Our Rosie

This post appeared as a guest blog on Alison Bruce's Have Laptop Will Travel. You can see Alison's brilliant graphics below! Here's Alison's website: Coffee Girl
 

 AND - this is my posting!

Rosie’s Christmas by Catherine Astolfo

It’s Rosie’s party and she is elegant and gracious. She no longer remembers names, but her eyes are alight with recognition as she greets each face.

Sometimes her son (my husband) and I wonder what happens inside Our Rosie’s head. She once told us, “It sounds a lot better before I say it.” We surmise that the dementia disconnect is in the communication, not the thought.

Rosie conducts as her sons serenade her with traditional songs, both Christmas and Italian. Years ago, she would have been conducting in a different way. She would have buzzed around, cooking up the entire meal; homemade pasta, salad, and cannoli for dessert. Her personality was forceful. She admitted to being bossy and nosy. She loved good gossip, good wine, and good cards. Right now Rosie would be standing in the kitchen in her apron (by choice), instead of sitting in the wheelchair in her Sunday best.

She hasn’t lost her love for her sons and their spouses and children. She doesn’t recognize the great-greats, but she knows they’re connected. She reaches out to hug and kiss them.

My grandchildren’s eyes are large and shy as they kiss Our Rosie’s cheek, prompted by their parents, and let her squeeze them. She is small and shrunken and silver haired. I wonder if she is scary to them, but they are polite and would never say so. Too bad they didn’t see her when she could whip up a pie or plant vegetables in a huge garden. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could flash back to the child Rosie or the newly married Rosie and see that face instead?

Her smile makes her beautiful, though, I think. Perhaps that’s the reason Sydney and Evan want to hang around and help deliver leftovers to the staff on the second floor with Gramma Cathy (me).  Our Rosie has gone upstairs a little while ago, exhausted from hours of adulation and attention.  We gather up plates of sandwiches and veggies and cookies. I lead the parade into the elevator.

I am a bit nervous about what Sydney and Evan will see. Men and women, heads down, tongues hanging, line up in a sleeping row along the wall. One lady twists in her bed, accompanied by a repetitive stream of indecipherable wails. One woman in the hall flaps her hands, drools a smile, la-la-la excitement propelling her tongue when she sees a visitor. They’re so young. Will they be afraid? Repulsed?

When we get to the nurses’ station, we put forward our offering with thanks for their help in making Rosie’s day special. They are as thrilled with Sydney and Evan as they are with the goodies. Since I think my grandkids are the cutest kids in the world, I’m not surprised of course.

Inside Rosie’s room, we discover an empty bed. Her walker and wheelchair deserted. “Where is she?” I wonder aloud and the kids follow me back into the hall. I have a quick rush of panic.

Seconds later, I see my mother-in-law trying to hunch herself onto a small sofa. Her head is at an uncomfortable angle, her legs dangle over the side. She moans, too tired to get up again.

I hurry over to her, four little feet at my heels, and put my arms around her. Once she is upright, I say to Sydney, “Honey, can you get Nona Rose’s walker?”

Sydney doesn’t hesitate. She races back and reappears, her eyes large and determined, not one bit afraid. With the kids’ help, I half-shuffle, half-carry Rose until she is seated backwards on the walker. We return her to her room, where I lower the bed and, with Sydney and Evan’s help again, soon have her lying flat. She is so tired she can barely keep her eyes open. She makes soft noises and mumbles words we can’t understand.

My sister-in-law, Rita, arrives and goes to get a PSW. In the meantime, Sydney and Evan and I gather around Nona’s bed. Her flailing hands grasp the air. My granddaughter reaches for the right, while Evan reaches for the left, and soon Rosie is quiet, breathing smoothly, holding those little hands on both sides.

The PSW appears in the doorway and lowers one side of the bed, in preparation for getting Rosie cleaned up and more comfortable.

Just before we leave, Sydney and Evan lean over and kiss her cheek. No parents watching, no obligation or expectation. No fear or revulsion. Simple, pure kindness and love.

Rosie smiles.

(This is the real Our Rosie, 

not the one I’ll feature in a book 

I hope to publish in 2014.)

The Music of Words

 In my family, we sing all the time and always did. Once when my nephew Jacob was little, buzzing around at our feet as my sisters and I worked in the kitchen, he lifted his gorgeous blond head and asked, “Does everybody sing like this?” We laughed but we didn’t have an answer. We just knew it was natural to us. 
     Any bit of conversation, any line, can remind us of some lyrics and cause us to burst into song. Usually, laughter follows, particularly when the song is an oldie or particularly funny.

     For me and my two sisters who came right after me, our mother was a stay-at-home mom. She sang in the kitchen and told us stories of her childhood, painting pictures of the farm, the depression, and a little red-haired girl who loved school. She had to quit when she was fourteen to work in a woolen mill miles away. I could always picture her long shapely legs carrying her up the hill at Norval, through the Brampton laneways, into the middle of town where the woolen mill still stands. It’s now an office building and a restaurant – even my dentist has his practice there.

     Mom told me she’d always wanted to be a writer, which was why she was especially proud of the fact that I inherited her gift and obsession. Her support and encouragement allowed me to actually become the author she’d dreamt about.

     It was a little different for our two younger sisters, because Mom went to work when they were quite young. However, the singing never stopped. Even through her dementia, our mother is beloved by her caregivers and her fellow residents for her propensity to burst into song at any moment. It makes them smile.

      I began to write as soon as I acquired the skill to string words together, around seven years old. I hear this often from other authors: that the desire to put sentences and ideas on paper began in early childhood and never abated. 
     I wake up in the morning with song lyrics, tunes, and stories in my head. How lucky is that? The Emily Taylor Mysteries

Mothering My Mother And My "Baby", Simultaneously

I am straddling two apparently different worlds. One, the world of long-term care homes for the elderly; two, marketing ebooks. One visceral, one cerebral. But I am struck by the thought that they do have one stark similarity: they are both misfits. On Tuesday, my first ebook is released. I have my head in the cyber world. People I’ve never met are suddenly friends. I am browsing their blogs, watching their websites, sharing life stories. Many of them are extremely interesting and admirable; a few are just selling, which in reality is what I am doing too. My books have always been misfits. They aren’t classical anything. Although mysteries, they break rules, switch points-of-view, and present some social justice issues close to my heart and head. Until Cheryl Tardif and Imajin Books, my books were proverbial square pegs in round holes. Along comes Cheryl, who not only understands the underlying themes and appreciates the differences, but also steers me toward a more marketable approach. So I get up every morning, as John Locke advises in How I Sold A Million Ebooks, and think about how to sell. In cyber world. My mother is also a misfit. She always has been, really. In the 1940’s, she (a white woman) married a black Canadian man. Pretty bold for those times. He died in the war, so she married my Dad and tried to fit into the 1950’s Leave-it-to-Beaver’s June Cleaver housewife image. She didn’t wear it comfortably. Eventually, she got a job in real estate. In her sixties, she started her own business. In her seventies, she learned to play the piano. She has always been loud, funny, opinionated, and bossy. Then came the Transient Ischemic Attacks. As my brother-in-law Dave says, her record button no longer works. It’s been that way for nearly eight years now. Hasn’t gotten worse. Still has the long term, especially her mathematical side. It’s not Alzheimer’s. It’s cerebral vascular dementia. But when we say dementia, suddenly she becomes a definition, fits into the round hole, and off she goes. However, when we cart her off to long-term care this week, she looks up at us with those azure blue eyes and she knows. She ruminates on why we can’t just die on a certain date and not go through this slow decline. She knows she is in an institution and that she really doesn’t fit. She’s still lively, funny, and social. In this same week, we are suddenly offered our top choice in LTC residences, one less hospital-like. Will this be my mom’s Imajin? We’re going to bet on it. Just as I am betting readers will like my books, despite their difficult subjects and misfitted-ness. (See, I even make up words.) I must say, though, that the euphoria of the release has been juxtaposed by the stress of my poor mom’s shuffle through the system, as kind and caring as those systems have been. (And they have been wonderful, truly.) My husband says things can only get better. Imajin that. www.imajinbooks.com Cathy