Down by the Station

We were down by the station early in the morning, looking for little puffer-bellies, but I guess they don't exist any more, especially not at a train station as small as the one in Davis.

It was kind of a quick morning.  I had set my alarm for 4:30 so I could get up and make cinnamon rolls for Jeri's last breakfast but the alarm didn't go off (or I slept through it) and I woke up with a jolt at 5:15.  No time for cinnamon rolls, but I could whip together some cranberry-walnut muffins.  I'll tell ya, I don't think I was even fully awake when those muffins went into the oven.  I was crashing around the kitchen trying to keep my balance.

But the muffins actually came out of the oven just as Jeri was coming downstairs, so we were able to have a last breakfast together before she headed off for Santa Barbara, where she will spend a few days with Tom and the family, a "fun time" she has earned after all her work here!

We did get down by the railroad tracks just minutes before the Coast Starlight came into view. 

 

Only time for a quick hug goodbye and Jeri was off to her next adventure.

 

As for us, we came home and I immediately went back to sleep.  I was awakened a couple of times, but when I gave up and went to the couch to sleep, I was able to sleep until nearly 11, to make up for the sleep I didn't get last night.

At 1 we went back to Atria.  Habitat for Humanity was scheduled to come sometime between 1 and 3.  While waiting, we finished boxing everything up and sorted into what was going to the SPCA thrift shop, what was going to the new apartment, and what was coming home with us.

In one of the boxes filled with lipstick, makeup, scissors and other toiletry items that I almost told Walt to throw away I found buried treasure:

 

This is 20 Susan B. Anthony dollars and 20 Eisenhower dollars.  I put out a call to see if they were worth more than $1 each and found out that they may be worth a bit more.  Perhaps twice as much as face value.  There is a coin dealer here in town and I will go and have him check.  At the very least, we'll have a dinner out of this!

The guys showed up around 2:30 and in no time at all, they had carted off all of my mother's furniture.

 

I admit to going out to sit on a chair in the hall to get myself under control, because I was fighting tears.  It's just difficult seeing things you have grown up with all of your life headed off to a charity, though I'm pleased that Habitat for Humanity can use it.  Heck, they even took her ironing board (I was not emotional about that leaving).

When that was all gone, we loaded up a cart and took the last 4 boxes over to the new apartment.  It was things like clothes, toiletries, and things to put on display outside her door.  Marge has the bottom 2 shelves, my mother the top 2.  

 

She seemed OK, thrilled to see me since it had been so long and she had missed me (she didn't remember I had been there yesterday).  One of the things I brought over was this very nice photo of Fred from their wedding.

 

The first time she saw it, she didn't have any idea who it was, and then recognized it as Fred.  She kept it on the bed and would periodically pick it up and either talk about how much she missed him, or try to figure out who it is.

One more trip will remove everything else from the apartment and then we are FINISHED with that old apartment.  Now all I have to do is make space for all the stuff I brought home in this overcrowded place!  It's been more of an emotional roller coaster for me than for my mother, but I'm happy to see that she has accepted the new places, even if she doesn't understand why she's there.

And Jeri made it to Santa Barbara in time for Lacie's dance recital.

 

The Detritus of Life

Anyone who has ever had to clean out the home of someone who has died or, as in my mother's case, moved on to smaller digs, knows the excruciating pain of going through every. little. thing. and trying to decide what to save (and why) and what to throw away.  

The day started with waffles, which I almost never make, and then in 3 vehicles, the 3 of us made our way to Atria.  Walt, in the SUV, bringing more boxes, Jeri on bike, and me in our car.

Jeri and Ned went to check on their grandmother.  I didn't even see her yesterday.  I was trying to sort out all the stuff in her drawers and separate everything in the apartment into piles for the SPCA thrift shop, and for Habitat for Humanity, and then the rest of "all that crap."  Jeri reported that when they arrived, she was in the common room, asleep, and I was happy to hear that they had gotten her out of her room and with the others, even if she was sleeping!  Maybe she will have more social interactions now that she is there.

Jeri, bless her heart, decided that "Marge," my mother's pod-mate, had taken over the door to their apartment and needed to share.  I love what she did

 

Ned helped with the clean up and took a huge stack of puzzles upstairs to the puzzle area.

At noon, we took a break and met Walt's brother Norm and his wife at Dos Coyotes, where we had a nice lunch, which I had to leave at 1:15 to get back to the apartment to meet the people who were taking the clothes we didn't move to the new place off to be donated somewhere.

Ned and Jeri took Norm and Olivia back to memory care and they visited with my mother and I settled in to go through drawers that were stuffed tightly with "stuff." It's easier to throw away someone else's treasures than your own.  It's also interesting to see the things she saved all these years.

I think she saved every greeting card she ever got and I tossed them all.  She also had a folder labeled "treasures" in which she kept, among other things, letters that Jeri wrote to her.  My mother was almost fiendishly proud of the fact that she never wrote letters to anyone, but she enjoyed getting letters.  I think I received one letter from her in my life.

I found all of my sister's school pictures through grammar school.  I haven't thrown those away, yet, but they are in one of the boxes of things to come home with me for further consideration.  I don't want them, but there is something that kept me from throwing them away.  I also was surprsed to find one of my grammar school report cards in the treasures folder.

This was another one of the treasures in that folder.

 

Olivia was a huge Joe Montana fan and since she was still visiting over in Memory Care, I texted her and she said she would stop by and pick it up on her way out.

Photos  .... oh groan photos.  I threw away lots and lots of photos, sometimes whole books of photos of people I didn't know.  One, I guess, was a party for my mother's retirement.  She is dressed up, with a corsage, and it's picture after picture of her with people I didn't recognize.  My father is in the pictures too, so it was before she met Fred.  Special memories but not, alas, for me.

I even threw away the album of the pictures of her wedding to Fred.  That was a painful day for me.  I was asked to be the photographer (I also was the cake decorator) and all day long it was "Bev, take a picture of us with....so and so."  There are pictures with Fred's parents, with his kids, with all their grandkids, and with other people there.  Guess who was never asked to be in a photo.  The photographer.  To look through this album you wouldn't have a clue I was even there.  It set up the way it was going to be for the 10 years of their marriage.  Fred's family always came first and despite my attempts to make friends with his family, it never happened (until much, much later).  They even gave her a big party on one of those landmark birthdays (maybe 80).  It was at a winery they had some connection to, apparently a fancy place where everyone spent the night and the party was wonderful.  I didn't even know about it until after it was over.  So I had no compunction about throwing that wedding album away.

I did keep, though, letters she received from both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, thanking her for her donations to the DNC and coming with an 8x10 photo of the president and a nice certificate.  I don't know what I'll do with those, but I just couldn't bring myself to throw them away.

There were also commendations from Hospice of Marin, where she volunteered for many years.  When she finally retired, she was their oldest volunteer, and the one who had worked for Hospice for the longest time.  Sadly, those also became "garbage."

I tossed her high school yearbook which was sent to all the graduates in preparation for their 50th anniversary reunion.  

On and on and on it went.  Walt was packing up the kitchen and putting thousands of framed pictures into boxes that I don't have a clue what I'll do with.

At 3 p.m., I collapsed mentally.  I was going to put a bookcase of framed photos into a box and I just sat there and literally couldn't move.  I finally decided to go home and left Walt there working, bless his heart.

I arrived home, plopped into my recliner and slept for more than two hours.  After I woke up, we attacked one of the things that we did not throw away..

 

My mother was a vodka drinker and this bottle of vodka has been in her refrigerator for months, maybe years.  But we decided that it was only right that we finish it off with vodka and tonic.  

It was just the remedy I needed, but I was still exhausted and went to sleep at 10, falling asleep instantly.  Of course that meant I was awake at 12:30 and now, at 3 a.m., I have finished writing this and hope that now that it's written, I can get back to sleep for another two hours.

We should have less work to do today, but still have lots of sorting to do.  Jeri and I are going to have lunch with my mother.

It's Done!

The best part of yesterday was when my mother, sitting in her chair, looking out the window of her new apartment, found a tree that was particularly beautiful.  I knew it was going to be OK.

 

We had  long day and I'm sure my mother is waking up this morning not having a clue where she is, but I hope at least she can find the bathroom.

It started at 11, when Jeri went to Atria to take her grandmother out for a couple of hours.  When they were leaving she texted me an all clear message and the moving crew gathered in the apartment.  It was Walt, Ned and my mother's stepson Ed, who worked tirelessly for the next two hours to get things set up.

 

I took pictures of things like her dresser and the table she sits next to so I could recreate it when we got to the new apartment.

I'm wondering if there are going to be problems with her neighbor, the woman in the apartment on the other side of the "pod" my mother is living in.  She seems to have taken over.

 

We met Marge and the difficulty with her is that her memory is worse than my mother's.  We had a conversation with her and I stll don't know what she was talking about.  She did come in and look at the apartment and ask why Walt and I didn't get into bed, because that was all there was to do there.  I'm not sure she understood that we were not going to live there.

Things came together quickly and soon we had the apartment looking set up and ready for Nick, from the maintenance staff, to come in, and hang pictures.

 

Nick was still working on getting her TV hung on the wall when Jeri and her grandmother returned, so things were a lot more chaotic than I had hoped, but she didn't freak out.  

Ned went to the dining room and got cups of ice cream and Jeri cut up strawberries she had purchased while they were out and we all took a break.

 

We took her on a little tour, showing her the garden which she seemed to really like.

 

When the TV was connected, Walt found a music channel of music that my mother would know and Jeri got her singing to Nat King Cole.

 

The connection between music and the brain always amazes me.  She can't remember my name sometime, but she can remember all the lyrics of songs she sang back in the 40s and 50s.  Jeri had created a playlist for the car and she said that my mother sang all the lyrics of all the songs even songs Jeri didn't know.

Eventually it was time to leave.  I was surprised there was no staff person there to make sure she knew what was going on, but both Jeri and I stopped to let people know that we were leaving. 

We came home, Jeri and Walt enjyed a "dark and stormy" out in the carport and chatted for awhile.  I cooked dinner and we toasted our good work for the day.

Today we have to face the mess that we left behind and try to sort out what is going where.  Someone comes today to take all the clothes we did not move and on Wednesday, Habitat for Humanity takes all rest of the furniture.

But I slept peacefully last night for the first time in a couple of weeks.

So Much Happier

Walt and I snuck over to Atria this morning while I knew my mother would be sleeping and went to her new apartment in the memory unit to measure and figure out how to arrange it.  I am feeling SO much better.  

For one thing, she DOES have a view out her window.

 

It's not quite the full length door that she has now, but she can still sit in her chair and look out at some greenery.  After Walt measured the room and checked with the measurements of her furniture that he took yesterday, I am even more content that she can have the room looking kind of like she has now.  I do have a photo of the room, but it's just a big empty room now, so no point in posting a photo until we have furniture in it.

When we went in I took a picture of the dining room

 

They tell me that there are about 30 residents in memory care, so the dining room is tiny (the wood floor tells me that there are probably more spills in here too!)  To the left, with kind of a "pass through" is the room where they do creative activities.

Directly behind me is the common area with the huge TV.  They were doing chair exercises when we arrived and a sing-along when we left.

 

Best of all, I discovered that my mother's "friend" Loretta (she does not know her by name, nor does Loretta know my mother by name) lives right across the hall from my mother.  I assume that sooner or later the two of them will realize that they are neighbors.

I took three short videos to give a feeling for the place.  This one is the apartment itself.

This one is the sitting room at one end of the hall (my mother's apartment is in the middle of the hall).  This one has a door that goes out into the garden.

And this one is the garden.  You can go out the door of the sitting room, wander around in the garden and if you take the other door in you find yourself in the common area.  It's impossible to leave the unit without setting off an alarm (Walt and I discovered when we tried to leave!)

When we left the unit, we ran ito Margaret, with whom I used to eat whenever I had lunch there (now her table is usually full).  She was happy to hear that my mother was going into the memory unit because she has noticed that she has declined a lot in the last few months.

We've decided her bed will fit in the apartment, so we aren't going to go out and buy a smaller bed now (until we decide if it turns out to be too big).  So really all we have to do now is wait for the 21st when we move her.

Power of Attorney

There is a lot more "power" in that term than the title that we sometimes throw around would suggest.  I felt very powerful, signing away all my mother's personal rights in preparation for her admission to the memory care unit next month.

She's going to be very upset and I am having nightmares trying to figure out how to make it all go as smoothly as possible for her.  It reminds me of the weeks leading up to her move to Atria four years ago.

It was the longest conference I've had with Richard, the General Manager of Atria.  We have had our moments when I had to confront him about this or that thing, but this was a congenial half hour we spent together.  I kinda sorta liked him, though when he talked about hoping my mother's rent will be reduced once the tax rate goes from 30% to 15%, I figured that politics was not going to be a good topic for us to discuss.

So now all the decisions have to be made, and behind my mother's back.  She was not happy when I mentioned the move to her (I knew she would not be) and said she would "think about it" and "let me know."  By now she has forgotten.  But I wanted it to be said.

* * *

We had two shows this weekend, Guys and Dolls on Friday and a new comedy, Treatment, at a 5 p.m. matinee.

Guys and Dolls was the best of the shows I have seen in the past three weeks.

 

The girl in pink is named Eimi Taormino.  We first saw her in the chorus of a show many years ago and have enjoyed watching her move up into principal roles.  This show, where she plays Adelaide, girlfriend of Nathan Detroit, may have been her best ever.  Walt commented that when she was on stage, you could not look at anything else.  

Sadly, she recently announced in Facebook that she is relocating to the Bay Area, which is a big loss to area theaters here.  I wonder if I will ever see her in a Lamplighters production!

Treatment was more difficult.  It's a comedy, but not the knee-slapper that I anticipated.  It was commissioned by a Sacramento theater to be written by three of their comediennes, some of the funniest ladies in Sacramento.

It was good, but with a bit more serious tone than I expected.  Writing this review is a bit trickier.  I had problems with the show because it is about 3 women, one of whom has lost her mother and is struggling to "let go" and scatter her ashes.  Another of the 3 has been in a lesbian relationship with a partner who has two children, whom this woman loves madly.  Only her partner broke up with her and not only is she homeless, but she also has lost the boys that she loves so much and she talks a lot about the pain a mother feels when she loses a child..

Uh....two themes that it me on an emotional level big time!

 

But my mother has helped me come to peace with signing all those damn papers to admit her to the memory care unit.  (For one thing I am realizing that she had to go through this kind of thing when she had to admit her own mother to the mental hospital in Napa.  In those days they didn't have "memory care units" and how hard it must have been for her to see her mother in a mental institution.)

Then this afternoon, while I was talking to Jeri, I had a call from Atria.  My mother fainted in the lobby while walking to the dining room.  They didn't call the paramedics this time, but got her up and say she's OK.  I have not seen her faint in many weeks, though she says she sometimes finds herself on the floor....you never know what is real and what is her imagination and nobody else has seen her faint, but now I'm thinking that she is probably remembering correctly.

One huge benefit of the memory care unit is that each resident is checked every two hours and she will probably spend a lot more time in the open areas with other people around her.  At least that is what I am comforting myself by imagining.

The other advantage of her fainting in public is that if she is remembering and worrying about "finding herself on the floor" from time to time, I can now reassure her that there will be people around to watch her more closely and make sure she doesn't lie on the floor for awhile before she is found. 

I hope that will bring her some comfort.

I know it brings me some comfort.