Shopping With Dad

Deb: Today, as is our habit, I was grocery shopping with my dad. Several times during our shop together he said, “You should write about this,” making a joke, of course, but kinda meaning it too. So....

Shopping with my dad.

My dad is 85-years-old. He likes to go shopping. When he was younger he was a gourmet chef. He would prepare wonderful meals for us all the time. I grew up enjoying baked Alaska flamed at the table. We had large profiterole trees at Christmas, filled with fresh cream, caramel dripping from its rounded branches. Beef Wellington adorned with pastry autumnal leaves would appear at a dinner party or Dad would cook an entire pig on a spit for a neighbour’s bbq. Gourmet Magazine was his bible. Dad actually guested on many local cooking shows.

Dad is in the chef's cap with my Uncle Don! 

Dad is on the right. Our friend Murray is on the left looking on.

He does not love to cook anymore. Cooking, his lifetime hobby, is now a chore.

I can remember watching him sit with my baby brother on his lap while he read cookbooks to him, putting so much expression and passion into them, you would have thought he was reading Robert Munch or Huckleberry Finn.

Cooking, next to my Mom, has been his lifelong passion and hobby. So despite what a painful and empty chore it has become of late, old habits die hard, and when Dad is in the market he loves looking at the beautiful foods. My favourite moments are spent watching him stand at the meat counter and reminiscing. Actually bloody well reminiscing about meals gone by and cuts of beef my mother used to eat and now doesn’t!!!  He loves to describe what he would do with a pork loin or a beef tenderloin and what the side dishes would be. And of course, no weekly shopping trip would be complete without our ritual of talking about the mustards and how they only come in squeeze bottles and how he sprayed the entire kitchen when he was trying to get mustard out of the squeezy bottle. He also falls into despair when considering the new liquid detergent!  “Why? Why?” says my dad. And my favourite of all, uttered every five minutes is, “This store is starting to tick me off!” sprinkled with a few, “Boy, that’s gone up!” as he scans the prices. My dad can forgive anything except bad overpriced produce!

But he loves it. Loves the outing. Loves the connection to his old life. He may not want to cook it when he gets home, but he sure wants to step into the nucleus of it again. He wants to go back to a time when shopping and golf were his exquisite passions. The grocery store can take him there in an instant and he comes alive savoring every second. I swear to you, I watch him as we shop and I can only compare him to a retired athlete running onto the field again for another toss of the pigskin. The difference is, my dad is wondering how to turn the pigskin into a savoury appetizer. In his day he would get up on a Saturday and go to the St. Lawrence Market and he would know and chat with every vendor about their wares. He would choose his cheeses and meats and breads with loving care.

And he still is. He is doing it as much as he can. Every aisle we go down he says, “I need to find a nibble for your mother, something she might love to have.” Although it is a packaged bag of caramels or muffins, he is still putting the thought into it. He is still playing out that role. He is doing the best with his skills and, even if the menu is wieners and beans, he is still trying to impress my mother, still trying to make her happy. And when he cooks for her, she still tells him she loves it, wieners, beans and all.

Today when we wound our way to our parking spot, slowly but surely, Dad said, “My pants are falling down,” and damned if they weren’t. I hitched up the back of Dad’s pants as we pushed the cart to the car door. He laughed and said, “You should write about this.”

Barbara: I knew this was going to be a killer post, Deb, and it is. In every sense of the word: kills with its sentiment, with the nostalgia of something lost (or going), kills with the sheer and utter love. As many of you might know, I’m not around right now—off on holiday with my husband—and I haven’t had a chance to read all your amazing comments and thoughts and dreams. I am looking forward to a quiet moment when I get home to really savour them. But this post, Deb, took me to another place, both for the memories it evoked in my own experience, and for the tenacity and spirit with which you guys navigate this new world of “different”. Chef’s hat off to you and your dad.

Invisible

Deb: Throughout these last years as the care of my parents has become a more regular part of life, I have made some tragic observations. The most distressing of these is that my bright, funny, interesting, charming parents have become invisible. They have quite faded away in the eyes of most people.

I have been watching this with growing sadness at every social function we attend. As befitting their age and stage of life, they are always greeted by everyone in attendance. I have watched people ritualize them as if they are a King and Queen. They are treated warmly and enthusiastically, but also like figureheads who must be welcomed and respected but not lingered over. The respects are paid with very good intentions. But there is no “engagement”. They are no longer the people with whom you have an “interesting” conversation. So “hello” becomes enough. They aren’t up on pop culture references and what they have to say is outdated. So instead they are asked, “How are you doing?” in a loud voice. They are asked if they can be given more food or beverages. They are asked what they think about the weather and how they are enjoying the early spring. Of course there are those who go beyond this cursory greeting, but I would be lying if I said these were not the rarer breed.

I am not angry as I write this rather; I am heartbroken. I have noticed more and more how people just look right through Mom and Dad and other people of their age. I find it even more distressing given the contrast of my own experience.

When we were growing up, our grandparents were the centre of the visit, the reason you looked forward to going at all. I remember visiting my Granny, her Scottish tablecloth laden with sharp cheese, crackers, bread, canned corned beef, scones, jam, raisin bread, shortbread, and tea. Always tea, lots of tea. And that was just when I visited alone! Every visitor would have the same feast laid out before them. I can feel, smell, and taste those visits. I remember the light from the kitchen window and the sounds from the alley as we sat at that table, Granny and I. We would talk about life and her garden and the family gossip and when I left I felt that we had visited, really visited.

When I see any grandchildren of the invisible, it makes me so sad to think that they are not getting this visit of my past. And they are not learning about their past through these wonderful people who love them so much and just want to be loved in return. They might be surprised to learn for example that the things they think their grandparents are out of touch with are the very things their grandparents are fascinated and in awe of and would love to hear more about. And these grandchildren, without really truly knowing their grandparents, might never be able to say, “I do that, just like Papa” and be proud of their lineage, their connection.

I do know this. Paying respects to your elders at the beginning and ending of an event does little towards building a bond. The most painful thing to observe in these moments is the invisible noticing that they are invisible.  And you can scramble and rush to their side and try to fill the void. But it’s too late. They have already noticed and the hurt of it makes them a little harder to see.

Easter weekend, Colin, the Boy and I hosted an 85th birthday for my parents. We had a casual afternoon gathering and it was lovely. The only gift asked for was one of conversation with each of them. Now this particular gathering is what I would call, preaching to the choir. These are people in my parents’ lives. But even so, they took the invite to heart and chatted ones and twos and threes with Mom and Dad. And as a result, each of them who engaged my parents came away with a new story about their lives or an experience that had previously been unknown to them.

My parents for their part, had the best night. I could tell. Because at that party, on that day, they were the first people you saw when you walked through the door.

**One of my favourite John Pryne songs ends with this lyric:

“So if you’re walkin’ down the street sometime

And you should spot some hallow ancient eyes

Don’t you pass them by and stare as if you didn’t care

Say Hello in there. Hello.”

Barbara: As my parents and their spouses aren’t yet of this age (and by that, I mean they are still mobile, which means they can control their engagement), and as my grandparents, who are older, live so far away, I’ve never consciously observed this heartbreaking trend from centre-of-attention to invisible. But I can feel the truth of it, especially if people are in the mindset of not knowing how to greet our older generation—or even that they should and MUST. Have I engaged Deb’s parents before this celebration and Deb’s gentle request? Of course. And I have loved speaking and laughing with them. But there was something sweet—and not the least bit forced—about doing it consciously at their 85^th. In fact, this is an excerpt from the thank-you letter I sent Deb after the party:

Thank you so very much for the absolutely lovely celebration for your parents. It was a gorgeous and wonderful day. Your parents are such loving and amazing people and deserve every bit of revelry and honour they get! You are a doll and wonderful daughter to always make sure they get their due. I love that you asked us to chat with them and I love that they had so much fascinating stuff to share. I had no idea your dad was such a Western buff and how he only really has patience for non-fiction. He regaled me with some great facts and stories about the wild west! Your mom is just so lovely and honest, telling about her frustrations and concerns, but also her love of life and for her family.

All this to say that by consciously making an effort, by consciously being aware of engagement and taking interest, I got so much out of the experience, so much more than just a superficial exchange of greetings or observations. And I think it’s a worthwhile bug-in-our-ears to make sure people like Deb’s parents get more than just a courteous greeting, but get their real and deserved due. And I guess in order to do that, especially as we get older and older ourselves, we need to remind and teach each other and our children to be aware of it. Open ears, open hearts. It’s another one of those win-win situations we love to embrace here!

Dream A Little Dream With Me

Barbara: Do you like to talk dreams? Because lately a friend keeps asking me to pay attention to them—out of curiosity, but also out of interest as to what they might dredge up—and it made me realize that I haven’t thought about my dreams in a long while.

(Costa Rica: photo by Phil)

I’m not one to believe that our dreams can predict our future or the future or any aspect of it (although I do believe that there is a certain kind of person for whom this might be true). But I do think that dreams are manifestations of our questions or concerns or stresses or even joys.

In the morning when I wake, I hardly ever remember my dreams. It was only several years ago when I was doing some research and was encouraged to really try and remember them that I made a concerted effort to recall details as soon as I woke up. And it worked! Suddenly I could see the strange places I’d been in my dreams that were kinda like familiar places in real life but then not. I began to write the details down in a journal that I kept beside my bed, and that process helped me remember the dreams with even greater clarity. This ritual was so effective that to this day I remember dreams I had during that period. (Okay, there was this one where I’m an amphibian creature crawling around a vividly verdant rainforest floor but I’m also looking at my creature-self from above, way up high from the lush trees, also trying to crane my eyes over the tree-line to the blue sky beyond it, when suddenly my amphibian self says, very clearly over the rainforest whoooosh, “What you’re looking for is not up there. It’s down here on the ground.” Even though it was my dream, I still think that’s a cool, apt life-reminder for any of us, no?)

(Costa Rica: photo by Phil)

Anyway, the cataloguing-dreams thing was just an exercise and pretty soon I dropped the habit and began again to jump out of bed as soon as I woke to hit the ground running. Dreams went back to being what they’d been before, these distant, vague, sometimes unsettling, sometimes blank impressions … and nothing more. 

So I decided to heed my friend’s recent advice and from now on spend a few moments every morning trying to remember my dreams. At first it was frustrating. I couldn’t remember a thing. And what’s worse, I could feel the memory of the dream zinging away from my mind’s-eye like a yo-yo, now here, now gone up from whence it came. But I realized that if I really worked to grab the memory back before it was too far flung(!), the details would rack into focus and I could examine it, turning it first one way and then the other until it made some kind of coherent sense. Now I can tell you with complete confidence that each of my dreams (much like the amphibian dream) has featured me looking for something. But in an intent, calm, and specific way. Either I’m asking people questions, or I’m searching my house (but not my house, rather that weird, dreamly version of it), or I’m off in some distant land, exploring and discovering it. Or—like in last night’s dream—I’m either a newly minted police officer or an actor learning to be one, and I’m taking all these notes and being super anal and asking all these questions about how the sleuthing should be done but also giving my (unsolicited) opinion when I think the sleuthing could be more effective (sadly, this is so me, sigh).

The thing is, I don’t know what I’m searching for in essence through all these dreams, but it does make sense to me that this is the conundrum I’d take into my REM: what is it? what is next? where is it all leading? what will I find? will I know what to do with it when I find it?

There’s a really weird side-note to all this: the same friend who started this interesting dream-quest also reminded me about that pen I lost all those years ago—and she challenged me to be open to finding it. So I’m lying in bed this morning, freshly awake, remembering that police-slash-actor-training dream in all its strange detail and suddenly my thoughts go to that errant pen, out of nowhere. And I get this deeply aware feeling that I know where it is. And it’s an option I’d long ago forgotten. I see it with another person. A person who said they didn’t have it way back then. As I said, an option I looked into and then put aside in favour of searching high and low in my own home. I’m not saying I believe it was stolen, I’m saying I just suddenly felt it was gone to this other, unreachable place. A real pen’s real whereabouts … or a metaphor for something else?

Are dreams speaking to us from some place we don’t ever tap into in waking life, or are they simply a wild kind of movie-version of what we already know? Is it the truth … or is it all just a dream?

Deb: Fascinating and timely subject, Barb—for me too. I am finding of late the insomnia seems to be the order of the day for me. Or I should say, order of the night. 3am to 6am to be specific. My feeling around this is that my dreams and wakefulness are a manifestation of that which I cannot face.

Although my day is filled with positive active movement regards the changes in my Mom and Dad’s life, my dreams are filled with doubt and self-judgment. When I wake up sometimes it is all I can do to shake them. But shake them I do. I know these images and feelings are the part of me that wants to plant the seed of self-doubt. And I guess if I had to choose, I’d take them during sleep rather than during a waking moment, which might affect my life or someone else’s life. So, yeah, I think the dreams are what we don’t and won’t tap into. I also think they are daring adventures that an unused part of our brain’s spirit wants to go on. And if we won’t go willingly, it takes us regardless.

You have inspired me to the dream journal, Barb. I have a splendid one that my husband bought me in Italy. A lovely brown leather deal with the moon and stars stitched on the cover. I will wait till this period of my life is settled and then I will start recording in it, not my dreams but the images and feelings provoked as a result of them. It’s pointless to do it right now though, as I know all too well which part of my brain this oddness and fear is coming from—and why. But soon, I will crack it open. Look out, brain, here I come. 

Mourning Living Losses

Deb: Peaks and valleys are the best way to describe what my family has been going through lately. We are at that stage of life’s path where we are faced with the fork in the road. There are no signs pointing the way, no Lonely Planet guide giving us tips. We are hunting and gathering information and hoping to God that the right decision is arrived at.

My Mom’s foot has steadily improved and she is ready to be discharged from the hospital to further recover. But recover where?

The month-long stay in the hospital—between the trauma, drugs and the prone position—has produced both a pressure ulcer (bed sore) and a total loss of strength. She is now what they call “a two person transfer”. She can no longer transfer herself from bed to chair or chair to toilet. So of course the inevitable phrase “nursing home” reared its head. A blow to all of us and the specter of it has caused sleepless nights, tears, and endless circles of discussion. Add to that the sickening exposés on nursing homes on the front pages every day. The timing could not be worse.

My particular pain, which has itself developed like an internal pressure ulcer, has been in the unwanted job of holding Mom and Dad’s future in my hands. Honestly, I can deal with anything, but the agony of knowing I might make the wrong choice has been more than I can bear. I have spent endless hours researching and talking to our stellar team of support at St. Mike’s hospital who are working tirelessly to make this transition an easy and correct one. St. Michael's hospital is called Toronto’s Urban Angel and I could not agree more.

A few days ago I took my Dad home after a hospital visit. We had a particularly frank and painful discussion in the car and when I left him he said with tears in his eyes, “Debra, we trust you implicitly.” Any daughter would love to hear that but, while I was struck by the sentiment, I could not help wanting to run from this responsibility of trust. I spent the night thinking about this and how it was overwhelming me, and suddenly it hit me. I do not have the responsibility. I have chosen wrongly to own the responsibility. The only responsibility I have is to share with my savvy, very with-it parents, every single thought, every single option, every single fear. They deserve nothing less.

I realized, somewhat stunned, that this was just occurring to me. The simple fact is, we are all in this together. I was trying to do what I always do, trying to “handle it all”. I was putting this on myself.

The good/bad news in this scenario is that Mom and Dad’s bodies have betrayed them. Their minds have not. They can take all my information and offer good solid opinions. My job is to gather, shape, and offer it up. They do tend towards not wanting to cause me grief and stress, so I must keep it on track or they would just take the path of least resistance. I had this honest talk with them and Mom said, “Whatever happens, Deb, it will be because it is the best for us. This is a decision we will make together and it is not solely on your shoulders.” And a team was born.

It is still painful as we try to jump hurdles and dodge medical bullets. But I no longer feel I am falling down the rabbit hole. This past Friday we turned a corner. As soon as I identified the source of the pain, I think we all gained strength from the knowledge. The fact is, knowledge is power crept up on me again for the fiftieth time, bringing with it peace and purpose. How could I have missed that the agony was coming from mourning? We are mourning. And we have done it many times before. So why doesn’t it present itself to me each time with, “Hi, it’s me again, mourning.” But, like Dorothy, I seem to just have to learn it for myself over and over.  We have mourned before. We mourned Mom’s loss of independence when she had the stroke and we rose above it, turning her lack of independence into freedom. We have mourned these last few years as Dad has lost his independence and we continue to work towards good healthy solutions. And I look at them as my Dad takes Mom’s hand in the hospital as they say goodbye for the night. They are going strong, forging ahead. This generation continues to astound me with their strength and fortitude.

I guess the bitterest pill for all of us to swallow, is that we hold the secret of who they were. The care team, despite their best care and attention, see two old people at the end of their lives. The other day as an O.T. was giving me the results of my Mom’s cognitive test, I started to ball like a baby. The O.T. said, “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you want me to stop?” I said through sobs, “NO, I need this information! It’s just that, I wish you knew them, really knew who they were. You don’t and it’s breaking my heart.” My parents were the ones! They were the hosts, the entertainers! They were the centre of their circle. My Dad would cook like a pro and my Mom would dance the night away. They were the last to leave every single party! And it’s killing my soul that no one knows this. I wanted to scream, “Please, see this!” 

But I didn’t. It’s not their job. But I know it, and everyone who knows them knows it, and I guess that has to be enough.

The other day as we sat in Mom’s hospital room, my Mom said, “Jimmy, did you ever think we would end up this way”? To which Dad said, “No I didn’t, Anne”. I said, “Would you prefer the alternative? You have lost all your friends and you are still here.” As sobering as that comment was to digest, they sat for a moment and then smiled, knowing that despite all they are facing, they are happy as hell to be here. My parents love life in a way I wish every human creature did. They deeply mourn their lost family and friends but are in no hurry to join them, even at almost 85 years of age.

One of the Care Team experts, in an effort to assess how well I was doing as caregiver, asked me three questions. She said:

1. Are you feeling any resentment around taking all this on?

2. Are you feeling guilty?

3. Are you stressed?

And I answered.

1. I am not feeling resentment. I am so grateful that I have Mom and Dad and it is my great honour to care for them and about them.

2. I do not have any guilt. I have no reason for guilt and it is a waste of my time.

3. Hell, yeah, I’m stressed!

This week I would answer, “Hell, yeah, I’m stressed, but one tiny epiphany is melting it away, one crisis at a time.”

We will move forward together to make the rest of their life a party. Because as fate would have it, they are still the last to leave.

Barbara: Deb, I just want to thank you so much and from the bottom of my heart. I can’t tell you how, on the one hand, it’s hard to see you go through this and, of course, even harder to see your parents go through it, but on the other hand, your experience has also taught me an incredibly important thing or two.

My parents are all—knock on wood—healthy right now. But I know that can change in a flash. I find it interesting and important to remember that people—even those in medical crisis—are often capable of making, or being part of making, those critical decisions that will affect them the most. Of course, I also get that a lot of people can't––or won't––make good or useful decisions for themselves. But let's assume this is a case by case. If at all possible, they should not be outside that discussion. And we can't take on all the guilt and pressure that comes from making these hard choices. How brave and forthright of your mom to say it in so many words, that she takes responsibility for choosing whatever fork in the road you all travel down. And how lucky your parents are to have such a loving, faith-full Dorothy to hold their hands along the way.