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Barbara D. Cerow |
Mom and Dad as children |
Arriving in New England for Easter week, I have not seen the folks since last June, when I returned to California. Unfortunately, both Mom's and Dad's illnesses have progressed markedly. Mom has had Alzheimers for some time, while Dad has been more recently diagnosed with Parkinsons. They have been together for 56 years and its really something to watch the two of them trying to contend with the effects of these illnesses and their aging.
Dad was stationed in Germany after the war, and Mom had gotten a job with the government, working on the Berlin Airlift. Mom was a beautiful, high spirited (Aries Sun as part of a Grand Fire Trine) woman who had dated around, while Dad had graduated from West Point a couple of years before. Now, Dad was no slouch. He entered West Point in 1944, at the height of the war. He managed to make the cadet varsity hockey team four years in a row, and graduated 9th in his class in Physical Education. When Dad first asked Mom for a date, she said 'No,' but when he persisted, she challenged him to a bowling match, with the winner having their way. If Dad won, he would have his date with Mom. If Mom won, no date.
She won the game, and he was denied his date; but her girl friends urged her to borrow Dad's car (without Dad) so they could go to Switzerland shopping for a weekend. En route she was forced off the road while passing a lorry pulling not one but two trailers. The car rolled before coming to a halt. The Germans driving the lorry stopped and helped to right the car, but did more damage in doing so than the accident had. As a result, out of guilt Mom married Dad, and four sons later, she's still at it.
Mom working on the
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The Alzheimers makes Mom very forgetful, and she is really past the point of having a coherent conversation with people. It's just too hard for her to finish sentences. Dad's Parkinsons has made it really hard for him to get up out of chairs, and he often complains about not having any strength in his hands. He will try to rock back and forth to gain the momentum to get his feet and legs under him in an effort to stand up. Nevertheless, they continue to work together, with Mom being able to get around better than Dad, and Dad still being mentally sharp.
Early in the evening, I was watching the two of them from the kitchen, where they have taken to sleeping in two lazy boys in front of the television through the night. It's easier for them to get up from out of their chairs that way, and they have to get up fairly often through the night. Dad was attempting to rise as I watched, and Mom was attempting to help him up by pulling on his arms. Together they managed to accomplish the feat, and Dad went off to do whatever errand he had in mind (probably the bathroom). I have talked to him about getting someone to come in, but he feels that is not needed yet, although he does have an aid come in twice a week for an hour to help bathe Mom and take attend to her. Also, my brother Davis (the second estate, as Dad calls him) is in the house to help with whatever is needed.
Later that evening, all the lights were off downstairs, and the only illumination was the flicker of the TV screen with its ever changing story line. The two of them were settled in their chairs, with the soft glow playing about them, and more faintly as it danced with the shadows on the surrounding walls. I was standing behind the two of them, without their knowing I was there. I watched the entire scene and was thinking about their lives together and where they are now, with not a lot to look forward to and a difficult medical diagnosis for each; each day being a series of increasingly difficult obstacles which needed to be overcome. Although the TV continued to bathe the room in its flickering light, with the volume set a little too loud, there was a stillness to the entire scene as though it were out of time. Then, without saying anything or looking to the left or right, Mom just quietly reached out and put her hand on Dad's, whose only acknowledgement was to take her hand and hold it. And there they sat, in the glow, hand in hand, seated before eternity.
I silently cried as I watched the two of them.
It was sad and yet so beautiful.
POCKET FULL OF MOON DUST
Taken from 4/17/7 New Moon email
The Moon rules many things. Her realm includes meandering streams and fireflies twinkling in the night. It is the lush wooded hills and green valleys rolling into forever. It is the food we eat, whether solid or liquid. It's what nourishes and sustains us. It is Mom, home and the family. It is our feelings, and the emotional roller coaster they unleash. The Moon also evokes misty, water colored memories- silvery reflections of times gone by. To conjure them, all one needs is a pocket full of Moon dust.
This New Moon is conjuncting the ruler of my 4th house, the natural house placement of the Moon and Cancer.
Mom's one room schoolhouse classmates |
Mom was born on the Old Creek Farm in Sparta, Tennessee during the Twenties. She was the last of eight children, four boys, four girls. Her oldest brother, Leon, had already married NS moved out. His oldest daughter was born within a year of Mom, and they grew up together. Van, her Daddy, had seen hard times under the TVA. It seems that their polices somehow backed up and flooded a good portion of his crops one year. Although they fought it in court, they never received any restitution. It was a difficult blow, and they had to move on. They lost the family farm.
Mom |
Life at home had always been hard, with lots of work.
Learning about the ways of the farm |
That was where she met Dad. He was class of West Point, '48. He wore sunglasses the evening he showed up for his first date. He had obviously had a drink or two before arriving. He kept giggling. A week or so later her two girlfriends asked her to borrow Dad's car so they could go shopping in Switzerland. On the way they were run off the road by a German lorry, who stopped and helped roll the car back over, but in the process did more damage than the original accident. Feeling guilty (Neptune rising), she married Dad. Her two friends escaped penance.
Mom had a rather colorful history when it came to dating. She went to business college and then on to work in Washington D.C. during the war.
Wedding Cake |
While on the way to Guam via San Francisco, Mom stopped in Hawaii en route. While there she went out with a seamen who had a weekend pass. Over the course of the weekend, he spent an entire month's pay while painting the town.
She never saw him again.
Another suitor was an Air Force Captain named Klemme. He had told Mom that he was going to propose to her, but that he wanted to go off to the Riviera for one last fling. So he did. It was during that time that Dad worked his way in and proposed. When Klemme called after returning, he was flabbergasted when Dad answered the phone and told him of the 'New Deal.' Mom had had several marriage proposals, but had never accepted any of them.
Dad proposed on Mother's Day, 1950. They had met, proposed and married in just six weeks. Having never been there before, when they walked into the Hotel Republic on the French Riviera where they were about to have dinner on their honeymoon (see picture below), the band leader stopped the music, threw up his arms, and called out in a loud voice across the room, "BAR-BAR-A!!" Dad had no idea who this guy was. It turns out they had worked together during the Berlin Air Lift.
Honeymoon on the French Riviera |
At least, that's the story Mom told Dad.
One year after the proposal, again on Mother's Day, yours truly was born.
My present to her was to make her a Mom on Mother's Day. Her present to me was the gift of life.
There had been frantic protests from the other side of the Atlantic from Dad's parents prior to their getting married. Six weeks is not a long time, and they were worried that he might be making a mistake. Dad later made such a big deal out of them (of how important they were and the level of expectation that was needed to deal with them) that she suffered her first migraine headache when they came to visit, attempting to 'measure up.'
From there on it was a career as a military wife. From two moves in Germany there were two more moves in Fort Lee, VA, then Natick, MA, back to Fort Lee, Green Cove Springs, FL (while Dad was serving a tour of duty in Vietnam), Levenworth, KS, Philadelphia, PA, Didcot, Berkshire, England, West Point, NY, New Orleans, LA and finally, in 1968 they moved into Framingham, MA and the family home. Eleven moves and four boys in 18 years. The first two, Donald and Davis, were born two years apart. Then there was an eleven year break, and two more, Charles and John two years apart. Dad used to call us the First and Second Fleets. Mom used our names. An old neighbor remembered how, in the middle of the summer, with the temperatures in the mid-90s, Mom and Dad took off somewhere, and Dad was chastising Mom for not wearing stockings. Military wives had to set the example. The neighbor still tells that story to this day. That was in '62.
Inbetween moves we would visit the Grandparents, often making these marathon drives from wherever we were stationed back to Tennessee.
The family while stationed
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"Hold it, I guess" was the obvious answer.
I am waiting in the San Jose airport for my over night flight to Boston, and am working on the New Moon email. The plane is late. We were supposed to arrive at 5:04 tomorrow morning. It'll be after that now.
Mom is dying. She has fallen into a coma. I am praying to get there before she slips away,
...when all I will have left is a pocket full of Moon dust.
Please send prayers.
I love you, Mom.
~Donnie
EASTER
Taken from 5/2/7 Scorpio Full Moon email
Some people would find this strange. Celestially, it makes perfect sense.
When Lisa and I married, we both knew that our parents were getting on in age. Part of our vows were to see each other through as our parents began to fade. This was a conscientious sentiment. We had discussed it, and felt re-assured that we would be there for them, and for each other. Having gone through this once with Gail, I know how tough it can be to lose one you both love and cherish.
As it turns out, our Mom's were born within four days of each other; same year. Dad called me on April 6th; the day Neptune squared my Sun. Mom's Alzheimer's had progressed to the point where she had stopped swallowing. At that point he felt that Mom had six weeks, but I needed to start making arrangements about coming home.
Easter flowers |
April 6th was Good Friday. The weekend was Easter. On Monday morning Lisa received a call from her sister that her Mom had collapsed the night before and was in the hospital. The reports did not sound good. That night Lisa was on the plane to NY with a ticket scheduled to return one week later. On either side of Easter weekend, our Mom's had gone down. A quick look at their charts showed that Saturn was getting ready to make a retrograde station on both of their natal Neptunes the following Thursday. In four days time Neptune does not move very far and were basically in the same spot in their two charts at birth. Their immune systems were being compromised. Their abilities to fight off external influences, as well as simply being drained from the inside, was about to reach a crest.
All through that week, the doctors were not seeing much progress with Helga's (Lisa's Mom) situation, but this didn't surprise me. The pneumonia was not releasing its grip as quickly as might otherwise be expected, but I had let Lisa know that her situation would turn as they approached Thursday. It did, but the combination of assaults had taken their toll. When it was all over at the end of the week and she had been moved out of intensive care, Helga still had to go into physical therapy in order to recover the abilities she had lost. She had become too weak to even feed herself.
Mom was not so lucky.
This sweep of the celestial scythe caught the two of them together, and Lisa went one way, and I the other. Together with our Mom's, our support systems had collapsed, at least as far as a physical presence in the final stages was concerned. Naturally, there were phone calls back and forth, and when the crisis finally did pass for Helga, Lisa called the school where she works, extended her stay for another three days, and came north to Massachusetts to help support me and our family.
Mom in the Alps |
One of my chief fears before leaving for the east coast was that Mom would not know I was there when I arrived, at least not on a conscious level. The reports I had received was that the Alzheimer's was causing her to fade fast. It's a disease that attacks the mind and central nervous system, slowly forgetting first how to communicate (what was I saying?), but then degenerating into forgetting how to eat or swallow. She was eleven days into this stage when I arrived on the 17th, waiting until after a major winter storm blew through New England. As I walked down the hall in the nursing home where she was staying, Dad whispered in her ear and she looked up and visibly brightened. It was a bittersweet moment, but my prayers had been answered.
I had long ago learned not to try an talk to her; at least not to say or ask anything that required an articulate response. Rather, questions which required a yes, no, or ho-ho were all that were posed. The rest was hugs, affection, kisses, rubs and compliments. While the capacity to communicate is extremely limited, their hearing and comprehension comparatively remain. When I'd go in close to her face and purse my lips in the nursing home, she would purse hers in return, right up until two days before she died, seventeen days into her 'fast'.
Alzheimer's is not a very forgiving disease. Having rubbed Moms arms and legs repeatedly with olive oil through the week had managed to keep her extremities warm. On Friday morning when I came in, I noticed major discoloration around her ankles; they were mottled between blues and flesh tones big time. That is not how they had been the night before when we had left. Throughout the week, while asking about various conditions, the nurses would say nothing about Mom's time line; how long she might have. When I saw the discoloration, I called my good friend Anya who's a nurse on the Cape and has worked with the elderly and dying throughout much of her career. She told me when that happens you generally have 24 to 48 hours, tops. I asked her if rubbing her calves would do anything to hurt her. She said no, but that it wouldn't do anything to stave off the the overall situation, either.
And I'd like to offer a quick political statement here. I know that different people respond to situations differently and that nurses are under orders not to say anything (only the doctor can do that), but there are some of us who in times of darkness and uncertainty appreciate a little light. For the week that I was with Mom in the nursing home, I saw only nurses and nurse practitioners, never a doctor, and we were there from early in the morning until well into the evening every day. There were no doctors around to ask. Listening to some of the answers of the nurses in the nursing home, knowing that they were obfuscating I found personally insulting, but I knew there was no point pushing it. Anya was the only one who told me this (not everyone would be as lucky as I was to have such an experienced and loving friend), and as a result I was able to make some decisions based on what was really happening. The children were called in, and we were able to prepare for what was to come in a more timely fashion. Anya went on to say that ofttimes what they are waiting for was to be told that they could move on, that it was OK. Dad and I had been seated on either side of Mom during the entire week, with her in a wheelchair between us at the end of the hall by the window. When I gently told him this, he reached over and took her hand, fighting back tears and silently shook his head insistently back and forth- 'no'. He was not ready. He could deal with the timeline, but he was not ready to tell her to leave. Yet for those who desire it, who ask and would like to know, to continue to be kept in the dark when there is so much uncertainty and confusion around amounts (in my humble opinion), to cruel and unusual punishment.
God bless you, Anya.
Mom and Dad in the nursing home |
That was the final day of our stay in the nursing home, and here is where some of the intensity of Scorpio shines through with its brilliantly dark light, of death, insurance and fixed opinions. For some fifteen years Dad had been paying a Connecticut insurance company's tab, to the tune of some (approximately) $5,000 per year for long term health care coverage. On the 6th, when Mom stopped swallowing, she was taken to the hospital where she was given fluids through IV's, yet all the medical advice said that it was best not to attempt to keep her alive by artificial means. Alzheimer's is a fatal disease. It will take you out. While the body can be kept alive artificially for a time, it does nothing to stop the deterioration and, in the opinion of those who have studied it, only prolongs the suffering. The suggestion at this time is to let nature take its course and let her go. After two days in the hospital on IV's, these were pulled, and she was transferred to the nursing home where her disease imposed fast continued. For many reasons, it was a very strange place to be. While they would bring her pureed meals three times a day, she would not eat them although we tried to feed her, and this is where she became most animated, shaking her head and gritting her teeth in defiance.
She did not want it.
As a result, we wound up eating her meals and feeling very weird about it. Identifying what we were eating was usually a chore, but it felt like it was on a level with child molestation or something. Here we are, with our mother/wife who is dying from a lack of sustenance, and we're eating her final meals.
I'm sure there's a special realm of purgatory for crimes such as this.
Then came the bombshell. To the best of my understanding, because Mom was no longer 'sick' but had moved into a 'terminal' phase, the life insurance refused to pay for any more of her coverage. We had no notion of this, and Dad especially, having paid huge bills for all these years, was blown away. Mid-week we were told it would end on Friday. Period.
A surprise 'gift' from the company.
In an effort to understand just what we could do, Dad and the staff of the nursing home started making phone calls to find out what other options were available; Medicaid, Hospice, what? But because Mom was currently in a 'skilled' facility (the nursing home), this Connecticut company would not provide any answers about what our options were or what we could do next. We were now being told that we had to either leave, or that Dad could start paying out of pocket to the tune of a little under $8000 a month. Over the assured protests that we would in fact be taking her out on Friday, the Connecticut insurance company's receptionist simply responded matter-of-factly, "Whatever" and refused to answer any more of our questions along this line.
The nursing home representative, whose parents were using this same company, immediately called, related the story and told them to get out of their policy.
Even though the coverage ended Friday, we were able to take Mom home Saturday because the nursing home had a policy of not billing folks for the day clients leave. Hospice came out with a hospital bed and wheelchair and we put her in the living room where we were all with her, my children kt and Andy, coming in from opposite ends of the state, and picking up Lisa at the train station on the way. They arrived together.
While you are hearing this tale from my perspective, Dad is the one who has been taking care of Mom right up until the time that she stopped swallowing. She turned 83 on the 10th, during the middle of this ordeal. In February, he had turned 82. She had Alzheimer's, he had Parkinsons. Even though they each had their failings, they continued to work together as a team, with him making the decisions, and her helping him get up out of chairs or just get dressed. After spending day after day with her after she went into the hospital, the night she came home he sat in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand throughout.
Dad holding Mom's hand the entire night she came home |
His love and dedication for her has never wavered in 57 years, but her body was so tired.
The Hospice nurses were great. On Saturday they were there as we arrived, and on Sunday I helped to clean and bathe Mom for the first time, taking responsibility for her medications. We were shown how to turn her from side to side every four hours, and this we did starting on Sunday. The medications were to be given at the same time in order to allow her the maximum amount of rest. At midnight, 4 AM and 8 AM Sunday evening/Monday morning we got up and turned her. Having sat in an upright chair the night before, Dad went into the family room where there was a Lazy Boy and was able to get his feet up for some better sleep. As I had the night before, I slept on the couch next to the hospital bed Hospice had brought, setting the alarm for the next switch. By about 8:15 we had finished, and we both laid down again, he in his chair in the family room, and me on the couch beside Mom in the living room.
When I arose again just after 9, she had passed; her hands cool but her arms still warm. With the massaging of the calves, the mottling on the ankles and feet had been kept at bay. Here, even in death, her skin tone had returned and remained.
You have to be able to do something.
West Point burial |
Mom was buried in the West Point cemetery under the granite shadows of the long, grey line. As an Aries with her Sun in a Grand Fire Trine and being married to a West Pointer, she was entitled to an honor guard which carried her coffin to its final resting place. She's buried within about 20 feet of General George Armstrong Custer, and not too far from old 'Fuss and Feathers' as Dad calls him, General Winfield Scott, commander of the Mexican War and opening commander for the Civil War. The West Point cemetery is loaded with notables from history.
Now Mom is history.
Death is a hell of a ride. It flushes fear, uncertainty and loss. With the Scorpio Full Moon, these emotional themes are forced to the fore, focusing the mind like few things can. When grief backs the psyche into a corner, not much else matters.
God bless all of you who sent prayers and wishes, and especially to those who showed up for the memorial service on such short notice.
You have touched my heart.
~Don
As it turns out, this is one of those years when my birthday and Mother's Day happens to fall on the same day.
I am putting this up on the WEBSite as a Mother's Day card and memorial for Mom.
We really miss her.
Love you, Mom.
Happy Mother's Day, 2007
Barbara Dodson CerowApril 10, 1924- Sparta, Tennessee
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Mom passed away Monday morning, April 23 between 8:15 and 9:02 AM.
A memorial service will be held at
St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Framingham
at 7 PM, Friday April 27.
http://www.standrewsframma.org/home.html
She will be buried in West Point, NY on Monday, April 30 at 10 AM.
Thank you for all of your support. It has certainly helped.
Blessings to you all.
Getting a helping hand in life
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