She couldn't see her food. I was one of several people who would direct her fork to various portions of her meal. I did not do it often, because it seemed it embarrassed her.
Just after my elderly friend went to live there, just under six months ago,Marie was one of the first residents of the nursing home I met. I had spied the baby grand piano and made a feeble effort to play one of the few pieces for which I still had "finger memory", the "Arogonnaise" by Jules Massenet. I only got a few musical lines in before that lingering memory stopped abruptly. I got up and I said to Marie who came up in her wheel chair that I no longer really could play. She, who apparently had some musical training, seemed to think that I was quite good. I liked her for the encouragement. I thought of her as one of the "strong" ones, not so much of body, but of mind.
There are three groups at the nursing home. There are those whose bodies and minds have fully crumbled from old age. They cannot leave their chairs but also, whether it be Alzeimher's or other forms of dementia, they cannot speak at all or speak only the occasional word salad. They have truly made the circle back to baby hood. They are pure emotion, with the occasional spark of the persons they once were. There are those who are able to walk but whose memory loss has become significant enough that they could no longer live alone and take care of their day to day affairs and personal needs. They speak. They understand things and can respond to instruction or convey their wishes, but the forgetfulness does not allow them the independence of old. But they have not lost their selves, their essence. And then there is the third group, who but for their failed bodies, seem ageless, even if well over 90. They are still engaged in everything around them and like to read, or watch television or take day trips, or visit their families. When I met her, Marie was closer to this last category. I sensed she was wending her way to forgetfulness, but she sat with her confreres at dinner and communicated and though her vision was failing her, she'd eat without assistance and heartily. She talked with Neal, a non-resident of 93 whose wife died in the home over a year ago, but who continues to take dinner with his wife's comrades, and Imogen, a resident, at the extreme end of the table. And she negotiated around the room easily with her chair.
And then about two months ago, something happened. We used to exchange easy hellos, though I know she was a little deaf and I'd have to say hello twice. She had a sparkle in her eye, and even a bit of a smile. And then I noticed she had no idea who I was, the person who visits her friend nearly every day. And she was asking about going home, as if she did not realize that she was already home. She was suddenly discombobulated. She was restless. She couldn't manage to eat without some help.
And then there were evening meals that she did not leave her room. I found out that one of her children was a volunteer musician at the home, and she had other siblings. One would come every morning and every evening to be with Marie. Others lived elsewhere in the country, but they became in the last month or two, regular visitors. I sensed a family rift by the timing of visits and the body language when they were visiting at the same time.
"Hyppa" laws being what they are, the staff could never be quizzed about the health of a resident. So, information came via other residents and the occasional vague update from a family member. I never found out what were the particulars, but only that apparently Marie was now at the hospice stage. How surprising that was to me. She seemed so solid when I had first engaged her, but perhaps that was only an illusion. And of course the reality is that I had not seen her before, when she was the busy mother of six kids and a beloved grandmother. A conversation with one son made it clear that there was not agreement over the way the last days were to be handled. Or were being handled. A bitterness was rising among the siblings, something Marie would probably have not liked.
The nuns who nurse and administer hovered around.
I heard nothing for days, and then, this past Monday, the volunteering guitar playing daughter said to those gathered in he activity room, "This is the last song I played for my mother." Last song?
"Did your mother die?" "Yes", said her daughter, "she died Friday morning."
"I'm so sorry" I said beginning to tear up. Her daughter insisted it was a good thing. She was ready.
I hardly knew Marie and yet, I had to be at her funeral yesterday, at Holy Cross, just down the hill from the home. There were several staff and another friend of mine who met Marie as I had. I learned that Marie and I shared the same birthday, albeit hers was 31 years before mine. She had been a junior high teacher as well as playing the guitar. She had lived in New York, my home town, among other places. And she probably hadn't been in as good shape as I thought when I met her. She had had a major stroke. She had lived with one of the children until, as happens, it became too much to assist with her needs.
The priest, obviously a long time friend of the family, and in the "know" about the divisions illness and death can cause in a family, reminded them that their mom was in heaven and saw everything now. Nothing was hidden from her. And she would want them to love one another, and to forgive. I had the sense that this was a pointed effort at mediating some hard feelings that inevitably afflict relationships among the children of the dead parent. I admit it, at such moments, I am glad I was an only child.
There was no pamphlet or photo board. I would have liked to have seen these things to have more of a sense of a woman I encountered for only a few months, and find myself mourning.
She is with God. I believe that. And I am so glad our lives touched every so fleetingly.
