In Dedication to Mom I have been very busy the last ten days or so, it is not easy when one loses a parent even when they are very elderly. I talked to others who were in the same situation and they told me no matter what decisions one makes they will always feel guilty in the end and I have found this to be all too true. The medical decisions all fell to me and as I made them I prayed they were the right ones. Mom had to go to a nursing home when she was 95 years old due to the fact she kept falling and it was getting very hard to lift her and I was afraid she would break something again. She got to the point where she broke her hip and truthfully, I thought it was the end for her, but she was tough. We happened to get her an incredible surgeon and he rebuilt her hip and in a little over a week she was able to stand and began to walk. It was like a miracle. The scar from the operation was so thin one could hardly see it. My mother was always in very good shape. She did have a couple of medical issues, but she was able to conquer them. One of the most amazing things to me was the fact she had lymphoma for over 20 years and it never got bad enough for treatment. I used to take her to the doctor and he would test her blood every three months or so and nothing ever changed. When she finally reached about 93 years of age the doctor told me there was no need to test her anymore since she had been stable for so many years. One could say she actually conquered lymphoma which is cancer of the blood. In her early 70s she received a quadruple bypass. I had many friends donating blood to her and I never forgot what a great turnout she had. She had outlived her friends at the time. I remember there was a tainted blood scare and that was why I wanted her to have blood from people we knew. I received a call from the blood bank the day before the operation telling me they dropped her blood and were going to use blood from the general population which got me very angry. It turned out there was still enough blood left from donations for her needs since she only needed one pint and the blood bank knew by my ire at the time they better come through. Mom raised me and sacrificed much to do so since my father was not there after World War II. She took on many different jobs. I remember being about 8 years old and mom going to the church and asking for help in watching me while she worked. Things were different in those days. The church got a lady to volunteer and I remember being brought to her home by my mother who thanked her and then went to work. As soon as my mother had left the lady told me I had to sit on a kitchen chair until she came home. Talk about torture. There was absolutely nothing to do and I sat on that chair for 8 hours. When mom returned and took me home I told her what happened and she said I would never have to do that again and she gave me a key and told if there were any problems to go to a neighbor. I took care of myself from that day on. Today this would be frowned upon, but mom didn’t have much choice. As I got older and started to go out with girls, mom screened them all with a jaundiced eye. She didn’t take to any of them because “they were not good enough for her son.” When the phone would ring and it would be a girl for me, mom’s lips would clinch and her eyes narrow and then she would call me and her unhappiness with the call was evident. Girls were not supposed to call boys because it was too forward. One has to remember she was born in 1920 and never did get used to the way things were going even when I was young. Mom got married again when I was 16 years old and when I brought a girl to the apartment she would assign my step-father the job of sitting in the same room as us to make sure no hanky-panky was going on. Needless to say, I didn’t bring girls up there very often. Talk about an uncomfortable situation. Today my wife and I laugh about this. When I was young mom used to like to go to the movies. I can understand that because there was no television. If my memory serves me right the RKO movies were 15 cents before 5 p.m. and 25 cents after that. The movies were different in those days because famous actors would also do stage shows at the movies every once in a while. I remember seeing Al Jolsen on stage, a very famous singer and movie actor at the time. I also saw one of my favorite cowboys, Hoot Gibson. One day while we were watching a movie Basil Rathbone appeared and she didn’t know he was in it and when mom saw him she got excited and loudly said look there is Razel Batbone and everyone around us roared in laughter. I didn’t receive much corporal punishment and probably deserved more because as I got into my mid- teens I had a habit of staying out very late. One day when I came home after 2:00 a.m. in the morning my mother was waiting for me. She was cooking something and stirring it with a metal spoon and she looked very angry. When I walked over to her to give her my usual excuse she whipped out the hot spoon and hit me with it. In later years it became a family joke. I used to kid and say she branded me with that spoon, but the truth was nothing happed I just got hit. Mom never wanted her nieces and nephews and others to know her age and if you asked her she would always say 21. When I threw a birthday party for her when she reached 70, the cat was out of the bag and they all teased her. We had our differences over the years but I always took care of her. She lived in my home until she had to go to the nursing home and this broke my heart, but it had to be. I would go up there many times a week to see her and she did very well until she had a stroke. She had told me exactly what she wanted me to do for her beforehand. It is so important to not only find this out when someone is competent but also find out what each procedure is, because they are not always what they sound like and then have them explained to the person. From that point on there were many decisions to be made and there were times when doctors were telling me I was doing the wrong thing like not letting her die and having a feeding tube inserted, but I stuck to my guns since she told me she wanted to live and as it turned out that was problematic but gave her at least another 4 months of life and some family members who would have not been able to see her otherwise were able to and she was alert a lot of the time and happy to see them.
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