Golden Mom...

Mama Dear

Everything I am proud of having done or stood for I owe to my Mother and Father. To my Mom, however, I’ve always felt I owed a little more. Maybe it started with Ma laboring 31 hours to deliver me, while Dad just nervously pranced the floor. Maybe as an averse-to-sleep, night crying baby, she had to hug me more and the hugged imprint stuck. Maybe it stems from the times I can still remember. Those times when I’d come home from college, and Dad would be teary eyed and happy to see me, and after some simple words, he’d go to bed to rest for his night shift Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper delivery job. Then Mom and I would talk into the night. Mom hung on every college story, collegiate feeling, learning wonderment, friendship made. Often I thought she was dreaming her own youthful college experience through my words. Only after I recently re-read her only book --- ME, typed in 1932 on 21 fading pages as her 8th grade graduation assignment from Cleveland’s Brownell Grade School, was I reminded of the dream her son’s words lived for her on her couch:

“My ambition is to be a junior high school teacher. I will try to earn my own way through college. I wouldn’t enjoy going to a college in Ohio. I would like to go to a college in a different state. I will try to be kind to everybody in college and senior high school. From the wages I earn when I begin work as a teacher I will give part to my parents and keep the rest. During my summer vacation I will travel to different parts of the country. I expert to work as a teacher until I am promoted to the principal of the school. I hope that my future will turn out as I want it too.”

As the first college graduate among her sisters’ kids, I won’t forget what she said after I told her I wanted to go into the Peace Corps upon graduation, “There’s nothing more we can teach you, give you. You’ve got more education than any of us. You’ve got to know what’s best from here on.” She didn’t want me to be half a world away, but she sent me off with that sturdy independence, warmth and conviction and not a single tear. Sturdy and tearless, the mother I had always loved.

I can remember that Mother. She could be tired and curt, but always unafraid, caring and helpful. For a long time I assumed she’d be that way forever, and I’d always love her. I was right on one of two.

The way I remember her most vividly now is still sitting on the couch, anxious to see me but now hobbled by a stroke, with never seen in younger years, tears on her cheeks and voice. The slow lifting of the arms, the hug and the now rolling tears tugged at my heart. Now her tears and just a little talk would leave her in need of a nap. Sheltered in a blanket and sleeping, I would gaze at my once indomitable mother, wishing for her sake more of that earlier her could return to her.

This is the Mom, who like so many moms, sheltered her kid from the realities of life. The Mom who left me frolic in kid-hood, for she knew that too soon life would teach harshness and tears. When I wanted to go to my dream high school, Cleveland’s expensive St. Ignatius, she went out and took a clerk’s job at a discount store. As I romped through life, I thought she liked the added experience of working and raising two kids, and a dad. When I came home and asked, “Ma, the other kids at school have lettuce and tomato and stuff on their sandwiches. Can’t I have lettuce on mine? “

I got the lettuce. Years later I learned how the lettuce grew. Ma, who on paydays immediately shred her and dad’s paychecks into white envelopes hidden in her dresser drawer and floor furnace venting, said, “I didn’t have the money to buy lettuce for your sandwich, but I said to myself, ‘If it means not eating, my kid’s going to have what the other kids have.’”

This is the Mom who wanted to see me and missed me -- but encouraged me to travel with my friends during college breaks, who worried when I hitchhiked and jumped freight trains, who was scared when I traveled and worked thousands of miles away after the Peace Corps. “Travel. See the world. You won’t get a better education. Once you have responsibilities, you won’t be able to ...”

When I pushed to get a paper route to earn some money, she asked, “You want to be a grown man with a job already? Do you like playing baseball, football, swimming, riding your bike, going on trips, getting your homework done? With a paper route, will you have as much time to still be a kid? Be a kid for as long as you can...”

When I had a chance to buy my first fixer-upper in pricey Marin County, she volunteered, “Dad and I can give you some money to help.” Mom, like her Mother, never stopped turning small change into miracle lettuce that she’d pull from that little white envelope marked “Kids.”

On the inside, the weakened lady laying on the couch in her little “coucha” (Croatian home) in Ohio had never changed. The vibrant, gorgeous young woman, who on the dance floor with my dad in her twirling days was slick enough to have had Hollywood producers offer to squire her to Tinsel Town, wasn’t going to raise her little kids in the alley house on Cleveland’s East 25th where she and dad started. She found a safer, suburban Parma house that dad, the small-time sometimes bookie, was afraid to gamble all their savings on. “I didn’t bring these kids into the world to raise them in an alley.. They’re getting a better life. I’m buying that house and taking the kids. You can come, or stay, but we’re going.” Dad may have been scared, but he wasn’t stupid.

Not yet ten, I fought, cried and argued about leaving that alley, about leaving my best friend, Frankie Boris, and the adventures and tussles he meant. In the end, Mama knew best not only because I found other Parma friends and adventures, but because Mama needed a better home to take care of Marlene. It wasn’t long after we moved that my sister got sick, stopped eating, and seemed to this little boy to be sleeping and shrinking to death on our couch. Finally, Dr. Hall and Cleveland’s infamous Dr. Sam Shepherd and his brother diagnosed Marlene and started the long and often repeated hospital process of fighting to save her from a diabetic death. Over the years, my parents spent hundreds of nights at Bay Village Hospital with Marlene on the critical list. My mind’s eye can still see the hospital corridor hall and this little boy often sitting with his baseball and glove. Understanding little of what Ma and Dad and Marlene were going through, I would often feel sad for my sister and then find my thoughts turning to tomorrow’s games.

Suzzane King, a California friend who often sat with Mom when work beckoned me from being Ma’s caretaker, and would read her the Garrison Keillor stories that Ma liked so well, often got her to talk of earlier mothering days. “Your Mother feels sorry about how she raised you. She thinks she and your dad didn’t have enough time for you and that you were neglected. You had to make do on your own because they had to spend so much time taking care of Marlene, and that’s why you are like you are...”

Yeah, I remember Ma, the things you think I should change, and will work on those things you called me on, like being “an Exercise Gestapo... don’t rest or eat enough... don’t relax... you’re mean... work too much... offend people and have no friends...” For sure, however, whatever good I am, you and pop made it, and never, never did I feel neglected. I never even thought of being neglected till I heard you tell these stories of hurt a mother carries inside about her children. You’ve heard me say this to you before, and this is an airborne epistle again from fragile, misty ground control.

Like Golden Moms everywhere, she kept things inside that she thought might hurt her kids, hid reality from us until she thought it was the right time, struggled with herself on the inside as to whether she was doing right. Yet on other issues, she hesitated not to say her piece. She was as ill prepared as any young woman to raise children, yet often I had heard her say to child rearing advice offered to her, “What do they know about raising children, or raising your father. Until they have been in my shoes, they should keep their mouths shut and mind their own business.”

After I had been in India for 6 months as a Peace Corps volunteer, I sent pictures home. I looked very different to Ma, not due to the tight crew cuts but because of the 35 pounds shed from my 6’ 190 pound frame and strange color to my skin. Her rapid response letter said, “You look terrible and sick. If you are sick, just come home. Your health is more important than what people will say. Just come home now.” My color was explained away by Devali, an Indian holiday on which kids from my Bombay slum had doused me with colored water. And I had another reminder not to scare Mom with regard to her kids. Next to them, she didn’t care what the world had to say.

When I explained that Fr. Bierberg flunked me in a required for college graduation religion course, God and Creation, in my last semester of senior year, she lit up her little kitchen. “You mean with all that money we spent on Catholic education, the mass and communions you would go to 5 and 6 times a week, that he is going to keep you, the first kid in the family to go to college, from graduating? What kind of God does he know? And how the hell is he, a priest, to know anything about creation!... You’ll never catch me inside of a Catholic Church again, and they won’t be getting any money from me again...” Even though I did graduate, I don’t remember Ma going to church, other than her old Cleveland Byzantine Catholic St. Nicholas, again.

Textbook God didn’t phase her. But believe in her own God? Yes, I think so. And like good priests? Yes, especially when she knew they did their jobs or were good people. In July of 1991 Ma had her debilitating stroke. One day in August, while I was moving her limbs and pushing her to exercise, tired and crying, she said,

“If I had Grandpa’s house on 38^th street (near my high school), I’d give it to St. Ignatius.”

“Why would you do that, Ma?”

“Because they taught you how to do therapy, and now you’re teaching me.”

In her waning days I asked her if she’d like me to ask Fr. Kleinhenz, my high school Dean of Men -- who all of us Ignatius students then thought looked and acted meaner than Napoleon, to come visit her. She nodded yes...softly saying, “Yes, that’d be nice.” Fr. Kleinhenz, I learned sometimes after he had struck fear in our student hearts, grew up in Ma’s neighborhood and, “All the girls had a crush on him and his good looking brother.” Well, I wasn’t able to get one of my favorite St. Ignatius Jesuits to California, so what did God send to the hospital on a Saturday morn?

With silver, curly hair and an Irish brogue, Fr. Ahearn said, “Now, Marthe, I’m going to say a prayer for the sick over you. It asks God to take care of your sickness or take care of you in the best way he knows ...” Then he said, “And now, Marthe, if you think you might have any sins, I want you to just think of being sorry for them. You don’t even have to think of them, if you have any. Just think of how you are sorry, and I am going to absolve you...” To this good priest, Ma nodded peacefully..

Only after the Irish lilt left the praying and got to talking did I notice the baseball cap Fr. Ahearn had placed on Ma’s bed. I picked up Father’s cap and grabbed mine from the shelf, “Ma, look,” as I held both caps in front of her and she tried to focus through her partial blindness, “He’s got one San Francisco St. Ignatius championship on his hat, and what do we have on ours -- six or eight, right?” Down to the end, she couldn’t get away from the school she sacrificed to send me to and their good kids, Darren - who got me the cap, Tom, Jerry, Treavor, Karen --- young Wildcats from both coasts who did their community service and more to help Ma, Marlene and me through her stroke years. So often she would gleefully belittle St. Ignatius and a bonehead move by me or those boys by saying “I want my money back.” That day, she had no joke, just a peaceful nod and smile, and treasured memories of those wonderful kids who brought youthful exuberance, gaiety and sparkle into her sadly handicapped life.

Growing up, I can’t recall ever having had an argument with Mom. There is, however, one argument I wish I would have successfully waged with her. From July of 1991 until January of 1997, my nurse trained sister, with her severe diabetic complications, and I have cared for my Mother. It has not been easy for either of us to bring Mom back from two doctors’ prognosis of “She’ll probably be a vegetable for life.” Though tortuous for Mom, and draining for sis and me, through jock induced therapy, Mom straightened her splayed eye, learned to see some, built enough strength to move her once totally paralyzed left side, straightened her slouched face and learned to walk if she were holding a strong arm or a railing. Through the years of pushing her, I learned enough about life style effects to believe that had mom not been hooked on cigarettes her stroke might not have happened for years, if at all. Years earlier, as an incentive for me, she had promised to quit smoking if I completed my Ph.D. It was after trying to fulfill her end of that promise that she admitted, “I never realized how addicted I was.”

Pushing Ma to exercise, walk, think positively, laugh -- even if via dirty jokes, fight her labile crying jags that struck 30-40 times on some days, gave Ma back some independence. But was it enough -- for this lady who delivered life, help, love and radiated conviction and independence? She was a thorough bred wreathed with a halo. Now she felt and often acted like a handicapped nag.

She may have felt like a handicapped nag, but she still won races. When my diabetic sister failed to respond to Ma’s late night bathroom call in 1992, Ma crawled to her bed and felt my sister’s clammy body. Unable to walk, stand on her own or see much, Mom still knew how to mother. The first time she kept punching unseen phone numbers trying for 911 and got one of my sister’s friends coded numbers, asking for help. Tom Jarvis at the other end said, “Where do you need help, lady?”

“1817 California,” Ma responded, and Tom knew that was Marlene’s address.

Another time late in the night she crawled to the door of the condo, unlocked it, crawled down the hall and pounded on the neighbor’s door till Mr. Khan and his wife responded.

“Next time , Mama, you just pound on the bedroom wall, and we will know to come to you.” Mr. Khan said after the paramedics had left.

A third time she yelled from Marlene’s clammy body that she had huddled next to keep her warm until Rick and Jeff upstairs brought help. Each time she crawled to the door, pulled herself up by gripping the handle, and unlocked and unbolted the door, except for the chain, which one time she couldn’t find. That time she crawled away from the door so the fire department could bust the chain to save Marlene. Each time she did it without the tears and frustration that had taken over so many of Mom’s days. When her filly’s life was on the line, the stroke handicapped, labile lady became the protective, calculating, racing thoroughbred.

She could still win crucial races, but long, pasture grazing days never sat well with her. One sunny California day, I walked Ma to the lounge chair in the back yard and began tilling the garden. Jesting, I said, “I should sit you down here and have you pull weeds, Ma.” In that voice that trailed and cracked, she responded, “Oh, I wish I could. You don’t know how much I wish I could help you, son.” So often over the years she carried those sentiments and words to the poor cooking I did for her, for the baths I gave her, the behinds I wiped on her, the rushing around I did trying to cover work while caring for her. So often she cried, not stroke reflexively, but, “Because I can’t help you. I’m so useless to you and Marlene. Such a burden for you both.”

Even in her proclaimed “useless” state, Ma was teaching. Maybe it was because of the story that appeared in the Jewish Community Bulletin about Matt, the high school volunteer who for a period walked Ma for an hour a week, that the San Francisco Examiner asked to interview Ma. The writer/photographer team of Beth and Bob McLeod spent hours talking with and tagging along as we did Ma’s workouts and our shopping and park walks. The sensitivity and respect with which they treated Ma came from not just journalistic experience. Beth had almost lost her sanity as well as her California job trying to care for her terminally ill mother in Kansas. Years later she had finally convinced the San Francisco Examiner to let her pursue a writing love, a story about elderly and caregivers.

Months after the interview, working out of my home, I noticed a neighbor shove a newspaper in my fence. Sometime later I picked it out. Dominating most

of the front page of the April 3, 1995 Examiner were two pictures of Ma. One showed her working out with the `lead story’s words nearby saying “They said I would be a vegetable.” The other, with her hand holding her eye lid up as she often did, sadly saying that the caregiving responsibility for her kids was, “..not right, it’s not fair...”

The Examiner story sparked Ma for awhile. It made her feel like she had added something, like somehow she was being useful, “Maybe it will make people see how much more help they should give older peoples’ needs.” After reading Ma the McLeods’ award winning six part series, and after reading Beth’s particularly touching story of how she cared for her dying folks, Ma added, “It’s good they did those stories. Old people are important, and more people should know about them.”

On her honest talking days, Ma could zing the other side of the Caregivers stories at Marlene and I and the sandwich generation by quoting her Ma, “Bubba used to say. ‘A mother can take care of five kids, but five kids have trouble taking care of one mother.’” Oh, how true that lesson can be.

Where do I vent the lessons of my Mom’s last years? I hate the cigarette companies, who hooked Ma on smoking for 50 years. Am dumbfounded by stupid smokers who recklessly gamble on losing the independence Ma once had. Incensed at the inconsiderateness of those health crapshooters who are thoughtless of draining precious life time from those who may have to care for them in the future. Upset at myself for not being better prepared with time, confidence and cash flow to handle more of Mom’s day to day life when a once strong mother is replaced with an emotionally, mentally and physically handicapped mama.

But its not time to be angry now. I’m too busy crying, thinking and writing out my sadness. Mom’s cries over the years of, “Why didn’t you let me die?... Put me in a rest home, I’ll die quicker... Bubba, Bubba, I want to see Bubba ... Why can’t I die, I’m useless to everyone...” were answered at 9:00 am on January 20th 1997.

After I rolled up the bed next to Mom’s that the hospital had provided me for three nights, I looked out at the San Francisco houses, the University of San Francisco Church steeple and the skies that had given us nothing but gray and flooding rains for weeks. Over those days Mom had moved from letting me feed her a little, to sucking an Ensure milk shake, to spoon feeding her liquid, to placing crushed ice in her mouth. Through the night Mom sucked air from the oxygen tubes, sweat, wet and rolled limply when the nurses aides and I moved and changed her. Ma’s blood disorder had probably worsened to leukemia, was infected with newly anti-biotic resistant vaicomycin resistant enterococci (VRE), and was probably approaching pneumonia. I could hold her little fingers and stoke her soft baby skin. I could walk to and look out the window, listen to her breathing behind me, and talk sadly to myself. I did that for several minutes Monday morning, before I didn’t hear her rattled breathing.

When I turned from the window, her head had turned from me, and fallen to the right. Her lower dentures hung out of her mouth. Dentures she needed in older years because in younger years she skipped those costly dental visits to instead plant money in her little white envelope marked “Kids.”.

Doctors weren’t needed to tell me she had begun her journey to see Bubba. I could still hold her hand, stroke her hair, kiss her moist forehead, and look out the window. And as I did, the window changed. For the first time in many weeks, I saw California’s blue skies, puffy white clouds and bright light. For an hour the skies opened. A beam of God's light caressed my Mom. And I could dream that a jovial Angel in a limo was picking her up with Bubba, Dad, her brother, sisters, Uncle Bob, Scott, Mrs. Rini and Grandpa holding a pair of dancing shoes on her seat..

With my head on a bed rail, holding my Mother’s warm hand and a heavenly sky in the foreground, one of my cherished thoughts took me to December 22nd and one of those many nights she woke me to walk her to the bathroom at my house,

“You’re a good kid.” she said, as she carefully sat down on the seat.

“Thanks, Ma,” as I sat on the bath tub across from her and she held my arm for support, and began the banter that often made our frequent night bathroom trips bearable and funny, “You trying to butter me up for something?”

Ignoring my jest, she leaned closer, squinting to see me better and touched my face with both hands, “I’m going to hate to leave you.”

“Where you going, Ma? Got a hot date?”

Shaking her head gently, “No... I’m going to die.”

And that night, like I so often did, I laid my head against her head, and moistly prayed.

I wish you would have gotten all your wishes, Ma. Wish I could have done better by you. Wish you would have had the opportunity to be that junior high teacher and principal. Wish you would have had more of your cherished independence. But you got your tired wish, Ma. No more Pravachol, Ampicillin, Lisinopril, Coumadin, Lovastatin, Epigen, blood transfusions. No more pushing yourself to exercise, to walk. No more missing your friends who passed away or praying for those sick and hurting. No more crying to see Bubba.

You are no longer a frail human. You are something more. It is us, your fragile kids, family and friends who are doing the missing... And Ma, you were the best teacher and principal I ever had... Mama dear, I love and miss you.

In the summers, Marlene and I would take Mom back to her Parma house and friends she loved. In her last summer, Marlene took Ma for a “rich bitches weekend at the Cleveland Ritz.” Ma could use words like that now and even tell dirty jokes, the meanings which she often didn’t understand, because as she often said, “Once you’re over 70, you can say anything you want,” kind of like the Ma of the Golden Girls which she so enjoyed watching. Mary Jane Mendlick, who loved hearing from and sharing jokes with Ma, remembered that weekend.

January 28,1997

Dear Dwayne,

Marlene called me Sunday evening to tell me the sad news of your mother's death on January 20th. I was deeply saddened to hear that Marthe is gone. She was a very special lady. Her amazing recovery following her stroke and her continuing efforts to exercise and grow stronger were inspiring. I know that you did a great deal to encourage her which kept her going at times when it must have been very discouraging for her to deal with the ways in which her life had changed.

Both you and Marlene took such good care of your mother. She was truly blessed to have such caring and considerate children and we, who knew her, were also blessed to have had her in our lives. I will never forget her wonderful sense of humor.

Marlene was very kind to invite me to visit them twice during the weekend that she and your mom stayed at the Ritz Carlton. We all had a wonderful time and I know your mother enjoyed getting out and doing all the things we did. It was really fun to sit in the parlor of the club floor where they stayed and have snacks and laugh about everything. We even took a ride on the new Waterfront Line. It took longer to get your mom, in the wheelchair, on and off the train than it took to get to the end of the line at the Muny Parking Lot. This required using a special elevator a the Tower City Station which raised them about three feet off the ground so the platform would be even with the train floor. The Rapid driver insisted everyone had to get off, cross the tracks and get on again when the train started back in the opposite direction but we just told her we were not getting off so the driver had to call in to get special permission to allow us to stay on the train. Consequently, none of us paid a fare since it is free going East from Tower City. Marlene also amazes me at how well she gets around. I was so happy to be able to share that special time.

That Monday I took a day off to spend with Marlene and your mom left me with many fond memories. The jokes and nonsense went on almost constantly during those two days. We ate dinner at a different restaurant each evening and I acted as "Ms. Hunn's" secretary calling the front desk to request more stationery, etc., and to ask if they were supposed to leave the plush bathrobe in the room! What a wonderful gift you and Marlene gave your mother. I know she enjoyed it very much. We really had fun pretending we belonged to the "upper class" while sitting in that fancy parlor where they served so many different snacks and beverages several times a day.

It is so difficult to lose a parent. I know this is very hard for you because you were so close to your mother and that you and Marlene will miss her very much. She always thought of you, too, especially during that mini-vacation at the Ritz Carlton. I remember her dictating a note to you from the hotel. Marthe had a delicious, irreverent sense of humor which I appreciated as it was so like my own and Marlene's - very zany. I suspect some of my letters to Marlene over the ears have unnerved more than one of her readers.

My family and I send our deepest sympathy. I will keep your mother and you and Marlene in my prayers and I hope that in time you will find peace.