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Open Mic: The Next Stage

 Mother's Day is coming up. It's a time to reflect on how much our moms have done for us  -- and, with the passage of time, how much we can do for them.  It's not easy assuming the role of caregiver, but Douglass Hopkins -- a veterinarian from the Upper Shenandoah Valley -- is doing it with a smile.

Today I brought Mama a double fist-full of wildflowers. Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower and butterfly weed spilling out of a Mason jar.  I left her squeaking and shuddering as she pursued small spiders and ants across her bed. I hope arranging flowers (and chasing spiders) will help her forget where she is for a short while. Kendal in Lexington is the nicest nursing home I have ever seen – but she wants to be home.

My mother is eighty-one and I realize I have actually lost track of the number of bones she has broken in the last ten years. Both hips (one twice), both wrists, her orbit  . . .  and which elbow? Which tibia? As a veterinarian, I’m ashamed; normally I can remember a long history, but I honestly never imagined so many fractures. Mama is bright and chipper as a cricket and about the size of one. She moves like a crippled snail. Still she is determined to return to her home in the country and to the solitary, intellectual life she loves.

This time I made sure I was there when the doctor and case manager at the hospital discussed discharge plans.

They asked, “Mrs. Hopkins, do you live alone?”

She answered, “Yes, but my sister lives on one side of me and my son on the other!”

I said, “Write down: They are both over half a mile away, the son works full time and the sister is 87.”

They asked, “Do you have a walker or a cane?”

Mom said, “I have both!”

I said, “Write down: She will not use them.”

Now she is locked down against her will for a few weeks of intensive physical therapy for strength and balance. Our plan is to try to get her home again – once more – but with some changes. When she protests that she can’t see why things won’t be as before, I remind her of Einstein’s wisdom: “The surest sign of insanity is to continue to do the same things and . . .”  she finished the line, “expect different results.”

I tell her, “I am not insane.”

Neither is my mother, actually. In the hospital she had a bed alarm that would sound off if she tried to get out of bed without help. Seriously offended by this, I heard her mutter once as it jangled, “There goes that thing again. That thing that says: ‘Mrs. Hopkins has escaped . . . and is running down the street in only a HAT!’” On my next visit, she told me that she had looked at the box and discovered it had an on-off button. So she had turned it off. I stared at her and asked if the nurses knew this? She looked at me as if I were slow.

“What,” she said, “would be the point of that?”

So this next stage of our lives promises to be frustrating and entertaining by turns.  I do recall clearly the first time I heard myself address her as if she were the child and I the parent. Years ago I accidentally ran over a half-wild stray tomcat that my grandmother had grown fond of. To assess the extent of the damage, I had my brother trying to restrain the frantic creature on our breakfast room table. Mama kept trying to pat the cat’s head – to soothe it – saying, “Poor kitty. It’s OK.”  Distracted, I said, “Don’t touch the cat, Mom.”  It yowled and clutched the edge of the sugar bowl, dumping the contents onto his already liberal coating of blood and rank urine. My brother swore and I batted Mom’s hands away again. (‘Leave the cat alone Mom!’) I reached for my stethoscope and then heard her yelp. Looking up to see her cradling a bitten hand, I snapped, “Damn it - I told you not to touch that cat!”  In that split-second, the world shifted ever so slightly. 

Now we make our way as best we can. I know how our paths began and I suppose I know how they will end. Still, despite the rocky patches, I hope it’s a very long trail.

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