Suzanne W. Churchill

Family

A Family Fable

by Leave a Comment

Anne Lamott’s birthday essay about “every single thing” she knows at the age of 61 has gone viral again. I was among the 86k people to like it on Facebook. What’s not to like about Lamott’s delightful blend of spiritual wisdom, dark humor, and love of humanity? Witness this from Lesson #1:

Life is a precious unfathomably beautiful gift; and it is impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It has been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It is so hard and weird that we wonder if we are being punked. And it is filled with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.

That’s a pretty delicious swirl, but she manages to trump it with the pithy maxim of Lesson #2:

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

Hard to argue with such bare-boned truth, yet Lamott’s greatest store of wisdom may lie in her homily on family:

Families; hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. (See #1 again.) At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal, remember that in half of all cases, it’s a miracle that this annoying person even lived. Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants. When Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But that you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderellie. You will be amazed.

What’s so great about Lamott’s insight into family dynamics is that it applies not just to humans like “Cinderellie” and Goldilocks, but also to the three bears and all their children, grandchildren, in-laws, and cousins.  As you can see from this fable…

Once upon a time there was a family of bears: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and their children, Big Bear, Middle Bear, and Baby Bear. They were, by bear standards, a happy family: Papa and Mama Bear loved each other, cherished their children, and doted on their grandchildren with appropriate excess of affection and requisite trips to Jellystone Park.

They weren’t perfect, of course. Mama Bear cared too much about her fur and worried excessively about whether the salmon in their diet had too much fat. She expected too much of her oldest and did too much for her youngest. (One might say she also passed on her anxious perfectionism to Middle Bear, though Middle Bear, who was born extremely sensitive, would deny the charges and be hurt by the suggestion that she was less than perfect.) Papa Bear was sometimes gruff and, when Mama Bear got sick and could no longer do the things she used to do, he growled and snapped in frustration. But he cared for her devotedly, and when she died, he mourned for her with as much ferocity as he railed against her illness when she was alive.

The Bear children, who were now married with children of their own, also mourned the loss of Mama Bear, each in different ways. Big Bear and her family caught extra salmon for Papa Bear, letting him to take comfort in their den. Middle Bear went into hibernation far away on another mountain, using the long sleep to recollect memories of Mama Bear before she got sick. Baby Bear, who of course was no longer a baby, distracted himself from the pain by fishing for salmon and searching for a new den for his family.

The winter of their grief was long and hard. Some nights Papa Bear’s wailing swept through the forest like a bitter wind, his tears creating icy sheets on the ground.

And then, before Spring had time to melt the snow, Papa Bear was surprised to find his heart warmed by a Lady Bear, who, having lost her own beloved bear husband a year before, was just as surprised to find her heart warming to Papa Bear. They baked bread together, and she sewed colorful quilts to spread across his barren cave. Just as the crocuses began to bloom, they discovered they were in love and decided to move into the same den.

“Too soon,” moaned Big Bear. “Too cold,” cried Middle Bear. “Too fast,” sighed Baby Bear. They were hurt, confused, and angry. They missed Mama Bear and did not want anyone to take Papa Bear away from them. They did not trust Lady Bear and did not want to let her into their dens. They lashed out at Papa Bear. “Listen to us,” they cried, “Hear our pain!”

Papa Bear could not hear their pain. He could only smell their anger. He was hurt and angry that his children would not welcome this Lady Bear who had brought joy back into his life. He snarled and snapped at them.

The Bear children were glad that Papa Bear snarled and snapped. They wanted him to behave badly, because it justified their anger.

“It doesn’t matter what we say,” the Bear children growled, “because he won’t listen.”

Papa Bear was glad that his children were angry and resentful, because it justified his self-pity.

“It doesn’t matter what I say or do,” Papa Bear growled, “because it won’t make any difference to them.”

The Bears retreated into their dens, licking their wounds. By this time, though, the daffodils and dogwoods had begun to bloom. As the rays of the sun warmed the earth, the very beams of love that had stabbed them and driven them apart began to soften their hearts. They remembered that they were put on this earth to endure the beams of love. Earth was, they knew, Forgiveness School. They had homework to do. So they gathered at the dinner table with Papa Bear and Lady Bear. And they all wore comfortable pants.

 

What Poetry Doesn’t Tell You

by 2 Comments

Ok, this morning’s earlier post was the public story, but as you might of guessed, there’s a private story lurking behind it. Or more accurately, a story “Formerly Known as Private,” since I’m about to tell it. The public story was proper and tidy. This story is going to be messy, because I’ve just gotta get it down and then get on with grading all those papers.

What set off the explosion of gloom I alluded to was simply a bombed class. I had high hopes for a fun, lively debate about Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (an overturned urinal), William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” (a refrigerator note), and the limits of art and poetry. But whether I pitched it wrong, blithered on too long, or failed to account for the dreary weather, my students wouldn’t play. I called on one, wrapped up in her shawl, who confessed she’d been falling asleep. Later, I called on another, who had lost track of the discussion because he was reading his classmate’s blog post.

Don’t make excuses for me: these are the telltale signs of poor teaching. Which means I suck as a teacher and the class is a failure. I can see the rest of the semester trailing ahead as the barometer of student engagement continues to fall steadily, relentlessly. One corner of mind flings about wildly for ingenious games and activities I might use to win them back, while the other sulks in despair, contemplating early retirement.

Thanks in part to writing this blog, I’ve learned to recognize that when I find myself caught in such cycles of self-loathing and recrimination, there is usually something deeper contributing to my distress. For the past few years, that something has been grief about my losing my Mom, which is apparently a pain so unfathomable that I can’t confront it directly. Until I dig it out of hiding, I remain tangled in exhausting spirals of anxious thinking.

The pattern is now familiar, and it didn’t take much digging this time. I knew right away that my over-reaction to a bad class was triggered by my Dad’s announcement that he and his new lady-friend Ruth were planning to move in together. This isn’t a secret or a surprise: Dad has brought Ruth to church, introduced her to my siblings and their families, and taken her out to dinner with his closest friends. By all accounts, she is a lovely person. Although I haven’t met her yet, Dad told me about her, and I knew things were headed in this direction. Still, the news hit me with a wallop, and it didn’t help that he made the announcement by e-mail.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no objection to the lady-friend or even to the apartment-share. A little over a year ago, when Mom turned catatonic and was lingering on her deathbed, I secretly hoped that Dad would find a lady-friend to keep him company and hold his hand. Actually, I didn’t even keep my hope secret: I told Dad he had my blessing.

Retrospectively, I think that what I really wanted was relief from his misery—relief for me, perhaps, more than for him. It was so hard to see him weeping and wracked with grief. I felt awkward and helpless. It was much more pleasant to imagine him enjoying the companionship of a new lady friend—and much less of a responsibility for me.

At the time, Dad couldn’t even fathom my suggestion, and he grieved so hard all year that I decided that maybe he would do so for the rest of his life—that being wedded to Mom was his identity and life calling. So when he told me his feelings for Ruth had turned romantic, I felt my guts lurch. Why? Rationally, I knew Ruth could never replace Mom in our hearts, and she has no desire to do so. I was happy for Dad—I’m happy for them both that they’ve found each other. Yet in the days following his revelation, I was swept over by waves of grief, missing Mom more than ever, wanting to call her, talk to her, and have her back in my life.

It seems too fast for my grieving heart that their relationship has moved so quickly from romance to live-in partnership, but who am I to judge time for septuagenarians? If they were in their twenties and had their whole lives unfolding before them, maybe it would be appropriate for me to caution them to slow down. But I don’t sit at the seat of 75; what seems fast to me at 49 may seem to them like wasted precious time.

I’m trying to take a broad view, one that encompasses my own grief, acknowledges Dad’s and Ruth’s perspective, and incorporates my 14-year-old son’s point of view (but excludes my shitty teaching). When we told Zac that Granu had a new girlfriend and they might be moving in together, he smiled and said: “Good for him. It was a lot harder to see him suffering than it would be to see him happy with a new girlfriend.” He’s right. Good for him is good for us, too. I’m pretty sure Mom would smile and say the same thing.

 

Home is So Sad

by 4 Comments

This summer we laid Mom to rest. A gentle euphemism—”laid to rest.” What I mean is that we buried her ashes. We did it twice, actually, because Mom wanted to be buried next to her beloved parents, Dad wants to have his ashes scattered at their beloved lake cottage, and they both wanted to be together forever. So we split the difference, and put half of Mom’s ashes in a cemetery in Malden, Massachussetts, and half in Highland Lake in Bridgton, Maine.

As you may guess, I don’t have a very reverent attitude toward human remains. Raised a good New England Protestant, I learned to deny the physical body, with all its extravagant odors, noises, and folds, in favor of the pure, ineffable spirit. For Mom, the body was something to be slimmed down, smoothed over, and made to look neat and pretty. If I was her easiest child, it may have had less to do with my disposition than with the fact that I was skinny. I never have had much of a body to contend with, and for Mom that was a dream come true.

I wasn’t looking forward to the burial services. Not only would I have to join a ritual that had no particular religious significance for me, but also I would face a groundswell of emotion, a PDW (public display of weeping) that would be embarrassing and exhausting.

So I was surprised by how meaningful and right the ritual felt. It was softly raining  when we arrived at the cemetery. A small hole in the ground awaited our attention, and Dad had brought red roses, one for each of us to lay upon her ashes, and one yellow one—the symbol of the Naugatuck women’s Study Club and a remembrance of her intellect. As we sprinkled earth and laid a flower over her grave, I thought of the lines from W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of William Butler Yeats”:

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

Actually, I slightly mis-remembered the lines, but even if I got the words a little wrong, what remained right was their weighty music. You can hear the steady beat of  trochaic tetrameter, which puts a heavy stress on the first syllable of every foot, as if to better feel the earth under your own shoes. Four beats per line, like a box, or a coffin.

IMG_6425It felt good to return Mom to the earth, knowing her name would be etched in stone, next to her parents and waiting for her husband to join her. From there we made our way to the cottage.

Going to Maine meant returning for the first time to a home  Mom had once lived in, but was no longer there. In fact, I had never stayed at the cottage when she wasn’t there. And here was the cottage, just as she left it—except for fingerprints on the kitchen cabinets, dead bugs in the windowsills, and dust mildewed on bathroom fixtures. Dad, Peter, Alex, and Noah, the most frequent visitors, had done an admirable job maintaining it, but they didn’t have Mom’s fluttery, meticulous touch or attention to detail.

It was the sameness of the place, coated with the residue of time, that made her absence most palpable. Early morning was the worst. I woke up and tiptoed out to the main room, where the bright sun flooded the windows, almost blinding as it reflected off the glassy lake. Mom wasn’t there, padding around in her bathrobe and slippers, fussing at the dead bugs and wiping off the spots on the counters. The room was just as she’d left it, but emptied of her poetry.

Home is so Sad

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

– Philip Larkin, from Collected Poems,
Copyright © 1988, 2003 by the Estate of Philip Larkin.

For Larkin, the punctum—the detail that stabs the heart—is “that vase.” For me, it was a piece of paper stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet, where Mom kept her grocery list. But instead of milk, bread, and coffee, the note held only one word penned in her shaky hand: “dementia.”

It may seem morbid that Dad had left the note there and nobody had the courage to remove it. Yet I understood why. The note was a desperate last effort at connection. Mom was trying to hold onto to a memory, knowledge, or understanding of the condition that was evacuating her mind. The note on the refrigerator reminds us how she was. That note.

In the evening, Dad fired up the steamboat so we could spread Mom’s ashes on the lake. A family of loons came to pay their respects, and the lake and sky dressed in their best. The sunset was gentle and beautiful. Highland Lake received an honored guest, and Valerie Wintsch was laid to rest.

11180641_10207225654789998_8143604367905698365_n

Memory Is Something If You Give It Away

by 2 Comments

Recently, I was knocked flat for a day by a stomach virus. I couldn’t do anything but lie in bed, which gave me a lot of time to miss Mom. In my half-asleep state, I imagined a conversation with her—the one I wish I’d had, before it was too late. It began with me asking, “How does it feel to have Alzheimer’s? How does it feel in your head?” Her answers were clear, but just like with a vivid dream, I can’t recall what she said. I can only remember my questions: Are you scared? What are you most afraid of? What are you most scared to lose?

I don’t know why I never asked Mom these questions. Maybe I was in denial, afraid to ask because asking meant admitting she had Alzheimer’s. Alan Dienstag, a psychologist who works with Alzheimer’s patients, says that there’s a “lack of curiosity at a crucial moment that’s being driven by that fear and not wanting to look, not wanting to see it.” And that crucial moment is the time when you can have the conversations that matter most.

But at that crucial moment, I was also preoccupied with immediate concerns: moving my parents to a new place, getting Mom settled, reorganizing her closet and drawers, soothing her anxieties. I don’t know what we talked about really, but I probably spent more time asking her questions like—where do you want me to put your socks, or do you still need these sandals?—than inquiring about things that really mattered. Maybe I was too afraid to venture beyond her physical needs and peer into the terrifying abyss of Alzheimer’s.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the early stages of the disease, about what I wish I’d said or done or known. I’m not beating myself up, because I know we handled Mom’s illness as best we could at the time. But as her Alzheimer’s progressed, I learned things along the way that might have changed my early approach.

Pretty much all the advice I would give myself is summed up in Alan Dienstag’s interview with Krista Tippett in On Being. Oddly enough, I listened to the same interview more than a year ago, quoting it in an earlier post, but the parts that spoke to me then were different, suggesting that at the time, I was preoccupied with Mom’s suffering and the possibility that I might someday be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Now that her suffering is over (though my fear of contracting the disease is alive and well), I’m more concerned about missed opportunities.

What leaps out to me in the interview today is Dienstag’s urge to conversation and his warning not to postpone or shy away from talking about the disease, because time is running out more quickly than you think: “It really slips away quickly. And you see it slipping away week after week.”

Our natural tendency is to deny the slippage and look away, because the disease seems so alien and embarrassing. For example, during the brief stretch when Mom was able to go to an adult daycare called Memory Lane, we let her believe she was volunteering there to help entertain the elderly (she was younger than many of the other attendees, and she did like helping out). We preserved her delusion in order to protect her from embarrassment. But in doing so, we may have denied her an opportunity to talk with other dementia patients (and with us) about her experience of the illness. According to Dienstag, people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s find relief and satisfaction in talking with others who have the same illness. The sense of mutual recognition and community breaks them out of the isolation that “is ultimately the destination that this illness brings them to.”

Dienstag offers a different way of looking at Alzheimer’s that makes it seem less shameful and isolating, and more familiar and even heroic. He says that talking with people in the early stages of the illness can remind us what we all have in common—i.e., our mortality:

we don’t have an unlimited amount of time. And we’re going to run out of it. We’re going to run out of it. And when you watch these people, you see people who are running out of time. So there’s almost something heroic like, “I’m going to tell you who I am before it’s too late. I’m going to tell you this story about picking lilacs from a tree with my mother.” Whatever it is. You know, a simple story like that somehow has this kind of — it’s elevated. It’s elevated by the circumstance.

Dienstag asks his patients write down their memories and give him what they’ve written, because he knows they’re likely to lose their papers or forget the memories by the next week. This practical decision gave him a profound insight: in handing him their writing, his patients weren’t losing their memories; they were giving them away, entrusting them to him. And as Dienstag’s grandmother realized near the end of her life, “if you can give something away, you don’t lose it.”

I apologize in advance for the de-elevating comparison, but this lesson reminds me of the “Magic Penny” song we used to sing in Sunday School, a tune whose sentimentality and ear-worm potential are rivalled only by Disney’s “It’s a Small World”:

Love is something if you give it away,
Give it away, give it away,
Love is something if you give it away,
You’ll end up having more.

It’s just like a magic penny,
Hold it tight and you won’t have any,
Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many,
They’ll roll all over the floor.

Now, I’ve encountered a few bad pennies and enough overdrafts to know that you can actually overspend love and end up with a deficit. But whatever the limitations of the magic penny metaphor for love, as a thought experiment, what if we applied its logic to memory? Think about it: memory is something if you give it away. If you give your memories away to others, those memories have the chance of becoming collective memories, and as collective memories, they have a lot more reach and staying power than if you keep them to yourself.

So what if, instead of hiding, denying, or being ashamed of Alzheimer’s, we accept it as an unwanted invitation to help those afflicted give away what matters most—our stories of who we are, how we got here, what we are most afraid of losing, and how we want to live our finite and final days.

The New York Times today ran a story about teenagers with terminal illnesses having a say in their end of life choices. There’s a new trend in social work to encourage these teenagers to talk about their illnesses and express their wishes for end of life care—conversations that benefit both the teenagers and their families. There’s even a planning guide for teens, asking questions like: If visitors arrive when you are asleep, do you want to be woken? If they start to cry, should they step outside or share their feelings? I wish there was a similar planning guide for Alzheimer’s, including all the questions I wish I’d asked Mom before it was too late for her to answer.

Since this post is actually less about looking back than paying it forward (did you catch the magic penny reference?), here are some other resources any of you who may be just starting down the road of Alzheimer’s with a family member:

  1. Read the book, The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for Person’s with Alzhiemer Disease, Related Dementing Illnesses, and Memory Loss in Later Life, by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins.
  2. Listen to this NPR story about families who are grappling caring for people with Alzheimer’s. See if there’s a Home Instead organization in your area.
  3. Find out if there’s an Arden Courts near you or similar facility dedicated to memory care. For us, Arden Courts in Hamden provided more affordable, personal, and loving care. Also consider the option of an Adult Family Care Home, an alternative I learned about from Dina Ditacchio Wentworth’s comment on my blog post about the costs of memory care.
  4. Explore the wide range of online resources for caregivers. Here are 5 trustworthy websites with tips for Alzheimer’s caregivers. There’s a lot of overlap between the strategies, but you may find one speaks more clearly to you than others:

* A reader of this blog took the time to notify me that the Mayo Clinic link had changed. The “coping and support” page is no longer available; it appears that the Mayo Clinic is now more interested in directing people to their branches. I’ve added the Alzheimer’s Association and Lewy Body Dementia Association. The reader also suggested I add this link, warning about the importance of dental care for dementia patients. I haven’t had any personal experience with this dental organization, which appears to be a Nebraska business with a genuine interest in raising public awareness.

Into the Wild, Precious Life

by 6 Comments

When your mother has just died, people come up to you with empathetic eyes and soft voices and ask, “How are you?” So genuine is the concern that I feel like I should burst into tears and confess that each day is a trial, that I feel as if I’m plodding through mud, dragging my sinking heart behind me like a heavy stone.

Instead, I admit, I’m doing surprisingly well—so much so that I wonder if my heart has become a cold stone. Ads for the just-released movie Wild deliver a subtle subtext to me: What’s wrong with you? Shouldn’t you be plunged into your own journey through the dark wilderness of grief? Shouldn’t the death of your mother leave you feeling lost, unmoored, and ravaged by unrelenting grief?

It hasn’t. Maybe I’ve already traversed that wilderness, as I hiked the long, meandering trail of Alzheimers, where the decline was so slow and relentless that I didn’t see the dark forest through each withered, falling tree. Maybe I’m further along the path of grief, past the deep gullies and sharp cliffs. Ok, so I needn’t be ravaged by grief, but why do I feel happy?

Watching Mom slowly deteriorate was so agonizing that I was unprepared for the relief I would feel when I no longer had to face sight of her unable to speak, walk, or even wake up. Now that she’s dead, I can begin the business of letting go of those tortured images and re-collect earlier memories of her, when she was full of life.

My sister-in-law set this process in motion when she sent me a Mead writing tablet (100 plain sheets), with the yellow Renys price tag of 79¢ still on it, which she’d discovered in a box of art supplies. Mom had purchased the notebook to write down stories she’d composed for her grandchildren, documenting their activities at the cottage in Maine and their New England excursions. There’s a story about Benjamin “who loves a very special lake in Maine,” and another about the “happy, noisy times” the four cousins have together during winter and summer vacations, which begins:

This year during Christmas week, 1999, Ben who is 7 3/4, Alex who is 4, and Luke & Thomas are 3 had fun day with their grandparents Nanu-Nana & Granu (Wintsch).

Here’s Mom come to life in her loopy, left-handed, back-slanted handwriting and in the  painstaking detail with which she records their exact ages, hyphenates the two names she’s called by her two sets of grandsons so that the story belongs to them equally, and inserts her last name in parentheses—for posterity, to keep the story alive for the next generation.

And then there’s her delight in the humor of their conversations, and her careful editing to perfect the timing of the punchlines:


 IMG_5697When I read this story, I don’t feel like I’m falling off a mountain into “the valley of the shadows of death.” I laugh and remember my Mom as she once was, so beguiled by her grandchildren, and my kids as 3-year-olds: Thomas so judicious and perceptive, and Luke so full of appetite.

Speaking of appetites, one of my favorite blogs is Maria Popova’s Brainpickings.org, a librarian’s buffet of delicious tidbits from good books. This morning I stumbled upon her post about Anne Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life. When she was nineteen, Quindlen’s mother died of ovarian cancer—a devastating loss that paradoxically illuminated her universe:

“Before” and “after” for me was not just before my mother’s illness and after her death. It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on, for the darkest possible reason.

Quindlen insists on need to embrace death in order to live life fully. Like Wallace Stevens, who wrote in “Sunday Morning” that “Death is the mother of beauty,” she understands that mortality paradoxically gives birth to a fuller appreciation of life’s beauty. And like Mary Oliver, who in her beloved poem, “The Summer Day,” urges you to relish “your one wild and precious life,” Quindlen calls us to pay attention to the rich palette of the everyday world, to find beauty and joy in the mundane and minute:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

It’s a morbid idea, to “think of life as a terminal illness,” but it helps me understand why I might feel a sharpened sense of happiness just after my mother has died of one.

 

Momento Mori, or Motherless Me

by 8 Comments

 

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” because you are proceeding through the gates of shameless, narcissistic navel gazing. My mommy has died, leaving me motherless, which seems like good justification for ruminating, even if there’s little reward in it for you, my hapless reader.

I spent the long weekend in Connecticut for Mom’s Memorial Service, which was lovely. I wish she could have been there to enjoy it! Friends and family gathered from as near as the choir loft to as far as the Philippines to celebrate her life. Her childhood friend Jean Kirkham and three of her grandsons offered reflections, coalescing into a harmonious eulogy in four parts. Jean embodied the Canadian-bred elocution, warmth, and grace in public speaking that Mom tried to pass along to all her children, grandchildren, and pupils. Her grandsons spoke with confidence, love, and humor, each exuding his  distinctive personality and reflecting different facets of hers. They began by introducing themselves: Alex, as “her second grandson”; Luke, a twin, as “one of her grandsons”; and Ben, the oldest and agent provocateur, as “her favorite grandson.” Despite Ben’s bravado, it was clear from their remarks that Nana had made each grandson feel like he was her favorite—like he had an especially close relationship to her that no one else could match and a place in her heart that no one else could occupy. Although she was always obsessed with being fair and equal, she somehow made each one feel like they were getting the lion’s share of her love.

A couple of times during the four-day stay at my sister’s house, I lost my temper, snapping at my nephews and brother-in-law, when I felt like their  teasing provocations were unjustified, insensitive, and, well, unbearable under the circumstances. Soon after, when the heat of the minor crisis had dissipated, I made my apologies, admitting that no one would ever accuse me of grace under pressure. No one came to my defense. Nobody took my side or quietly reassured me that I had been justified in my outburst.

That’s when I missed Mom most, of course. Because just as she did with her grandsons, Mom always made me feel like she understood and sympathized with me ABOVE ALL OTHERS. She verified MY feelings and took MY side. Or seemed to. No doubt she was making my siblings feel like she was on their side, too. But no matter. She made me feel like I was her favorite. Now, motherless, I feel bereft. I’m no longer anybody’s favorite.

This feeling is maudlin and self-indulgent, fueled by false consolations and nostalgic distortions. But my Mom just died, okay? So permit me a few indulgences. I’ll get over it eventually.

Already, even as I feel sorry for myself and miss that kind of love that probably only a mother can provide, I also am starting to think: hey, wait, maybe I don’t need to be anyone’s favorite! Maybe I can grow up just a little bit and stop needing to have all my feelings and outbursts justified! Maybe I can start to think, act, and behave based on my own sense of right and wrong, which you’d think would be sufficiently developed after almost a half century!

Ok, probably not a profound realization to you, but a giddily liberating one for me. Which leads me to my hairdresser Chip (a font of wit, wisdom, and fashion advice), who told me that, after the trauma of losing your parents, you may find it’s actually liberating. People don’t want to admit it because it seems so heartless. But you no longer have these authority figures in your life, reminding you of a heritage you must uphold and a set of expectations you must fulfill. You’re free to be whoever you want to be.

This was not actually true for my Mom, who loved her parents with such devotion that she never, ever stopped trying to live up to their standards. They are the main protagonists of the memoir she wrote at age 70, and their deaths still ravaged her, sixteen years later:

The most sad and traumatic times in my life came with the deaths of my parents – my father on his 78th birthday, June 14, 1989, and my mother at the age of 81 on March 22nd, 1992. Nothing that happened before could have prepared me for the pain and emptiness I felt with their loss. It hovered around me for months, the shock and despair attacking suddenly and fiercely at unexpected times and in unexpected places. It sometimes still does that, especially in church where singing their favorite hymns is guaranteed to bring tears.

Mom kept singing her parents’ favorite hymns, carrying on their traditions, even sitting in the furniture they passed on to her, right up until the end.

Familyof3-600x600

There’s a lot of my Mom that I want to carry on—her fierce love of her family, her empathy and curiosity about what makes people tick, her love of reading and dachshunds, her ready laughter. But there are things I want to let go of too—an anxious need for approval, a desperate compulsion to be good, and crises of panicked indecision. “We are always changing” is a truth I’ve tried to embrace in the course of Mom’s Alzheimer’s, more than once. Alzheimer’s changed her, and it changed me, too. Her death has also changed me, in ways I don’t yet fully understand. I’m still learning how to let her go. Maybe the next thing to let go is the need to be justified.

In Memoriam: Valerie Jean Gates Wintsch

by 11 Comments

IMG_0596-768x1024Valerie J. Wintsch, 75, died peacefully on January 2, 2015, at Arden Courts in Hamden, CT, from complications of Alzheimer’s. A vivacious, well read, and intellectually curious lady, Valerie loved good books, music, friendship, and laughter. Most of all, she loved her family. She was a devoted daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother.

Born in Naugatuck, CT, in 1939, Valerie was the daughter of teacher Dorothy Moses and chemical engineer Charles Gates. She grew up in Elmira, Ontario, a tight-knit community that nurtured her lifelong loyalty to family and friends—as well as to the Queen of England. An only child until her brother David arrived when she was 15, she remained very close to her parents throughout her life. Her friend Jean Kirkham was an honorary sister (and fellow prankster), Isabel Huggan, a “pretend” little sister, and cousin Chris Woodman, a “borrowed” brother.

Valerie earned a BA in history with a minor in music from the University of Connecticut. She married Fred Wintsch, whom she’d known since childhood, on June 23, 1962, making their home in Naugatuck for the next 18 years. She taught history, English, and music at Hillside Middle School for 3 years before resigning to embark on a career as a full-time mom.

In Naugatuck, Valerie joined the Women’s Study Club, twice serving as President, sang in the choir and directed children’s musicals at the Congregational church, and performed in amateur musical theater. Valerie and Fred moved with their children to Durham, CT, in 1980, where she joined the Garden Club, volunteered at the library, led a book club, performed in Connecticut Gilbert and Sullivan Society productions, sang in the United Churches choir, and supported the Crackerbox Players.

In their 52-year marriage, Valerie and Fred enjoyed many travels and adventures, with especially fond memories of their trips to Switzerland and their summer cottage in Maine, where family and friends would gather to swim, kayak, listen to loons, and tour the lake on Fred’s steamboat.

P1020415-1024x768Valerie is survived by her husband, Fred Wintsch, of Wallingford, CT; brother, David Gates and his wife Gert, of Waterloo, IA; daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Peter Shoudy, of Durham, CT; daughter Suzanne and son-in-law Matthew Churchill, of Davidson, NC; son Jonathan and daughter-in-law Suzanne Wintsch, of Haddam, CT; and eight grandchildren: Ben, Alex, and Noah Shoudy; Thomas, Luke, and Zachary Churchill; and Isabelle and William Wintsch.

Valerie possessed a keen intellect and read voraciously. Her extensive vocabulary and impeccable grammar made her an excellent conversationalist and a formidable Scrabble player. She was an avid social and family historian, meticulously recording every facet of her children’s lives in baby books, delighting her Elmira school chums with her detailed recollections of their exploits, and writing a memoir for her children and grandchildren. For her, personal stories were rich sources of heritage, humanity, and humor.

An inveterate perfectionist, Valerie never stopped trying to be good and to please others. At the same time, she had a forgiving heart when people around her didn’t match the high standards she held for herself. She would dimple up in laughter at the slightest provocation, drawing great pleasure from pranks, practical jokes, zingers, and her husband’s dry wit. She was continually astonished by the marvels of her good fortune – Fred’s constant love, her close relationships with her children, and the ongoing delight of her many wonderful grandchildren.

A celebration of her life will be held at the United Churches of Durham (corner of routes 17 and 68) at 11 a.m. on January 17, 2015.  In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association or Hospice of Connecticut.

Mom carried on until we all gathered together this Christmas to say goodbye, and Ben was able to snap this one photo before the camera battery died.
Mom carried on until we all gathered together this Christmas to say goodbye,
and Ben was able to snap this one photo before the camera battery died.

This Hour Her Vigil

by 6 Comments

Christmas ornaments on treeThe Christmas ornaments, decorations, and lights are packed away, a New Year’s Day ritual that is tedious but satisfying. This year, my sense of accomplishment is troubled by a nagging sense of something unfinished, something demanding my attention. But the task before me is not mine to complete: it is my mother’s. She is dying. We are merely keeping vigil.

Her Alzheimer’s has run a rapid course since her diagnosis 3 years ago. Nevertheless, this last stretch has caught us by surprise, so precipitous has been her decline. Last week, we received word that she’d stopped chewing her food. We drove up to Connecticut the day after Christmas. When we got to Arden Courts, she was dozing in her wheelchair. She never fully woke up, though I think she knew we were there. Luke claims she mouthed my name, but I never saw or heard it. The next day, Matt and I joined my Dad there at lunchtime, keeping company as he spoon-fed her pureed chicken and vegetables, urging her to swallow as she slept through the meal. His efforts were gentle, loving, and persistent, yet so futile. Why push her to eat, I thought? Why sustain a body whose mind has exhausted itself? Dad’s pastor arrived, told us about the St. Lucy’s Eve music at church, and asked us to join him in a prayer about letting go.

Outside, the sky is that pearl gray so common in Connecticut in December, when the icy, white sun never gets much past the horizon, even at midday. I think of John Donne’s “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day”:

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
         The sun is spent, and now his flasks
         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
                The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with me, who am their epitaph.
What a picture of morbidity! Donne compacts so much gloom into one landscape, only to suddenly invert its relative vitality: “compar’d with me,” this shrunken, dreary scene is bubbling with laughter. I measure the stick of my own melancholy against Donne’s and find mine wanting.

We stop in an Irish pub for lunch, with handsome woodwork and mismatched, faded velvet stools. I order a bowl of Guinness lamb stew—hearty, comfort food that quickens my appetite. We drink our pints and go on with the business of life, as Mom winds down hers.

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil

She didn’t eat that evening or the next morning. By early afternoon, when my sister and I stopped in to see her, she had been moved back to her bed, so she could be more comfortable. Her pulse was up to 134 beats a minute, she was running a fever, and her legs were turning blue. Mom has strict DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) instructions that prohibit feeding tubes, IV hydration, or even antibiotics. The nurses had ordered oxygen and morphine.

The end seemed nigh, yet she was awake and seemed to focus intently on us. Her wakefulness seemed like a gift—a last chance. When I said, “I love you,” she whispered, “I love you too.” My sister Elizabeth talked to her about not being afraid to let go and felt that Mom grasped her meaning. We called our sons to come back from their hike, and all six of them, ages 22 to 13, took turns alone with their Nana. Stoic and teary, they made us proud. I called Mom’s brother David, and put the phone to her ear so she could hear his voice. Dad arrived, hugged us, and held her hand. Later my brother Jonathan, his wife, and kids came in and sang her a lullaby. Jon, a trained EMT, hooked up the oxygen. We each said our goodbyes, believing, maybe even hoping, they would be our last.

The next morning, however, she had stabilized. She said “good morning” to the nurse and squeezed my father’s hand. Her fever was down, and though her heart rate was up to 150, her oxygen levels remained steady. We stopped in on our way back to North Carolina. I said goodbye again, this time leaning over and resting my head on her shoulder, feeling a warmth and softness that instantly transported me back to childhood, to the rocking chair in the living room, to her lap. I climbed back in the car, and in 12 hours, we were back home in Davidson.

Today, two days later, Mom remains “about the same.” Dad sits by her bedside, holding her hand; Sandy and Charles Wiseman drop in; my brother comes with a speaker to play some Gilbert & Sullivan for her; her nurse Emily—so loving, gentle, and attentive—checks on her; Hospice nurses measure her pulse and temperature; pastors offer prayers. And we wait.

Mostly it is my father who keeps vigil. As I imagine him there beside her bed, weeping and wracked with grief (he married her when he was 21! who is he? what is his life without her?), I think of another poem, from Tennyson’s In Memoriam:

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

Tennyson may be praying to God, but I also think he’s calling to his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam, to whom the long elegy, written over the course of 17 years, is dedicated. This is just one of 133 numbered cantos, all written in the same verse form but in different lengths, expressing the many shapes and stages of grief. When I searched for the poem online, I found another gorgeous, wrenching “Be Near Me” poem, this one by Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
                                             with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
                                             of inconsolable children
                      who, though you try with all your heart,
                                             cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
—At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
                                             dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me.

That’s all I’ve got. This post may be overpopulated with poetry, but “When whatever you want to do cannot be done,/ When nothing is of any use,” that’s where I turn. Because, as Philip Sidney wrote in his “Apology for Poetry” (1595): “Dire sights, bravely pictured forth, do bring delight.” It is a delight—an exquisite pleasure and great relief—to find your own inconsolable torment expressed so perfectly by a perfect stranger.