Joan Z. Rough - Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go

Copyright 2016 by Joan Rough

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

In order to maintain privacy for some mentioned in this memoir, I have changed their names or used initials to indicate their identity.

Published 2016

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-095-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-096-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934470

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

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She Writes Press

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Berkeley, CA 94707

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To my mother, Josephine Zabski, and all mothers and daughters
who are seeking to love and forgive each other.

W HAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU BEGIN TO notice that your parents hair is turning more white than gray, and that their heads nod like one of those wobbly dolls when you talk to them? How do you feel when they begin to visit the doctors office weekly and are diagnosed with an ailment youve never heard of or may be terminal? What do you do when you notice all the dings and dents on the rear bumper of their car? And how do you handle their growing forgetfulness?

These are the hard questions all of us face as our parents age. Not only are they aging, we are, too. As we make decisions about eldercare for our parents, we also begin, reluctantly, to think about how we ourselves would like to be cared for as we enter the territory of old age. The answers and the options are all tough, but most of us dont get out of dealing with them, unless our parentsor wedie instantly in a plane crash while were still fit to travel.

We can try denial. Its the easiest thing to do, for the moment. We can simply wait until the terminal diagnosis comes inor until Mom or Dad plows their car into a tree or, worse, people standing on a sidewalk. Many of us want to take control by sending the ones who birthed us off to an assisted living facility or nursing home, but these options can leave us feeling sorrowful and guilty.

One October day in 2014, as I got in my car to go home after a Pilates session, I noticed a man lying on the ground in the parking lot. He had just fallen as he tried to fold his wifes heavy wheelchair and put it into the trunk of his car. The back of his head was scraped and bleeding. I helped the nurse who accompanied them out of the building to get him back on his feet. He complained that he had a doozy of a headache. In the meantime, his wife struggled to hang onto her walker while she waited for someone to help her get into their car. While the nurse went back into the building to call the rescue squad, I stayed with the couple.

Both husband and wife were morbidly obese and appeared to be in their eighties. They both had extreme difficulty moving around, especially the wife. I was afraid the husband would fall again as he picked up his cane and started to sit in the drivers seat. Youve injured your head, I said. I dont think its a good idea for you to be driving. He replied, I can handle it. I always do. When I suggested that a family member might be able to drive them to their appointments from now on, he replied, Theyre no good. One wont work.

I went further, suggesting that they try the services of JAUNT, a community provider of transportation that many elderly people use, but he said, I cant afford it. I dont have any money. He also said that they couldnt get free services because their income was a bit over $25,000 a year. Hed been told they had too much money to get help.

When the rescue squad arrived a few minutes later, the man denied having a headache and said, I just want to go home. When asked, he admitted he had diabetes and a few other ailments but said he was sure he didnt have a concussion and refused to be taken to the hospital, adding, Who will take my wife home? She cant drive.

In the meantime, the nurse called the couples daughter, who arrived as the EMTs were examining her father. She stood by until the rescue squad left, then offered to drive them home. Her dad whined, Im okay. I can do it myself. As I left the parking lot, I watched the daughter kiss him on the cheek, then get into her car.

I was flooded with sadness and memories of having been my mothers caretaker during the final seven years of her life. It was difficult to watch those parents deal with the help their daughter offered. I also realized nothing has changed: The elderly are still as stubborn as ever about giving up their independence (Im sure Ill do the same), and the broken systems that are in place to help some cant help others.

When babies are born, they dont come with a manual telling their new mothers how to take care of them. When we age, begin to fail, and need to be taken care of, there is no manual to tell our kids what to do with us. When my mother started falling on a regular basis and was diagnosed with a number of ailments, I began weighing the options. I could ignore the situation, I could try to convince her to go into an assisted living facility, or I could invite her to come and live with me.

Against advice from friends, I decided to go all the way and invite Mom to move in with me and my husband, Bill. I wanted to help. But as she grew more frail, our already difficult relationship turned into a mother-daughter war. I rued the day Id brought her into my home. There was nothing I could do to console her as she got closer to death. There were moments when I wanted to throw her out. There were many days when I was afraid that I was losing my mind. My anxiety disorder held me in its grip so tightly that sometimes even my husband couldnt stand to be around me. And at times, much to my horror, I prayed that she would just die.

Ill never know how it would have turned out had I put her in an assisted living home or completely ignored the situation. The problem was that I loved her and wanted to make her final days as comfortable as possible. Little did I know that it would be one of the most difficult things Id ever do.

Now, years later, Ive come to understand that life has a way of taking us out of the ditch weve been living in to places of higher learning. During those hateful years, I learned about love, life, death, hate, and how to heal my own soul. I learned that forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about coming to terms with the human spirit and what drives us to be the people we are. The story you are about to read is about how my mother and I worked our way through her last years, doing the best we could. Its a story about my growth and how I found love and forgiveness amid anger and hate.

May 21, 2007

I TS A BEAUTIFUL MAY MORNING IN VIRGINIA. THE grass is heavy with dew, and the air is filled with an early-morning concert by a choir of returning birds. Theyll soon build nests in neighboring shrubs and trees, where theyll raise their young, then head south again in the fall, completing another yearly cycle.