By
Sherry Churchill
Sally was crying on the
telephone!” exclaimed my bewildered mother “I didn’t know what to
say to her! I think she is exhausted from taking care of mom and
that makes her depressed!”
Those words made me feel a
little bewildered and depressed myself. My mom and I were living in
Florida, 1200 miles away from Aunt Sally and Grandma in Michigan.
The family, most of us spread all over the country, had collectively
agreed that Grandma should not go to a nursing home with strangers.
Mom had tried to have Grandma and Grandpa in her home about 10 years
ago, but it made her a nervous wreck and she only lasted a few
months. Next, her sister Sally agreed to be the caretaker. Aunt
Sally had the right temperament for caregiving. Always a homemaker,
and possessing a calm personality, everyone agreed she might be
successful. She was. But because she was so successful, caring for
them both until Grandpa died 5 years ago, and now Grandma, at
98-years-old, it was easy for the rest of the family to forget that
Aunt Sally had put her well-deserved personal life on hold. We were
all living our lives conveniently ignorant of what it meant to be a
caregiver. Mom traveled to Michigan once a year and took Grandma out
for 3 hours. That was the extent of our side of the family’s
assistance. My four cousins, (one lived 3,000 miles away), were of
some help to her, but all had their own lives and families. Grandma
required total care - diapers, wheelchair, everything. We never
heard one word of complaint from Aunt Sally. Our intermittent and
sparse telephone calls to her were always met with joy. She would
cheerfully put Grandma on the telephone to say hello, and we hung up
feeling good about ourselves, still with no real thought to Aunt
Sally’s sacrifice.
Then came the day she cried on
the telephone. That just didn’t sound like her. So after hanging up
with my mom, I called my Aunt. Soon, I had put it all together. My
cousin’s baby, Aunt Sally’s 9-month-old granddaughter, was to have
emergency open-heart surgery in Los Angeles. Aunt Sally had never
even seen her, and now she could die from the risky operation.
Because of grandma, Aunt Sally couldn’t go to California to be with
them during the 5-hour surgery. Her two sons could only be with
grandma during the nights, and her other daughter, who could
normally come for the days, was pregnant and couldn’t lift. As I
listened, I realized that the only right thing to do was to
volunteer to take care of grandma for a week. Flight arrangements
worked out to play musical houses, and so it was that I visited my
aunt’s home for a week of caregiving. “I worked in a nursing home 20
years ago,” I thought, “I can do this.” Aunt Sally left me pages and
pages of instructions on medicine, bathing, bathroom, dressing,
sleeping and eating. I assured her as she got on the plane for
California that Grandma and I would be just fine. When I looked at
Grandma for the first time in three years, I was startled. My little
4’11” dynamo of a grandmother now looked feeble, and she bent
forward and to the side. I was pleased that she still walked on her
own at 98 years old, but it was a disturbing shuffle, which
sometimes threw her off-balance. She wore diapers. Even though she
could communicate that she had to use the toilet, she often didn’t
make it in time.
Her frail hands shook when she
held her daily cup of coffee, sometimes spilling it down the front
of her or on the table. Talking consisted of one or two words, not
always the appropriate word for what she wanted or needed. Most of
the time her mouth drooped and she drooled constantly. I immediately
got the idea this might not be as easy as I’d figured. Little did I
know that Grandma paces non-stop every night from 4 pm until 10 pm.
That first night, I followed her back and forth, back and forth, up
and down, up and down, from the moment I arrived until 10 pm, when I
finally put her into to bed and she stayed. After unpacking, I
crawled, exhausted, into bed. I suppose the baby monitor in my room
helped wake me at 1:00 am from the “thump”. I jumped up and ran into
grandma’s bedroom to find her clawing the wall, seemingly
disoriented, and shivering. I put her back into bed and covered her,
knowing that she might get up again and again. I slept very little
after that and finally got up at 4:30 am to make coffee and read.
Every bone and joint in my arms ached from the constant lifting the
night before. It felt like arthritis, whatever that feels like.
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