On June 3rd, 2011, Eleanor Brophy had a stroke. On June 22nd, 2011, we moved in. And now, a month later, we start documenting our experiences of what it's like taking care of this Canadian Octogenarian living in Framingham, Massachusetts. Long story short, it's like taking care of a cranky baby who wishes for the sweet release of death, but upon his arrival, would complain that she doesn't very much care for the color of his robes or the manner in which he glided into the room.
It should be noted that Eleanor did not have a serious stroke, although the idea of any stroke not being serious is somewhat absurd, however, the doctors constantly used the term "minor." And, I suppose, it was minor. When Eleanor fell at 4.A.M. in the morning she was able to grip the white capsule of plastic around her neck and have a full conversation with the people on the other end of the lifeline; like the famous, if not laughable commercial, she had fallen and couldn't get up. She didn’t know she had a stroke, she just thought she fell. The rescue team was dispatched and she was taken to the nearest hospital where she was admitted and treated for a fall and then sent to a rehabilitation facility a few towns over the next day.
Eleanor has no children of her own, only nieces and nephews. When her family went to visit her, they noticed a slight slur in her usually cantankerous speech, and Susan Hardy, her nephew's wife, being a Psychological Nurse, immediately knew she had had suffered a stroke and arranged for the facility to send her off to a different hospital for an MRI, which, sure enough, detected "a very minor stroke."
Eleanor, never Ellie, was returned to the rehabilitation center where her blood pressure was monitored closely, but continued treatment only for her initial fall. When strokes happen, they just happen and then they pass, sometimes taking the life of their victim with them. In Eleanor's case, as she's often whispered from the side of her dry, chapped lips, she wishes she had "been so lucky" as to have left with the stroke, and only now, after a month of living with her, do we have some fraction of understanding as to why. It isn't that Eleanor is in a lot of pain, she isn't, she's actually more comfortable than a fat, white Senator who sold the property the local orphanage was on to Wal-Mart. It's that she is, in fact, (and scientists would agree if they cared about such things) the most miserable person on the planet with absolutely no reason to be. She is so unpleasant that if misery were currency, she would be able to buy and sell Warren Buffett ten times over and still have enough left over to ruin Christmas just for kicks.
The trouble with Eleanor was apparent to everyone else but me, even when the idea of this situation was first introduced.
"I was thinking," Susan said to her daughter Melanie and I, "why don't you two move in with Auntie? She's going to need a caretaker and the services for that kind of thing are really, really expensive. Why not let her pay you guys. Move in and make some money."
Mel had squinted her eyes and made a grumbling noise akin to what Marge Simpson would make when Homer had done something foolish, which, in Homer's case, is a daily thing. That low moan has haunted me every day since then, and after what I can only describe as "careful deliberation" Mel and I agreed to move into Auntie's house and take care of her, splitting up the responsibilities. Melanie would become her medical proxy and power of attorney, handling all medical and financial affairs, and I would handle mostly everything else; the day-to-day chores, meals, shopping, trips to the doctor, and, as an addendum grandfathered in later, listening to, and putting up with some of the most insufferable nonsense this side of the Lifetime Network's Movie of the Week. And I'm including the one where Brian Dennehy is supposed to be believable as some kind of action hero detective.
A great deal of debate went on within Eleanor’s family about what to do with her. She didn’t want to go into a home… yet. Her husband Jim had passed several years earlier from Cancer. She had no children of her own and Sterling, one of her two brothers, was distant, both physically and emotionally. So distant, in fact, that rather than simply call his sister for a rare “How are you?”, he sends her hand written letters from Washington State that I have to read out loud to her because of her poor vision and blind right eye. They were so matter-of-fact informative that there should have been a footer at the bottom with the phrase “Dictated but not read.” Gordon, her other brother, and his wife Alice (Parents of Nelson and Kevin, grandparents to Melanie and Bailey) were making most of the decisions for her at the time and supported Sue’s plan to have Melanie and I live with Eleanor as caretakers under the guideline that at any point should we not be able to take it anymore, we leave while we can and put her into assisted living. Melanie and I were to be in charge of everything Eleanor did, and that meant being in charge of Eleanor, a concept that never quite got off the ground. The same can be said about the recovery process of the memory centers of her brain.
This plan would also work out well for Melanie as she worked in Framingham at the Public Access Television Station but lived in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. She spent an hour driving to work and an hour driving back, not to mention the 100 dollars a week on gas. In truth, I also needed the money. As a freelance filmmaker and production manager, work comes and goes, feast or famine, and the New England indie film scene had been dormant for some time. My other job prospects in the Non-Profit world were non-existent due to the shitty economy and my education certificate was only good in the state of New York and had since just expired. I had student loans to pay, expensive student loans that dominated every aspect of my life. The stress was crushing my soul. Our condition, to ourselves, was that we do it for no longer than a year. The money was simply too good for either Mel or myself to pass up and it would provide us the chance to spend more time together and work on ourselves as people, personally and professionally… or so we hoped.
Two days before Eleanor was to be discharged, Mel and I moved into her house. She was clearly a very particular woman. She had a garden that surrounded her entire house, it was apparently the envy of the neighbors; even the ones she had been feuding with over plants that had been spilling over into her yard. A garden like this required some serious upkeep, the kind that she wouldn’t be able to do anymore, and, as it turns out, hasn’t been able to do for sometime; she had been paying a person she called her “Handy Man” to do it for her.
During the move-in, Mel and I made room for a few of our things in a room her family referred to as “Pink Bedroom” as well as the kitchen, which was rugged, rather than tiled. We sorted a few things out but mostly ended up throwing food that had gone bad, and I don’t mean just bananas and spoiled milk. I mean jars of jam from 2002 and boxes of Jell-o from 1979. (I kept one to use as a prop.) At first I chalked this up to the stereotype of elderly people never throwing anything out, but after later spending time with Eleanor, the line between stereotype and batshit crazy began to blur.
And the Jams. Ohhhh the Jams. Eleanor had been making her own Jams and Jellies since the first Bell Jars rolled off the assembly line. Grape, Peach, Orange, Strawberry, Strawberry Rhubarb. There was a room in her basement DEDICATED to Jam. A shrine to the pagan fruit gods. When I first saw the room I already knew she had done the work herself but in my mind I imagined a gaggle of persnickety grandmothers churning out jams by the boxful every day. Little poor children with coal covered cheeks and plaid caps would press their faces against the cold glass windows of the factory in the dead of winter, hoping that one of the older women might have a heart kind enough to butter a slice of bread and spread even just a spoonful of jam on it, presenting it to them with open arms and a warm smile, and just when one of the braver, more modestly raised older women would get to the door with that sweet, buttery, strawberry coated, toasty warm bread, Eleanor, the manager, would march up to her, speeding out of the shadows like an Arabian Viper and smack it out of her hand so it lands buttered side down on the floor, after which she would immediately terminate the kinder old lady’s employment, sending her out into the snow and shoo the poor little children away, telling them they’ve dirtied her windows with their greasy fingerprints and slowly dying breathes.
And then there were the doilies. On every. Single. Surface in the house. She even had doilies lining the drawers, and even on the drawer where she stored the doilies themselves. “This whole house is one big, fucking doily!” Mel yelled; frustrated with seeing the lacy paper circles everywhere she turned. Rather than continue unpacking, Mel began what I can only describe as a Jihad against these pretty pieces of paper. I wasn’t a huge fan of them myself, but Mel developed and Ahab-like obsession with their destruction. If the walls of the house had been made of steel, she would have napalmed the whole damn place, burning everything else in the process. I didn’t know then what I know now; that Melanie’s family all had their fill of Auntie Eleanor’s misery and particulars and Mel was no exception. Auntie had been frustrating Mel and she wasn’t even home yet.
June 22nd. Cold. Damp. Grey. What I imagine Hell might feel like. Or rather, Martha Stewart’s Hell. We arrived at the rehabilitation facility. There she was, like a decrepit, golden Pharoh, sitting in a wheel chair, clutching her purse, next to a pile of treasured files and boxes. Dragons hording gold could learn a thing or two from Eleanor Brophy. These files, mind you, were not life saving medical files; no, these were her taxes, which she requested be brought to her in the rehabilitation center two weeks earlier. "I'm ready to go." she said.
"Yes, we can see that Auntie." Mel replied as the doctor and nurse entered with her discharge paperwork and to give us the 411 on what would become known as "Auntie's Pill Playbook". As we wheeled Auntie out of the room, she looked to us saying very loudly, "They took too long getting me out of here. I don’t think they did it right" well within earshot of the doctor and nurse. I couldn’t tell if she wanted them to hear her or if she just had no concept of how to control her voice, but clearly, either way, for lack of a better term, she did not give a fuck.
Mel, aware that Auntie had the general disposition of a Holocaust survivor who chose to stay in Germany after the war, brushed off the comment while I was initially shocked by her bluntness. As time passed, this behavior would continue to reveal itself to me as an uncaring rudeness that Eleanor simply wasn't aware she was doing, and if she was aware she was doing it, this woman had bigger balls than Teddy Roosevelt.
"I guess the stroke really affected her attitude." I said to Mel.
"HA!" she replied, and pushed Auntie onto the elevator, and only now do I look back on that moment and realize how much Mel wished she was pushing Auntie into an open elevator shaft instead.
The ride from the Rehabilitation Facility back to Eleanor’s house was perhaps the most pleasant time we’d had together. Eleanor was telling us how happy she was to be going home, and at one point I started to question whether or not they gave her anything to help her mood as I have not seen her smile as much since. She went on about the housework that needs to be done and, before she began to turn things around by complaining about everything she experienced over the last month, how much she was looking forward to moving into assisted living after she filed her income taxes in 2012. April 2012. She could do it earlier, but with her it MUST be April 2012. Any other time simply won’t do.
Eleanor’s goal was to be a resident at St. Patrick’s Manor, a very upper crust retirement home; the kind of place Dukes and Duchesses would be kept if the U.S. had them. Auntie had visited two of Jim’s Aunts who stayed there decades ago and her memories of it are very pleasant, but there-in lies the rub; Jim’s two Aunts were pleasant and treated everyone there with the same respect they would expect. Auntie Eleanor, on the other hand, is not pleasant. She believes this place to be her Shangri-La when in reality it’s more like the Catholic Purgatory; you’ll only be treated as kindly as you treat others. And, perhaps even more like the Catholic Heaven, as there is a waiting list to get in. Up to a year, and even then she’d need a recommendation from a doctor stating she was unable to live on her own, which isn’t entirely the case. She’ll have nothing to do, no one to tell what to do, and no one to talk to. As I write this, I realize only one of those things will actually upset her, the part about having no one to tell what to do. She’ll be the one who is being told what to do; a rude awakening for sure. As for the other two things I mentioned, she actually spends most of her time staring off into space (or complaining, she really does enjoy it, I can see it in her one good eye.) or silently knitting, and she both likes and loathes talking to people all at the same time. Rather, I should say, she likes talking and hates listening.
Despite her minor stroke, she’s remarkably mobile; like a mouse being chased into it’s hole by an old Italian woman with a broom. There are times when I turn corners in the house and expect her to jump out at me, asking for a snack while yelling like a Navajo Indian waving around a tomahawk. “Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye Give me crackers!” Most of the time, however, she often shambles and scuttles about with her walker; the quiet, almost whispered sound of tennis balls slowly shuffling along the rug; her unintended way of letting us know, almost ominously, that… she’s coming. The quiet sound has often caused Mel and I to stop our conversation and try and figure out which direction she’s moving in as we hope to avoid the cloud of misery she carries with her. Every now and then though, when she’s impatient, which is every moment she breathes, so I mean to say when she’s REALLY impatient, she’ll speed around the house with her walker faster than a bloated southern housewife does to turn the television on at 4pm in time for Dr. Phil… which Eleanor sometimes watches.
When Eleanor does finally go to a home, she’s going to be surprised. Despite being told by both myself and Melanie, by Sue, by Gordon and Alice, by Doctors and Nurses, Eleanor believes that Assisted Living at St. Patrick’s Manor will something akin to being waited on hand and foot. She never witnessed this ideal herself, but her memories of Jim’s pleasant Aunts being pleasant while they stayed there waiting for Death to sneak up on them like a creepy pedophile, in combination with the word Manor in the location’s letterhead, has lead Eleanor to believe that everyone is wrong about it but her, which is a common mentality she carries around with her, next to her social security card and GenTeal Brand Eye Drops. Due to a history of similar behavior in my own family, I am used to the “I’m right, you’re wrong, even with proof” brand of thinking that Eleanor has. Melanie, on the other hand, is not used to this, and I don’t know if she ever will be. But I do suppose that’s a good thing, as I like to think that means she hasn’t been tainted by the kind of extreme light and dark upbringing I’ve had.
While living with Eleanor over the past month, despite the ups and downs, I have come to understand the value of youth, luckily, while I’m still young. 27. That’s still a young age. Most people over 35 would say they’d “Kill” to be 27 again. I’m not in perfect shape, but neither is Eleanor, and it has given me the drive to reach 83 with strength and dignity; the motivation to value every step I can take at a regular pace and to live some kind of even slightly happy life so that when I do get to be her age, I don’t look back on my life and think “Well, what the Hell was that for?” I don’t know what makes Eleanor Brophy so unhappy, no one seems to, but I intend to find out so that I can avoid those mistakes and to live the rest of my life, starting at age 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment