Funeral

A Jewish burial is very simple. The body is covered in a white cloth and placed on straw in a raw wood coffin. There is a short graveside sermon, then you eat.

A limo drove Dad, the Caribbean ladies and myself to the cemetery on Long Island. (I can’t believe my first ride in a limo was to a funeral.) Being the end of winter meant that everything was dead and brown, and the grounds looked barren and dried up. Not somewhere one would want to return.

Once there, Dad had to lift the lid of the coffin and identify the body. Thankfully, it was Ada’s. I can’t imagine what happens when there’s a fuck up.

As per tradition, they lowered the coffin into the ground immediately, then the congregation shovel in a scoop of dirt each. This was done before any words were spoken, and there was nothing beautiful about it. It felt very weird. Dad was given the shovel first, and to my mortification got a bit carried away and shovelled in two scoops. If I hadn’t of yelled “just one” to him, he probably would have kept going.

Then the Rabi spoke for about ten minutes, Dad said some words (and shed some tears) and we left. It was cold, and for a ten minute sermon the Rabi charged $450. I’m sure Ada was turning in her grave.

Before we left, T - Ada’s night nurse, looked towards the grave said “You are in front; we are behind.”  These words were a comfort to hear, not because I want to follow, but because of the inevitability of it.

I wasn’t sad at the funeral. My body turned on it’s asperges as a means of protection. Then I slowly let it sink in on the car ride back.

That night Dad and I went to three Jazz bars; we drank, we danced, we celebrated life.

Billie Holiday

 Photo credit: Gottlieb, William P

March

Ada's Kitchen

I’ve been staying in Ada’s apartment on my own ever since she passed away. It was strange at first; not wanting to sit in her chair, impulsively disinfecting things before I touched them. Then slowly tidying up. Sorting through a life-time of clutter, and the weird questions… “what do we do with her teeth?!”

Thankfully Dad flew over and stayed for five days to help sort her affairs out.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here. I predict I will get kicked out soon enough, but for now I'm truly enjoying living on my own for the very first time ever.

February

February was the month I turned 30. The month I’d been in New York for two years… and then out of no where, except maybe old age, it was the month Ada died.

She died shortly after a stroke which brought her to hospital, where she remained sedated until she passed on.

A candle now burns in her apartment, but her spirit is definitely gone. Gone far far away from here and hopefully to the place she had been yearning to go for so many years. 

 the lioness herself.

Trippin on Natural Causes

I’ve never been around someone on acid or mushrooms, but I can imagine it would be similar to being around my great-aunt Ada this week. Every now and then, she hallucinates very vividly. This time her ‘trip’ lasted three whole days.

 “Oh! Someone else is here!” She exclaimed looking at the blanc space in front of the the door.

“Who?” we asked.

“There is somebody here!” she insisted, and then turned to the left and started clawing at something in the air beside her. “What is this? What is it?” she kept saying.

It didn’t bother me. I felt like it was just her brain giving these messages to her eyes. But her night nurse T gave me a knowing look, and said “She’s been calling out for the dead, you know. Looking for her Mother,  her sister and her husband, and seeing a little girl,” which is apparently common for the elderly to do.
“They are coming for her, you know.”

All of Ada’s Caribbean aids believe in, and have a bit of an unexplained psychic ability. Jean, her day nurse sometimes tells me how she was at home in Brooklyn when she knew something bad had happened to Ada so came around early – it turned out Ada had had a stroke. T’s sister (a more specific psychic) will call and tell her when people they know of have died - before anyone else knows.

During the rare occasions that Ada hallucinates, she doesn’t sleep. Her eyes may roll back, or dart back and forth when she rests, but she continues to move and babble in a mixture of Polish and English, cycling through different moods and emotions. It’s like she is possessed.

One night she got up and shuffled out whaling and sobbing “No! Don’t, please! No! They are coming. Ahhh!” It was very dramatic, like she was in a stage play doing a torture scene. On the third night, she finally collapsed in into sleep, one arm hanging off the edge of the bed, like she had passed out drunk, her body occasionally twitching with nervous impulses. We dared not move her, lest we wake her up again.

It seems the kinder thing to do when she gets like this, would be to give her a couple of valium after the first day. Id’ asked her psychiatrist previously about this, but she had wanted to increase the amount of anti-psychotic pills she takes, which only seem to take effect after a few days – and then they turn Ada into a dopey, sleepy mess who forgets how to walk and talk.

It feels like the process of growing old and dying in her case, is a long drawn out and laborious one. A natural phenomena that is not entirely unlike the process of being borne into the world.  I do sometimes wonder though, if Ada should have had that heart surgery years earlier, or if the tens of pills we give her every day are prolonging her life against natures will.

Ada Update

I haven’t written about Ada for some time now. Towards the end of last year, I read a book called The 36hr Day, about dementia and it changed everything; how I view her, how I talked to her, how I listen and respond.

I no longer fear her. I now understand that when your brain is clogged with plaque, you often feel scared and confused and frustrated as all hell.  And when you’re trying to express or rationalise that, it can come out all wrong.

When she yells “You are the devil! This is mine! I hate everything! I have nothing!” I hold her, and I say “I know. I understand. I know you don’t feel like you used to.” Or her favourite; “I know you don’t belong here.” And she’s often so grateful that someone ‘gets her’, instead of arguing, that she gets teary and hugs me.

This morning I went in and lay with Ada. (I do this when I want a sleep in, and her nurse is up). She turned to me and said “I can’t learn anything new.” It was a moment of clarity, like when someone from a foreign country says “I don’t speak English well,” but they say it in perfect English, which makes you momentarily doubt what they’re saying.

Once an Adult, Twice a Child

Sometimes Ada will be sitting quietly then start pointing at her apartment, and exclaim "This is all mine! Everything is mine! I own the place!"
(She rents.)

When marveling at her child-like behavior, her Caribbean carer's will chuckle and say "Once an Adult, Twice a Child." And it's true. We are all growing into our second childhoods - especially if we plan on developing dementia.

The circle of life seems so complete when I look at Ada:

• She has soft white downy hair, that covers her face
• She throws tantrums
• She would eat ice-cream for every meal if we let her
• She can only eat soft foods
• She has no teeth
• She is forgetting how to walk
• She needs constant attention
• She wears diapers / wets the bed
• She needs a potty
• She hates taking baths
• Sometimes, she babbles and gurgles for hours in a foreign language - or as we call it 'tongues'
• She is becoming memory-less
• She doesn't care who sees her pick her nose, or flash her privates

Living with her makes me realize what kind of mother I might make. Evidently I'm a good, patient mother who enjoys dressing their kids in ghetto beanies and making them do gang signs with their hands.

Apparently I'm also be a mother who only wants to be there 'some' of the time, and if I'm there too much, all I can think about is my escape.

Katyn Forest

In April 1940, the Soviet NKVD (police) put a memo from Stalin into action.  They were to execute 25,700 Polish prisoners of war, that had been placed in Russian prison camps. Prisoners were to be shot individually in the back of the head, many after being forced to dig their own mass grave in Katyn forest, where this Saturday’s plane crash occurred. I’ve just found out, that one of the Polish Officer’s killed in the Katyn Massacre was Ada’s father (my great-grandfather). Can you imagine what that would have been like?

Ada and her sister would have been unaware of his fate, as they were in a Siberian labor camp throughout the war. Both her and her sister never spoke about their experience. We have no idea which camp they were in, or what it was like. The only thing they ever said to Dad was that they were lucky to have enough food to survive, and while my Grandma did manual labor, Ada was spared and allowed to do administrative work indoors. Apparently Ada had the brains and my grandma had the brawn.

I have tried to ask Ada if she remembers the war. Like most things, she draws a blank. Probably better for her that way I guess.

Groundhog Day

When you live with someone with severe dementia, it often feels like you’re living in the movie Groundhog day. Or perhaps you’re trapped inside a long-running repetitious play.

 

One scene I don’t mind re-living day in day out is this one:

Ada: “How old I am?”

Nurse: “87”

Ada: “What?”

Nurse: “87!”

Ada: “EIGHTY-SEVEN?”

Nurse: “yes. 87.”

Ada: “EIGHTY-SEVEN!??”

Silence for a few moments, then...

Ada: “I though maybe forty or fifty, but EIGHTY-SEVEN?!!”

She shakes her head in disbelief.

A few minutes later, they have the exact same conversation again. Pause, repeat throughout the day. J

Silent Screaming

Ada Halpern didn’t sleep last night.  Instead she haluscinated solidly for 10 straight hours and for most of the next day. Sometimes in English. Sometimes in Polish. There was nothing we could do. Sleeping pills had no effect.

“Polsk polki polski Bastards” she yelled.

I was vaguely aware that I drifted in and out of sleep, but at 4am I couldn’t take it any more. I thought about strapping my ipod to her head and playing soothing music, to calm her down, and then it dawned on me: Why don’t I put my headphones in my ears to calm me down?

My glands were swollen and I already had a mild fever. As soon as I pumped up Pacabell’s Cannon, to over-ride Ada and the nurses screams, I was gripped by a very clear memory… Of lying in bed at the age of 12 one night, when my parents were still together. Spiritual music was coming from the living room, and being turned up so incredibly loud, that I couldn’t hear myself think let alone sleep. And it just kept going, it didn’t stop, for hours.

I was furious! How inconsiderate of my parents! How dare they! They would have never let me listen to my music this loud this late at night. But instead of confronting them, I just lay there angrily getting night-sweats.

It never occurred to me why they had played their music so loud, nor why it happened more frequently in the months to come. But later I realized it would have been to cover their screams. In their entire 14 years of marriage, my brother and I never saw them fight once.  Not once. 5 months later, they announced their divorce.

Good Morning Ada

This morning, I awoke to the sounds of Ada’s cane moving swiftly across the floor. It is rare that she can walk on her own, and when she does, she is in another world. It’s like spirits are leading her around. “Wondering,” they call it. I closed my eyes, and listened to her wonder. I must have dozed off, because the next time I opened my eyes, she was sitting on the edge of the couch with me. She stared at me stoic faced, then said in her harsh Polish accent “I want to die.”

Ada's Days

Days come and go so fast. But I often wonder how fast they go for Ada. She gave up her will to live long ago, and now, for reasons no one can explain, she is being held alive against her will.

She sits in her chair, like she’s on an airline, waiting for her next meal… and some kind of airline disaster that will result in her imminent death.

“It’s your birthday in a week, Ada,” I’ll say, trying to cheer her up.
She will shrug her shoulders and say, in her thick Polish accent “I don’t know if I’ll be alive.”

“Well, God must have plans for you here,” I’ll remind her.
“My life is over,” she will repeat and sigh. “There’s no use, anymore. I used to have everything, now I have nothing. And soon I will be dead.”

There is no convincing her, when she’s in one of these moods. Get Pollyanna with her, and she’s likely to smack you on the back of the head.

The only thing I can do, is something very distracting - like putting my hair in a pony tail. “A shvantz!” she calls it. Suddenly her mood will turn to anger and she’ll yell “WHY DO YOU HAVE YOUR HAIR IN A SHVANTZ! IT LOOKS STUPID!”

Never fails to amuse me, and I’d rather see her feisty than depressed.**

I have a feeling the baby boomers are going to save us all from getting dementia. There's no way they will want to go out like this. I hope they find a cure!


** I’ve since learned that talking about suicide is very common in people with dementia. And I’ve also learned that it’s important not to aggravate them. So no more pony tails for me.

Ada's Black Humor

I’m currently knitting Ada a scarf. I bought the needles and wool so that she could knit, but she had no interest. So I knit, and she holds the wool. It’s something for her to do, and she loves it. She calls it her job, and I pretend I’m a slave driver.
“Be quite and concentrate on your job!” I yell in her deaf ear.
Every time she forgets to give me wool, I fire her. Then I have to re-hire her and negotiate a new rate of pay. (Is this a Jew thing?)

“How long you make it?” she enquires.
I hold it up.
“I will hang myself on it!” she smiles.

Joking about committing suicide is her favorite creepy thing to do.

She will often be heard yelling, “I will throw myself off!” as she looks out towards her balcony. Or simply “I want to kill myself.”

And when she gets her medication she yells “Ha! My poison!”

I’ll laugh nervously, while Jean will smile, shake her head and say “Ada, I’m going to put you in jail!”

That’s their little joke. Jean will threaten to throw Ada out on the street or put her in jail most days. And it never gets old. It’s their humor to a T. No wonder they can get along.

Traumatic Tales

(Warning: this post is about wiping elderly butts. It's not for the feint hearted.)

This morning, for the second time this year, I found myself doing something highly traumatic, and inconceivable to me a year ago.

I stood, one hand lifting Aunt-Ada off the toilet, the other hand using a wet-wipe to wipe her ass.

The first time it happened, I’m ashamed to tell you, I completely freaked out. Her nurse, Jean went to the store, and I stayed in the apartment with Ada, watching a US soap, packed with Aussie exports, called “The Guiding Light.”

Suddenly Ada was fiddling with her cane.

“I need to pee!” she yelled. Oh dear, I thought. Usually, her nurse takes her to the bathroom, and I remain purposefully ignorant of what goes on. That day, was going to change everything.

I helped Ada to the bathroom, lifting her nightie for her as she sat. My body stiffened, when I heard number twos…

No no no no… please don’t do that, I thought… but it was too late. In that moment, I panicked. I didn’t want to think about what I might have to do next. I was in serious denial. All I wanted to do was call the nurse to come back from the store immediately. Have I no maternal instinct what so ever?

Selfishly I hummed and haaaawed about my next move. Then I sucked it up, ran to the living room for wet wipes, and did the unthinkable.

The thought of wiping the elderly’s ass is always more horrifying than when you actually have to do it. It’s more a battle of the wills than anything else. You have to un-paralyse your body and get it out of denial of what’s about to take place. You have to pretend it’s what you were borne to do, to put the person at ease, and you have to hope that by the grace of god, you don’t accidentally wipe your eye straight after.

Once you’ve over come it, it’s not that bad. It’s life. Life is messy! And it would be boring if it wasn’t.

Thankfully, nature has a way of helping us out in our old age. Mark my words, one day our butt holes will hang out our butt cheeks, like a loose, floppy vagina. ☺

The experience is always rather humiliating for Ada. Both times, she wept in self pity and embarrassment. (Although she does that about everything. That's the kind of person she is.)

Never the less, this is a timely reminder of how short life is. I hope by the time we get old, robots will be doing all this for us, or perhaps we will have evolved to no longer need to poo.

That would be fabulous indeed!

And, here's something funny to watch - for those of you who remember speaking Pig Latin in primary school, and also to change the subject!

The Finger Suck

I gave Ada’s hand a kiss this morning. She then grabbed my hand to reciprocate, but instead of kissing it, she narrowed her eyes, smiled at me, then put my middle finger in her mouth, and sucked on it.

WTF!!! I was so surprised, that I started giggling like a school girl. I yelled out to Jean to see if it was normal for old people to absent-mindedly perform foreplay on your fingers.

“Ah ha! That Ada! She knows trouble, you see?!” beamed Jean in broken English.

Ada was still smiling at me. I hope she didn’t want me to suck on her claws in return. I think I’ll stick to the cheek kiss from now on.

Urban Slang for the Elderly

Ada can be brutally honest, and extremely harsh for an 86 year old lady. Last week she coined a new word for me:

“A Nieviot!”

It describes someone who is both naive and an idiot. She call’s me this when I deny that her carers are stealing from her.

Usually, an insult like this would sting a bit, but this new word is so cool, I could only get mildly offended. In fact, I was so proud of her genius, that I almost gave her a high five!

I’m currently considering entering it in the urban dictionary.



Word.

Beauty Routines

Ada and I engage in the following little ritual every morning, at least once:

“You are beautiful!” Ada will say. Then a worried look will come over her face, and she’ll extend an arthritic hand. “But your hair…” she continues, looking sadly disappointed, and shaking her head – “What can you do with the hair!”

I don’t really know what to say to this, but as it happens every day, I’ve gotten used to it. “I’m not sure.” I resign, “It’s just my hair I guess.”

She shakes her head again in disgust. I brace, and go in for some wet kisses, before leaving for the day.

Once outside the door, I pause by the hallway mirrors to wipe whatever was on Ada’s lips, from both my cheeks. (Usually a mixture of stagnant saliva, and small pieces of her breakfast.)

My hair looks as fine as it can, after accidently receiving a mullet from a hair dresser looking for hair models. There is nothing to do except "wait for it to grow," another hairdresser confirmed.

I enjoy our little ritual, but living with Ada has added a new step to my daily beauty routine. I now cleanse, tone, moisturize, apply make up, then run out the door and douse my cheeks with hand sanitizer!

Reverse Tourettes

“I will die!!”, “You will kill me!!”, “I am broken!!”
Such great dialogue for a war torture movie set in Europe.
Alas this dialogue came from the bathroom this morning, as my Aunt fought with her nurse about brushing her teeth.

Then out of no where she screamed “ALLY IS A YOUNG AND ELEGANT GIRL!”

I was in the living room, and I laughed so hard, I nearly poked my eye out with my mascara wand. How lovely that in the middle of all this dramatic cursing, she stopped to yell out a compliment about me.

Kind of like having complimentary tourettes. Just imagine! You would be really popular if you had this syndrome ...

“I hate this world, everyone is out to get me – YOU’RE GORGEOUS!!! YOU’RE GORGEOUS!!! I LOVE YOUR HAIR!” because they don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. I’m going to kill myself – NICE SHOES YOU ATTRACTIVE WOMAN!!!”

Spanish Emergency

Last Thursday at midnight, I was returning home from an improv comedy performance (my usual pastime) and the night nurse, Tia greeted me, alarmed -- “Ally! Where have you been! I’ve been trying to call you!”

I peered into the bedroom, and was met with a scene from CSI Miami. Ada lay on her bed, huge pools of clotted blood covering her pillow and soaked her nightie.

She’d had a nose bleed, the fourth big one in the last two days. She seemed unfazed, despite her white hair now a cherry red colour down one side. We decided to take her to the emergency room at the hospital, save her bleeding to death in her sleep. Tia insisted we call an ambulance for ease of getting her there. I was freaked out by calling 911, because I’d only ever heard of people calling in major emergencies, and I didn’t want my recorded voice to be played back on the news in the event of some controversial mishap, so Tia did it for me.

The ambulance officers were two young Latino males, in navy colored uniforms, with long black hair tied back in pony tails. Aunt-Ada commented loudly ‘I don’t know if they are a man or a woman!’ An insult that mortified me, but showed she still had a sense of humor. They strapped poor Ada to a stretcher and transported her against her will.

In the hospital her blood-pressure went through the roof, and suddenly one of the Ambulance officers hit on me so weirdly I was left speechless.

Grabbing a chair for me to sit next to Ada, he moved his head very close to mine and stared into my eyes with a gentle intensity that only men who are very confident in bed can pull off. Then he whispered in a deep Spanish accent “She’s got pink-eye." (dramatic pause) "Be careful, I wouldn’t want you to get it in your beautiful, brown, eyes.”

I felt like Antonio Banderez had just told me “You’re hot, but be wary of the growing threat of rabies in the area.”

Then the other ambulance officer came up and said – "He likes you."

Surely this is against the rules? I had no idea how to react, so I turned red and they left. We were in the emergency until 6.30am the next morning. Ada stayed awake the whole time, asking us how we could do this to her. Tia and I sat sleepily telling her to relax, and eavesdropping on the other more interesting medical emergencies happening around us.

I could hear slow dripping from behind a curtain, and later found out that it was coming from a guy whose arm would not stop bleeding. Another guy woke up and threw a fit because he was hungry and the emergency department apparently has no food, even though they charge him thousands of dollars to sleep there.

Half way through the night Ada needed to pee, and when I went to get someone to help take the bars off the bed and lower her to the ground, they simply handed me a bed-pan and some gauze as toilet paper. That was the low point of the night, until I found myself walking around with the said bedpan post-pee, with no where to put it but under my seat.

The next day we had to take Ada back so they could stuff a camera that behaved like an earth worm up her nose. Then they stuffed the left nostril with dissolvable packing, that leaked brown ooze.

But the oddest thing was, I couldn't seem to get those ambulance officer eyes out of my head. I wonder how he hits on girls with Swine flu.

Three ladies – PANTS DOWN - WTF?

In Austrialia, we girls have adopted many a habit from the yanks. Women’s rights for example (which we have taken and transformed into a woman’s right to behave like a man). Internet dating (which is gaining popularity), and reducing our carb intake in the evenings. Yet in many ways we manage to retain our English heritage. We still have our high-tea venues, our ability to tolerate endless cricket updates, and by god! --We still have our modesty!

So the Aussie’s who read this will understand my distress when the following happened...

I arrived home at 1am, and snuck into the bathroom, past the open bedroom where Ada and the weekend nurse - Betty, lay sleeping. I gave myself a ‘writer’s shower’ where I used baby-wipes on my pits and bits. (Going running in the morning, so can shower then.)

With no clean undies left, I opt for a dash back to my pj’s in my singlet only. But on my half-naked dash back, I glance into the bedroom to see Ada – on her potty, PANTS DOWN. I’m so quick, I don’t recall seeing the nurse until it’s too late. She's in the kitchen. She looks up in surprise – to see me PANTS DOWN, trotting towards my bag. But I’m in shock too – because indeed – she also has her PANTS DOWN, and is doing something with paper towels behind the bench.

WTF? How did three women, end up in a dark apartment at 1am with our PANTS DOWN, all at the same time?

The next morning, we all pretended that nothing had happened. This is probably a universal reaction, that transcends cultural differences.

Ada the Cheeky

The other morning Aunt-Ada was sitting in her chair, and I could hear her nurse saying ‘No – Ada don’t swallow. You gotta spit it out!’ Ada hates the weekend nurse, and becomes stubborn and rebellious around her.

It was then I saw that the nurse was holding a cup of chilling green mouth-wash and a bucket to spit in.
Again, she gave Ada a swig of of mouthwash.
Again Ada stared defiantly, swallowing slowly and on purpose.
(I was half laughing half dry-heaving in the kitchen)

The nurse spoke even louder ‘You gotta spit it! Spit it out Ada! Don’t swallow!’

Ada stared with even more malice. A third try was issued.

Ada swallowed.

The nurse shook her head.

Ada had won that battle, (thanks aging taste buds), but the war had just begun.