Monica Graham - Senior Moment: Navigating the Challenges of Caring for Mom

Navigating the Challenges
of Caring for Mom

Monica Graham

Copyright 2021, Monica Graham

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill Street, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

Printed and bound in Canada
NB1490

Editor: Angela Mombourquette
Cover design: Heather Bryan
Interior design: Rudi Tusek

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Senior moment : navigating the challenges of caring for Mom / Monica Graham.
Names: Graham, Monica, 1954- author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200404164 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200404407 | ISBN 9781771089548 (softcover)
ISBN 9781771085915 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Graham, Monica, 1954-Family. | LCSH: Adult children of aging parentsAtlantic ProvincesBiography. | LCSH: Mothers and daughtersAtlantic ProvincesBiography. | LCSH: Aging parentsCareAtlantic Provinces. | LCSH: Old age homesAtlantic Provinces. | LCSH: Long-term care facilitiesAtlantic Provinces. | LCGFT:
Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC HQ1063.6 .G73 2021 | DDC 306.874dc23

Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

The last time I visited my mother at her house in Newfoundland, she cooked my favourite meal: roasted chicken breasts with vegetables.

But before wed even had a chance to taste it, she shoved it into the garbage and offered me some homemade soup shed found in her freezer. Then she confessed shed smeared yellow dish detergent instead of vegetable oil over the skinless, boneless chicken breasts, and covered it with herbs and spices.

By the time shed realized what happened, it was too late.

It was an easy mistake. Both the vegetable oil and the dish soap came in clear plastic bottles with yellow labels, and they sat side by side on her pantry counter. I could have done the same thing myself.

Really, I could have , I told myself. Except I never had. And as my visit with Mom progressed, I recognized this mix-up was typical of what her life had become in the few months since Id last seen her.

Shed hidden her situation well, even from methe person who telephoned her every day.

Twenty-five years earlier, just after shed retired, Id begun the daily practice of calling from my home in Nova Scotia at 7:30 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. Newfoundland time.

Before that, Id called less often, but always early, before I started work and when she was likely to be at home. If she didnt answer my early call or my subsequent calls throughout the morning, I told myself she was outdoors or couldnt hear the phone. Butwhat if? What if shed fallen downstairs? Suffered a heart attack? What if she was lying there in pain, waiting for help?

Sometimes Id call her neighbour, or my cousin, or my aunt, who would investigate and then report that she was weeding her garden in the pre-dawn darkness, that her phone was turned off, or that her radio was blaring so loudly it had drowned out the phone.

After a few such alarms, Mom and I made a pact that I, or someone designated by me, would call her every morning at the same time. If we didnt reach her, we would have reason to call for helpand possibly even call the police. The thought of police cars roaring up to her house with sirens screaming clinched the arrangement. Most mornings Mom pounced on the phone at the first ring. If she had to go somewhere early in the morning, if she had a hospital test or was travelling, shed tell me the day before.

Over the ensuing 7,300 phone calls, give or take a few, I never picked up on how much both her memory and her physical strength were failing. She chatted easily about politics, religion, and peoplejust as she always hadso our conversations never yielded the critical information I gathered within the first thirty minutes of my visit to her home.

When Id arrived, my initial impression of Moms house was that it was the same as ever: a place that offered a comforting sense of welcome. There were no strange odours and there was no visible dirt. The cheerful decor included mementoes from ninety years of energetic living, with the kitchen table set, as usual, as if a dinner guest were expected any minute. That day the guest was me, but preparing the table for a surprise visitor was Moms habit.

I was taught to set the table as if Jesus was my guest, Mom had explained to me many years earlier, as she turned over a knife Id just laid on the linen cloth. The knife should face the other way. I doubt ones level of faith is indicated by the position of a knife on a table, and I still don't know the correct way to place cutlery. Although Moms instructions were long wasted on me, she obviously still followed her own advice, right down to the cloth napkin (always cloth!) properly folded, usually in a napkin ring, and placed beside the fork.

The bare parts of the floor were clean and well swept. A smallish fire glowed from the wood stove, just enough to be welcoming without being oppressively hot, and there were footstools and cushions for tired feet and backs.

It felt like home, almostexcept my mothers current house had never been my home. Familiar, but not home. Mom had inherited it from her father more than forty years earlier. I had visited almost annually as a child, when it was my grandfathers house. Now it was Moms.

Mom and I had not lived in the same house, or even in the same town, since my departure at seventeen for a summer job away from the Cape Breton town we lived in at the time. That job was followed by university and then by my marriage and settlement in northern Nova Scotia.

Dad was an Anglican priest, and when he died eleven months after Id married and left home, Mom and my three teenaged brothers were forced to move from the church-owned house that had come with Dads job. Although it was a traumatic experience for all concerned, moving wasnt new to us. Throughout my childhood, our family had moved wherever Dads work as a clergyman took us. We had never lived long enough in any single house for it to become a homeprobably the reason that, as adults, wed all rooted ourselves deeply within the communities where wed landed.