen.) I ran the business when your daddy was running around with his politics. I ran the house. I raised you and your brother. And now, all of a sudden, I’m helpless. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with my brain. There’s nothing wrong with me at all. I’m just tired. I miss your dad.

  “You just wait until your wife dies. You’ll forget a lot of things too.”

  For me, this was always part of the problem. In the beginning, I could never tell the difference between Mom’s grief and her disease. Grieving people forget things. Grieving people get depressed and cry a lot. Grieving people get angry when little things go wrong, and grieving people yell a lot at people they love.

  And so do people with Alzheimer’s.

  My dilemma was complicated by the inconsistency of Mom’s behavior. One day I would visit her and she would be fine. We’d have a great day together. I would drive home thinking maybe we were going to be okay. The next time I would be with her, her behavior would border on the bizarre. We would run errands, and she would forget why she was going to the store in the first place. Dishes would be piled up in the sink, and food from several days ago would have been left out on the counters.

  I would find tools in the refrigerator, and bills stuck in books on the bookshelf. She had stuff everywhere. I told her she was one box away from an episode of Hoarders. She kept everything. Old magazines, newspapers, paper plates and cups, every scrap of cloth her hands touched were piled into her sewing room. She had tax forms from twenty years ago. She had bills from other houses they had lived in, and files and files from the family business, even though the business had been closed for years.

  She had glass jars filled with buttons, nails, screws, and all kinds of knicks and knacks. She had jackets and shirts, pants and sport coats piled on multiple beds throughout the house. Whenever I would volunteer to help her clean things up or clear things out, she would brush me off and tell me she was working on it.

  If I pushed her about it, she would get angry. “Don’t touch my stuff! I need my stuff! I’ve got projects I’m working on. I know what I’m doing. And if you’re going to sit here and tell me what to do, you can just go back to Nashville.”

  I would go back to Nashville, but I couldn’t stay there. Mom needed me. She may not have admitted that she needed me, but she needed me. And I would be there for her. Just like she had always been there for me.

  My mom was a fierce mama bear. She would protect her cubs against all odds. Once, when I was a kid, an older kid pulled a knife on me. Mom exploded out the back door of our house. (She had been watching me from the window over the kitchen sink.) I still laugh when I remember my mom chasing that kid down the street promising what she was going to do to him when she caught him.

  Once, when my brother got in a little trouble, my mother dressed up in her fanciest suit, grabbed her briefcase, and marched into the courthouse demanding to see the sheriff. Everyone in the place assumed she was a lawyer. Now, she never told anyone she was a lawyer. She just never corrected their assumption. She met with the sheriff, and well, let’s just say she cleared up the misunderstanding involving my brother.

  That was my mom. She handled things. She took care of people. Now, it was my turn. She needed me. I needed to be there. Now, she would never admit that she needed me. Nor would she ever thank me for whatever I did. Whatever I did was what I was supposed to do, and you don’t get a prize for doing what you’re supposed to do in the first place.

  When I was little, I counted on Mom to do what was best for me. I never asked her to do that. I never told her I needed her. I just showed up in her life on November 22, 1956, and I never left. Mom wasn’t perfect. She made mistakes, but she was always doing her best to care for me. Even when I didn’t like what she was doing, she still did what she thought was best for me. Even when I got angry, she still did things the way she thought was best for me.

  Now, I had to do my best for her. Even when she got angry. Even when she didn’t understand, and even though she never asked me.

  She knew.

  I know.

  And my dad will know. One time when Mom was angry at me, I looked at her and said, “Mom, I’m only doing what Dad told me to do. He gave me specific instructions about how I was to handle things. I’m doing exactly what he said to do.”

  Then, I leaned forward and held her hands, “Mom, you’re looking at the only man who’ll need two votes to get into heaven. When I get up there, Jesus will say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Then, Dad will step around the throne and say to Jesus, ‘Hold on, Jesus, I’ve got a few questions I need to ask the boy. Mike, son, did you take care of your mother the way I told you to?’”

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  Coffee with Mom: “One day, I’m going to see your dad, and I’m going to tell him what a lousy job you’ve done taking care of me.”

  When you’re dealing with an Alzheimer’s patient, there are many days when you aren’t sure you’re doing the right thing. You can do it this way or that way, and no one seems to know which way would be best. You’re just doing the best you know how.

  And in the end, that’s all you can do—the best you can. If you can look in the mirror and know you did the best you could do given the information you had, you’ll be able to live with that. And that’s important because you’ll be living with yourself for a really long time.

  Chapter 18

  Until I Can’t Say Goodbye Anymore

  Coffee with Mom: “You’re not preaching my funeral. No way I’m giving you the last word.”

  One of the hard things about having to deal with an Alzheimer’s patient is having to listen to all of the well-meaning advice and counsel from everyone you meet who has someone with Alzheimer’s in their family.

  And everyone has someone in their family suffering from the illness. They may have just died, almost died, or died a long time ago, but the details don’t seem to matter. For some reason, people feel like they need to tell you everything they’ve been through on their journey. Most of the time it doesn’t help. For one thing, the illness affects everyone differently. Some people get angry. Some become violent. Some become quiet and withdrawn while others become childlike. People mean well. I know they do, but a lot of times someone else’s pain just adds to your own.

  But there was one friend, Dr. Robert Bishop, who shared something with me that I never forgot. He had lost his mother to Alzheimer’s a few years before. Unlike my mother, his mother got to the point where she didn’t know him at all. Toward the end, she didn’t respond to him either.

  “But I wouldn’t trade a minute of it,” he told me. “I wouldn’t give back one minute when I got to sit with her and hold her hand and tell her I loved her. No, I’d keep every minute. So, my advice to you,” he said, “is to hold on to every moment. The time will come when you won’t have any moments. Don’t waste on
e of them.”

  For some reason, that counsel stayed with me. Whenever I really didn’t feel like going to see Mom, I would remember Robert’s words, and I would stop by. Sometimes I would wonder if I was doing any good at all, and again I’d remember his words.

  One of the things I discovered is you have to find your own reasons to care for your aging parent. I really couldn’t expect anything from Mom. If I thought she was going to be grateful for the care I was giving her or if she was going to participate with me in her care, I was sadly mistaken. For one thing, she wasn’t able to do that, and second, if my mom had been capable, I would have had another battle on my hands altogether.

  I would go and see her. Sometimes, she’d be hostile. Other times, she would be silent in her anger. Sometimes she’d be funny, and other days she would almost be her old self. We’d tell stories and laugh, and she’d want to know about the grandchildren and the church. And I soaked up every moment.

  I learned not to fight with her. Trying to argue with her was a waste of time. For one thing, she couldn’t keep her mind focused long enough to have a real argument. Something I would say would distract her, or she would just wander off to a new target. I found myself so frustrated because we could never finish an argument. Then, I realized that was my fault. I was expecting my mom to do something she could not do.

  I learned to just roll with wherever she was. If she wanted to talk about buying a car, I’d talk about buying her a car. I knew I was never going to buy her a car, but that never stopped her from talking to me about her getting a car.

  “Have you bought me a car yet?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

  “Have you even looked?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I want my Suburban back.”

  “Mom, that’s a big car. Don’t you want something a little smaller?”

  “No, I want my Suburban. Don’t you remember how I would throw the boys in the back of that car and off we’d go to the lake house?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I remember. I miss the lake house.”

  “I do too,” Mom would say. Then, we’d talk about the lake house. “Your daddy loved that lake house.” Then, we’d talk about Dad.

  Toward the end, I was having to bring all of the energy to the conversation. Mom would remember, or at least become animated in a manner suggesting she had remembered, and she would laugh at our favorite family stories.

  I would show her pictures of my granddaughters and she would “ooh” and “ahh” over them like it was the first time she had seen them. It was. She couldn’t remember we had looked at the same pictures the day before.

  I wasn’t getting anything back from her. She would absorb all of the energy I would bring to the conversation. Some days, I would be exhausted as I finally got into my office around nine in the morning. I had been carrying Mom throughout our entire conversation and this, of course, would bring back all of my grief. While it’s true that you lose them a little bit at a time, some days you lose more of them than others.

  I cried every day. Some days, I wouldn’t cry that much, but I would still cry. Walking back to my car or driving to the church or just sitting in my desk chair and feeling the weight settle down on me. The weight of grieving for all that had been lost. The struggle of having to see my mom so helpless. She would have been horrified if she could have seen herself. I hurt for her. I missed my dad. I missed her.

  Coffee with Mom: “One cup of coffee doesn’t count as a visit.”

  And I didn’t know how much longer we would have to keep walking down this road. But then, I would remember Robert’s words . . . and I’d go see her the next day. And I would keep dropping by to see her until I couldn’t go see her anymore.

  We ran out of time on Saturday morning, July 14, 2018. I had been out of town, and my flight had been canceled and rerouted. I ended up getting home twelve hours later than I should have. Jeannie had gone to lunch with Mom and told me they had a pretty good time. I was planning to go see her the next morning.

  The phone rang at six o’clock.

  “Don’t come to Morning Pointe,” the nurse’s voice said. “Go to Williamson Medical Center. Your mom has had some kind of episode, and we’re sending her to the emergency room.” Jeannie and I both got up and started to get dressed. She called Morning Pointe and confirmed the details of Mom’s condition. We didn’t know much; but we did know Mom had lost consciousness, and it didn’t look good.

  We were at the hospital a few minutes later, and we beat the ambulance to the hospital. A very understanding hospital staff showed me where to park the car and where to stand to wait on the ambulance. I know it was only a few minutes, but we waited for what seemed like hours. Finally, the ambulance backed up to the hospital doors and the emergency medical techs rolled Mom into the emergency room. Mom was DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), but the techs hadn’t gotten that word. They had tried their best to keep Mom alive. They shocked her three times and were performing CPR as they brought her in.

  I told them she was DNR, and they stopped and tried to explain it wasn’t their fault, but that really wasn’t my concern and my mom had already been hurt enough.

  The doctor got her stable, but it was apparent that Mom wasn’t going to recover. Her oxygen saturation rate was 80 and dropping. Her blood pressure was failing. The doctor told us he would give us a minute, which is doctor speak for “I think she’s about to die.” So, he stepped out and left me in the room with my mom, my wife, and my mom’s three sisters. We sat quietly and watched Mom.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, Mom began to recover. While she never regained consciousness, her blood pressure stabilized, and her breathing improved. With her numbers improving, the doctor stepped in to suggest we plan to admit her, and we agreed.

  When the doctor left, my aunt leaned next to me and said, “Michael, I believe Jesus is having second thoughts.” The picture of Jesus reaching for the heavenly gates and then hesitating as He thought about letting Mom in cracked us all up. I don’t know what people would have thought if they had looked into the room and saw my mom in the bed and all of us standing around laughing until we cried.

  We did admit her, but it didn’t matter. It was only a matter of time. We sat there and watched her breathe. We said what we needed to say.

  And then, she just stopped breathing. There was nothing dramatic. No last words. She exhaled, and then, she never inhaled again.

  We gathered up her things, and we went home. We had her funeral service at Brentwood Baptist Church, and from the crowd, you would have thought a local dignitary had passed away. My mom told me she had more friends in the church than I did. From the number in attendance, I’m not sure she was wrong.

  Her favorite musicians played and sang. Chris and Craig, my sons and her grandsons, both spoke. Craig told the story of Mom carrying a wooden spoon to discipline them when they were little. One Sunday, when they were little, he asked “Bob Bob” (the name her grandchildren called her) if she had the spoon. She nodded her head that she did. Feeling bold, he said he wanted to see it.

  Without ever looking at Craig, she slid her hand into her purse and pulled the spoon out so Craig could see it. According to Craig, the mere sight of the spoon inspired good behavior.

  The graveside was a large affair. She was buried next to my dad, and her friends, many from as long as fifty years ago, gathered around and began to tell stories. The places they had shopped, the places they had travelled, and the adventures they shared. I thought I knew my mother pretty well, but I was hearing stories I had never heard before. My parents had been quite the celebrities. Everyone wanted to be their friend. Everyone wanted them to be at the party. “They just don’t make them like her anymore,” I was told more than once.

  I know that now in a way I never have. Like I said, when you’re little, you think everyone has a mom like you. I was surprised to realize they d
on’t. Then, you realize no one has a mother like you do. She’s one of a kind.

  And I was privileged to be her son. I was honored to be the one who cared for her. I was the one she counted on, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

  Shortly after Mom passed away, Regie Ragland pulled me aside at church one Sunday morning. Regie is the community director at Morning Pointe and became a good friend to my mom and an invaluable resource to me.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you this story. On Friday, before your mother died, we had our worship service. Since your mom loved the music, I went and got her to come with me to the service. After we sang, I got up to serve communion, and your mother got up with me. She stood next to me, and I thought, Well, that would be okay, and I let her stand there. Then, as our friends came to receive communion, your mom helped me serve communion. She talked with each person and prayed with most of them. That’s the last picture I have of your mom. It was a beautiful moment I’ll never forget.”

  Coffee with Mom: Today was the first day I drove to the church without stopping to have coffee with Mom. Grief has a quiet way of sneaking up on you when you start thinking you’re “over it.”

  My mom serving communion . . . she was in a place she didn’t want to be. She couldn’t do the things she wanted to do or live the life that she wanted to live, but there she was. Praying with the residents and sharing the bread and cup.

  That was my mom. Life may be tough, but it’s never too tough that you can’t gather around a table, share a little bread, and remind someone how much they are loved.

  That’s what my mom did.

  And I’ll never drink another cup of coffee and not think about her.

  Chapter 19

  Things No One Will Tell You (But You Need to Hear Anyway)

  Coffee with Mom: In the end, you have to live with yourself. If you can remember, in all of the craziness of the disease, the only thing that really matters is knowing you did the best you could, you’ll be fine. Less than that is hard to live with.