Category: Family Page 3 of 4

Bad news

On December 14, 2011

Tuesday evening, December 13th
I’m slouching on a sofa with my legs stretched across a coffee table in the lounge off to the side of the entrance to the dining hall. In front of me is a large fireplace. It’s just a gas fire but I like the feel of the heat on my face and to watch the flicker of the flames. I almost doze off in between listening to the sounds of the voices of the residents as they leave the dining room. New York accents, Brooklyn accents, New Jersey accents, all mix and blend together with the occaisional Yiddish word thrown in for local color. The most common question of the evening is about “The Races”. “Are you going to the races?” “Races?” “Races!” “Yeh, in the auditorium!” “Now?” “No later!” “Upstairs!” “Are you going?” “I dont know, Im tired.” “You should go!” “Are YOU going?” And on and on.

I overhear a small group discussing my mother. They mention Evelyn’s daughter, the one from Sweden. They discuss Marty, my mother’s friend. A man sits down at the piano behind me and starts to play for a bit. Another group gets on the elevator. A voice calls out “floors please, tell me your floors please.” (there are only 2 floors) An elevator voice calls out “the Rainbow Room, take me to the Rainbow Room”. The elevator is filled with laughter as the doors close.

I’m tired. Its only 7 o’clock but I’m tired. Its been a tough day. As usual, I woke very early – after going to sleep late after a long conversation with an old friend. At 8 o’clock I go to the cafe for my complementary breakfast. A resident comes up to me and says ” You know Martin Wendruff, right?” Now, Marty has been my mom’s fella practically since she moved in here 4 years ago. I had just seen him the evening before, when he had come back from a short stay in the hospital. He was in a room in Health Care, the same section of Monroe Village that my mom lives in. I answer, Yes, to the man in the cafe and he asks me if I had heard the news about Marty. Thinking he was referring to the fact that Marty had just moved into Health Care, I ask if that is what he is referring to. The man in the cafe, Sandy, says, “No. Marty died last night.” I stand there in shock! I can’t take it in. I had just seen him the evening before. Sandy says that Marty’s daughter was over in the computer room. I had met her for the first time the evening before. I head for the computer room – my bag of stuff forgotten on the floor under the table, my handbag forgotten on the floor, my breakfast forgotten. I see Linda and we go back to the cafe and talk over a cup of coffee. She leaves, to continue with all the preparations she has to do. I start to eat my breakfast but my buttered toast now seems to be just dry bread in my mouth.

My sixth day here in Monroe Village has begun.

Fading

By Hilarie

On December 10, 2011

In Family, Life

December 9, 2001

Here I am, sitting in my mom’s room in a nursing home. Dinner has been served, even to me – on a tray. I help to feed my mom but she doesn’t eat much. I’m reminded of the days when I fed my son when he was still a baby. The food is all in small pieces – chopped up turkey (whole pieces for me), stuffing, gravy. All her liquids are thickened because they are worried about her ability to swallow liquids. I also get some ick “onion soup” and spinich. We both get lemon merange pie. She has dozed off and is sleeping and peaceful. The TV is on, turned to the Food Channel. I am sitting at her desk trying to type this out on my mini computer’s tiny keyboard.

Earlier, just before dinner my mother was often getting very upset. All afternoon she has been asking me to “get her out of here”. When I ask her where does she want to go, she can’t find the words to tell me. She doesn’t know. All she knows is that she doesn’t want to be where she is – lying in bed with her feet up. Finally she starts crying, almost on the verge of hysteria. I go to stand next to her bed. While I hold her hand, my other hand gently scratches her head through her hair, like one does with a dog, while saying schoosch, schoosch, its OK. She gets calmer, settles down.

I had a meeting today with her doctor. He seems like a nice man. I guess you have to be to specialize in geriatrics. Dealing with the relatives of dying patients must be a very common part of his practice. He is unable to give me any time reference for how long she has. Days or weeks, probably not many months. Her kidneys are failing. We have decided not to do anything to correct problems. We will let nature take its course. And in the meantime try to keep her comfortable. Now its up to Nature to decide how long it takes to fade. I can only watch and wait and be here.

A good man

By Hilarie

On October 7, 2011

In Autobiographical, Family, Life, Uncategorized

October 15 is the yahrtzeit or anniversary of my father’s death. He died in 1997. My mother called me here in Sweden a few days before, to tell me that the doctors had said there was nothing more they could do for him and she had decided to unhook him from the machines he was attached to. My husband booked me on a flight to the States the next day. Mom picked me up at Newark airport and we drove directly to the hospital. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sitting there next to my dad, holding his hand. I don’t know if he knew if I was there or not, but I like to think he had been waiting till I came. That night, sometime around midnight or so, the hospital called to say my dad, Milton Cutler, had peacefully passed away.

me and my dad

While my mom kept herself busy making funeral arrangements, I sat down at her computer and wrote a eulogy for my father. I thought those words had been lost long ago on some old hard disk. Recently, while I was helping my mom move, I found a printed copy of the eulogy and brought it home with me to Stockholm. Now on the anniversary of his death 14 years ago I want to give that eulogy once again. Here it is.

My father was not the kind of man who created a stir when he entered a room. He was a little man, almost petite, and spoke softly. He wasn’t the kind of person who could tell riveting stories or captivate an audience. But I remember when I was little, he used to read to me before I went to sleep. He didn’t read to me ordinary run-of-the-mill bedtime stories. He read me Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl and Aku Aku, the book about the statues on Easter Island. He liked those kind of stories and that was what he found interesting to read to me. For my tenth birthday I received a subscription to National Geographic from him and long after I moved away from home, the issues kept coming every month to the house, with my name on them, but not really for me.

He also loved Science Fiction and that love I’ve inherited. I read my first Sci Fi book when I was 11 – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, it was Daddy’s book. After that I read every Sci Fi book Daddy had till I started to buy my own.

He was a quiet man who rarely voiced his own opinions or demanded to have things his way. I think he came from a generation for whom the expression “self-fulfillment” would cause a feeling of discomfort and the idea of “doing your own thing” was an alien concept. For him, it was more important, to do the right thing. He didn’t drink, he didn’t gamble, he didn’t chase after women. His life wasn’t easy but he stuck with it. He worked hard and tried to give the people he loved in his life as much as he was able to. And when his time came, there wasn’t much time left to do the things he had wanted to do.

My father was one of those small, inconsequential men that the world out there doesn’t take much notice of. But he was a good man and in this day and age, just simply being a good man is something worthy of our respect, deserving of our praise and should be cherished in our memories.

The big six oh

By Hilarie

On June 29, 2011

In Art, Autobiographical, Family, Life, Stavsnäs

Tomorrow I am going to be 60! How did I get this old? Where did all the time go? I still remember the days when I lived in Brooklyn, when the slogan going around at that time was, “Never trust anyone over 30.” For that reason, my thirtieth birthday was a hard one for me. But it was alleviated by the fact that I spent it on a sailboat out in the Stockholm archipelago. It was my first visit to Sweden. A man named Håkan took me sailing for a week and he gave me a box of chocolate with a picture of Silvia, the Queen of Sweden, on it. That was a great birthday, in spite of my no longer being trustworthy. And that birthday was 30 years ago. I’ve spent 30 years of my life connected to Sweden. And now I sit, out at our country place in Stavsnäs, in the little house that was the original house on the property, typing these words. My husband, the same Håkan from that sailboat ride, and my son are just across the yard in the newer, bigger house we built together. Probably wondering why am I sitting out there and why am I staying up so late. Actually, probably not. My son is sitting peeled to his computer screen and definitely isn’t thinking of me and I can see my husband watching TV.

A bunch of friends, most of them part of the “family” that I created here for myself, think I should have a big party to celebrate. A number of them have had big blowout celebrations for their 50th birthdays, recently. (Most of them are younger than me, you see.) But to celebrate what? That I’m not dead yet? I feel sort of dead though. I feel like I’m at some sort of crossroads, with so many different things all tugging at me, trying to pull me in so many different directions. I want to yell STOP! Leave me alone! But life doesn”t do that. All that tugging and pulling is what life is about.

A like-aged friend from childhood, told me about a birthday party she recently attended. The theme of the party was “I Am 60 Going on 17”. I love that idea. In a way that’s how I feel – like a teenager all over again. Like during my teenage years, my body is metamorphasing into something I don’t recognize. And its not a good thing, let me tell you. The hair that I used to have to shave off my thighs is gone now. Great you might say but it seems to have moved over to my chin and upper lip. Who asked for that? And when I spent my teenage years waiting for all those new bulges to appear, it seems like they are now appearing but in all the wrong places! But the main similarity with teen years lies in those big questions: Who am I? What do I want to do with the rest of my life? What do I want to be when I grow up (or older?) I’ve given up on the growing up thing. I didn’t want to when I was 10 and I don’t think I want to even now.

Some of my friends in my age bracket talk about how they are so looking forward to retirement. But what does that mean? To stop working and spend time playing golf? I hate golf! And to stop working is something I cant imagine. Its like declaring that what I spent my life doing wasn’t worth anything. Maybe if I worked on an assembly line or in the post office sorting mail all day I might want to stop doing that. But what I work at is what I do, its who I am. I want to be able to continue doing it till my hands freeze-up from arthritis or my mind stops working. So imagining retirement doesn’t take up a lot of my time.

Other questions do though. What is my role as a mother to my son, now that he doesn’t need me so much? I spent 20 years being a mother. How do you just stop being one? How do I reinvent my couple-ness with my husband? How do we become a twosome again? And then, there is my roll as a daughter to think about. How do I help my mother as she ages? What do I need to do for her? How do I offer my help without making her feel like she is losing her independence and self-reliance? And how do I do it from so far away as I am?

Mother, daughter, wife, artist, creator, friend. All of these things are pulling at me, tugging me into the future, putting demands on me to make decisions, to be responsible. But I don’t know what to decide. I don’t know where I’m going.I don’t know what to choose. Who the hell is this person?
princesstarta3-60
All I know is that I want to eat princesstårta on my birthday. Cake made of layers of whipped cream and yellow cake with light green marzipan smoothly covering it and a yellow marzipan rose on top. That’s what I want for my Birthday – the big six oh.

And now its the next day. While I was writing this the clock turned over to June 29. And now I am 60.