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My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.
-- John Cheever
Thursday, July 31, 1997
Last night I updated the Cacophony pages. August looks like it will be a great month!
I bought Slow River by Nicola Griffith at the Clarion West reading the other night. Good book! I feel like I am in on a secret because she revealed what real place the city in the novel is based on.
I found out that one of my friend G---- is leaving Microsoft. Not only that, but he and his partner will be renting their house and taking off on the road! I was really surprised, and I'll really miss them while they are gone. I just don't approve of all these changes! I think people should stay where they are (for my benefit and comfort, of course!).
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Through reading the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheet newsgroup, I was pointed to Zeigen's website. Part of his personal pages details his mom's heath problems and the family efforts to aid in her care and recovery. When I was writing to him about his site, I was going to point to my stuff in the journal about when I was helping in my Mom's care. But I couldn't find it! I must have just thought about writing about that time.
My mother had a rather rare, slow-growing form of cancer in her salivary glands. This was first diagnosed in the early eighties. She had surgery and radiation, but they knew that it had already spread to her lungs. But she seemed to get along OK.
Finally in 1988, she retired from work. Because my brother was out of control with alcohol and drugs, and was abusive to my parents, we (my sisters and I) decided that the best thing to do was for my parents and me to move to Seattle, where my sister M---- was already living. Because of my brother, this was accomplished in a much more hurried way than we would have done otherwise, although we probably would have moved anyway.
We found an apartment near Volunteer Park, in a building with a garage and an elevator. My mom was still walking and getting around, but did tire easily. My dad's lungs had been chronically bad, but he seemed stable. I was the primary caregiver, and my sister M---- tracked the money and bills. My sister B---- in Delaware (and her husband) sold the Virginia house for us.
It was difficult and sad, but we had the resources to have the help we needed. We had a cleaning service. We got Mom enrolled in a hospice program. We even had a home health worker come in weekly just to get my father to bathe! (He was physically capable, but was reluctant to do it; he did cooperate with the health worker, though.) We had friends from our old street in Virginia who coincidentally had also ended up in Seattle who came to see us. We hired a nice woman who came twice a week for half a day to take my mother out, or keep her company at home so I could have a break. My mother was weak and getting weaker, but she still liked to go places.
When people heard that we were taking care of our parents, they would be very admiring. "You girls are so great!" they'd say. We would accept these compliments or sympathetic remarks in the kind way they were meant, then laugh together later when we were alone. We were glad to do it, but where was the alternative? We pictured ourselves talking together and shaking our heads: "Gee, too bad about Mom! What a shame she is wandering the streets of D.C, totally confused and ill!"
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Last night my all-time favorite Seinfeld episode played in syndication: The Tape. I never get tired of the last scene: George, Jerry, and Kramer all staring at Elaine goofily, dreamily, because of the sexy tape she recorded.
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Tomorrow is the last Clarion West Party of the summer. Where does the time go? August starting already!
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