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You know I’ve been in this state of mind where someone could tell me right this minute that things look better and I just want to respond, “and then what?” Because honestly the way things look for mom is that we can get through this hump but the true come to Jesus is waiting in the wings. When her brother died of cirrhosis of the liver decades ago, they had told him a year earlier that if he didn’t quit drinking, he would die. We’re waiting for her to get off the vent for her to learn the same fate – stop, or else.

I went to the hospital early to see if I could help calm my mother’s anxiety as they were trying to back her off the vent completely. She was breathing too fast, so they kept her where she was and upped her sedatives again. In the meantime, I kept leaning in and saying, try to relax, breath deeply – and she kept trying to mouth complete thoughts through the tape and tube and I couldn’t understand a word of it – I felt like I was in ground hog day and this scene and my statements were just on an endless loop like they have been over the last 16 days, years, months? How long has it been?

I came back frustrated and T said it’s because I’m in the same mode I always am with my mother – trying to get her to do something that she doesn’t want to do.

Later I went to the grocery and a guy at the check out counter was wearing a black tee shirt that said I’m not dead yet. If I could understand what my mother was trying to say, it would most likely be that.

When the adoption failed in May, we were dejected and did what any adults would do, we sought consolation in distraction – we planned a trip to Portugal. Little did we know that this disappointment was the beginning of a summer full of oh my god’s, one after the other.

Now that the trip – prepaid – to Portugal is hanging on the delicate balance of whether my mother can segue out of the acute phase, I find myself clinging to the trip’s purpose once again, the consolation prize for having no control over our destiny.

The only problem is how soon our trip is coming up and how slow progress has been with mom – and so I’m trying to believe that I will roll with whatever comes my way since most of this is out of my control anyway.

So today’s meditation on the Tao te Ching is particularly enlightening as it proposes openness = mainly to whatever comes – ommmmmmm.

#12

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.

The lung doctor told me that patients who come into the hospital with living wills asking not to be resuscitated seem to have a propensity once they have a vent down their throat and are given a choice that when it is pulled out they will die, all decline to die. The stubborn clinging to life.

I watched T taking care of her 78 year old mother and I see the same thing I recognize in me – caretaker – and I know where my habit came from as the daughter of my parents. But I don’t know where her’s comes from except that she was left alone most of her growing up because her parents worked and she watched herself. Her mother tells the funny story of when T was six years old and put the key to the house under the mat for her mother and left a big note with arrows pointing down towards the mat saying THE KEY IS UNDER THE MAT.

One of the email updates that came across my screen this morning had to do with media, a guy was describing his father’s plunge into long-term care via a stroke but he was working his way to the point that people do things out of habit and even after severe damage to the brain, his dad was able to recall his social security number without flinching. He quotes Neale Martin who wrote a book about this phenomenon:

“When we repeat a behavior,” he explains, “even one that involves many independent steps, it is etched into the basal ganglia, ready to be activated whenever a cue is encountered.” The more a behavior is repeated, the deeper it gets etched in, until it’s so deep there’s no getting rid of it.

The sky is filled with big puffy clouds and the bayou is glassy  and dark, very mysterious looking. Today one of my neighbors wrote about the Disney ducks and the mess they are creating on the other side of the bayou from me. Hail hail. Meanwhile, the writer also went on to note the plethora of canoes that are now in some form or another lining the bayou making the banks of the bayou look like a week after Katrina. Speaking of which it’s hurricane season, when I was thinking about the raw emotional state I find myself in as I nervously wait to see if mom will get off the vent this week, whether I can make it through the sixth week of the family visit from Croatia, whether or not attorney number two is going to give us the green light on this adoption book that has taken most of the summer to prepare, what skin care to use on my wrinkled aging skin, how to fit yoga into an already crammed day, and how to find enlightenment in this time of darkness, I have to say I have a strong desire to borrow my neighbor’s rifle and sit on the porch and pick off those fluffy white Donald’s just for the pure fun of it.

Yes, I’m scrappy, but I’m from here and inside everyone who is from here is a pull to the dark side, the tidal force of mischief, and so there it is.

Why is it that you can simultaneously have an overarching desire to smash the head of a teenager while wanting to save the life of your bad-girl mother? How come life doesn’t come in Goranimals – easy to mix and match emotions as well as people?

My conversation with my friend who has a teenage niece gave me perspective on our visitor. My conversation with mom’s lung doctor today gave me perspective on what to expect next with her – conclusion: we have a long way to go, baby.

I got disgusted with Olay having so many line extensions that they had taken over massive amounts of shelf space and left loyal customers like myself confused and resentful. Corporate greed. What wrong with one good cream? Meanwhile, I signed up for Dermitage after finding some recommendations online, but honestly I want some pleasure in my skin care regime – the smell, the feel, the results. I found none with this product so it was back to Olay Regenerist again. But not for long, I’m searching for good skincare, so if you have a recommendation that is not too perfumey with good results, I’m all ears. And don’t say Creme de la Mer, I found that overpriced and not so great.

The meditation of the Tao te Ching today is #11, which I think needs a little more meditation for me. Even though I get what it is trying to say, I also know that the center, the emptiness, the inner space are all areas that are not easy to access.

#11

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

I don’t have much peace in the morning anymore because I wake up and try to figure out what to do to help my mother and I obsess about what might come next and what came before. I’m trying to find a way to go about every day while my mother remains in limbo in the ICU – will she get better? will she have to stay in the hospital? – the sad reality is that she probably will never go back to her apartment again and that’s just what I can’t get my thoughts comfortable with – what will be her quality of life? How will she live?

Last night, after two full weeks in the hospital and obsessively running back and forth, I did not go to the night visiting hour, I just felt done, overdone. And yet the first thing I felt was guilt because mom can’t be an advocate for herself and I need to be there all the time interceding for lame nurses, the rogue respiratory therapists, the indifferent doctors – that’s not to say some of her care hasn’t been outstanding, but yet sadly some of it leaves a lot to be desired.

As I sit here about to start my work this morning, I know I couldn’t do what the health care professionals do every day – I don’t have that gene in me even though everyone in my family was a doctor or a nurse it seems like. This one nurse, Jennifer, who was mom’s nurse on the second floor was so outstanding it made you ache to deal with anyone else after her. My hat’s off to the good doctors and nurses who are the consummate health care providers – caring about the patient as much as the disease and giving all of themselves while they are there.

I want to believe that zoo’s are around to help people learn about animals so that they can help them. Is that true? It’s been so long since I’ve been to a zoo because honestly I have a hard time with all those animals behind cages, even fish zoos tend to get me a little down. So yesterday I took my niece and our 14 year old visitor to the New Orleans Zoo, which is considered one of the finest in the country and we got there late in the afternoon after it had been storming, and we got to see my favorite animal – the elephant. I just love elephants. I can look at them forever. The elephants at our zoo are Asian elephants but a few years ago, I spent the weekend in Arkansas at Riddle’s Elephant Sanctuary and most of the elephants they had were African elephants. The ears is the tell on which region they come from as the Africans have ears that are like a large map of Africa.

The work that Scott and Heidi do at Riddle’s is extraordinary, they not only continue research on this fine creature but give these ex circus animals a place to grow old. The visit to the zoo was quite amazing and I know that children must love to go, but I still can’t help feeling like they are there for our benefit and not theirs and I’m not quite sure we have that much to offer them. I could be wrong, but that’s just my feeling.

Here is a photo of me bathing Betty Boop at Riddle’s and the other is Booper and Peggy in the water cooling off.