I’ll Be Home For Christmas (2012)

A writer needs a healthy combination of inspiration and imagination. For this writer, it is first and foremost inspiration because my imagination has never been one of flourish, color, texture and taste. Nor would I trust my imagination to weave such fantastic tales as those which real life can and will provide.

But I can tell you what I see, experience, feel – all through the filters in my mind. This holiday season has found me once again pondering the importance of personal relationships and processing – endlessly processing – experiences, memories, and themes of the past.

Christmas is that perfect mixture of pain and joy. Possibly, as we age, the scales swing more towards the pain side than joy; for surely even happy memories of Christmases past make us remember those who are no longer with us.

Unhappy memories are gifts we’ll never be able to return. We are left holding the scales, trying to keep them balanced for the sake of the people around us. Nothing is ever truly fair, but we try, don’t we?

And so when I visited the now infamous nursing home to spend some quality time with my mother, the contrasts were what I saw – the young visiting the old and infirm, the capable assisting the incapable, those still with cognition and those whose cognition has long since ceased to provide a clear point of reference. And I saw my mother, whose small life had become smaller still.

She had been to the hairdresser in preparation for her day out of the old age jail. She was invited, wanted, at her great-granddaughter’s home for Christmas Day. There she would be queen of the day.

I’m glad for her and for myself. For her, it will be a few precious hours released from the living hell of a nursing home. For me, it means I won’t have to endure going there to see her. We are both free for the day.

On this Christmas Eve afternoon as I find her freshly coifed and dressed in new clothes ready to enjoy as best she can, along with the entertainment that would be available in the dining room, her mood is decidedly pleasant. I push away visions of other Christmases where she’d spend hours crying or hollering or withdrawn into a depression none could penetrate. Today, she is smiling and full of good cheer.

We go into the room where the entertainer is setting up his electric keyboard, microphone, and amplifiers, and talking to the cute CNAs whose job it is to position the residents’ wheelchairs in such a way that all can see and hear. I place my mother’s chair smack dab in front of the entertainer’s equipment where I’m sure she’ll be able to hear the music. A mere 10 feet from the amp should do it, I figured.

Ma has been deaf and going deaf since she was in her sixties. Over the years, she’s had various hearing aids, all of which she would eventually declare pieces of junk. These recent years, in spite of collective best efforts to get her equipment she’d use, all have failed. We’ve given up. We set our voices on stun volume in order to speak with her. It does make having any kind of pleasant conversation nearly impossible as one strains one’s voice in a tone she may hear and then have to repeat oneself at least twice.

“THE WEATHER IS CHILLY TODAY!”

“What?”

“THE WEATHER IS CHILLY TODAY!

“What, the leather is mildewed?”

“NO, THE WEATHER IS CHILLY!”

“Oh well, what do you expect, it is winter.” And thus we labor along, me smiling at her wondering if her daughter is going soft.

The entertainer excitedly looks out at his audience – the frail, now physically impaired, some incontinent, others paralyzed, blind, deaf, even speechless beings that are known as residents in this facility. He smiles broadly, animating his every movement and facial expression in an effort to give them the best show he can. I see a middle-aged man with some limited talent whose work has gotten him this far, but whose core is one of kindness and tender mercy. He wants them to enjoy themselves; regardless of their condition, he’ll give them a show.

I note he has the ability to play some pretty good jazz chords. I’m enjoying watching him and studying his technical abilities as I understand them to be after spending all my adult life providing musical training for my son. This guy is good. He tries his best to get the folks to sing along and, after a bit, many are joining in as best they can.

One resident is tapping the fingers on his working hand, another knows all the words to the songs and sings along with tears streaming down her face. I turn to my mother and she motions for me to come closer so she can speak to me.

For some time now, my mother’s ability to speak has been rendered nearly gone due to a series of mini-strokes and congestive heart failure, which affects her breathing. I place my right ear as close to her mouth as possible with my chin resting her on chest. The end of her cold nose is now in my ear but I don’t move even though I know her nose is runny. She says, “What is this damn fool trying to sing?”

Oh, classic Mother lives, I think to myself. That mother who could find fault with Andy Williams, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, sometimes even Elvis (perish the thought) – ta da! Here she is. I smile as I pull my face away from her and am pleased that my ear is not wet.

I don’t really respond to her verbal assault on this poor working schlep, opting instead to shrug and nod while tapping my foot in rhythm to the electronic pre-programmed beat.

White Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Silent Night, Joy to the World, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and all the seasonal favorites roll out and over the assembled.

One CNA is dancing in between wheelchairs, stopping here and there to get a resident more involved in the world around them while shaking a tambourine. She wears a headband of reindeer antlers with blinking lights and a loud red sweater. I think she is adorable. My mother is ready to share another thought with me.

“Doesn’t she know she looks like a damn fool?” Oh, the urge to tip her out of her wheelchair is tempered by my deep desire not to sink to her level. I smile.

Then the entertainer makes a song choice mistake. I hear the sad and all too familiar first notes of I’ll Be Home For Christmas. I think to myself, this guy can’t possibly understand how cruel it is to play this song.

Obviously, many in the room won’t have a clue what he is playing, including my deaf mother, but many others will and will be reminded that they are never going home again – you can’t go home again never, not fully, not ever – even me.

Tears threaten, so I rather abruptly get up and say to my mother’s ear, “Time to go!” As I search to find a way to escape the song through the labyrinth of wall-to wall-wheelchairs, I hear him say, “Oh, let’s leave that and pick it up a notch,” launching into a lively rendition of Jingle Bells. But I’m gone in spite of this wiser musical choice.

One and a half hours is about all I can stand on a good day outside in the sun on the grounds of this place, never mind a gray Christmas Eve afternoon in close confinement with the poor folks stuck in hell. I install my mother at the reception area where she wants to stay instead of going back to her room.

“If I’d known it was that damn fool, I wouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed today.”

I make goodbye noises, kiss her, and promise to see her soon while making a speedy exit out the door. How clean and fresh the air always seems to me after time spent in that altered universe, that time warp of pain, that ‘end of the world.’ I find deep breathing beneficial and, oh so necessary, as I walk to the car.

On the drive home, I see their faces: the faces of all those people who once had lives, a rich fabric of family, friends, events and abilities – all now in tatters. They are the remaining shreds of humans; they are the result of a medical institution that can keep them alive, even if not living. I see the faces of people who were once young and who could never have imagined an ending such as this. Like my mother, they are in this holding station between living and dying.

Recently, my mother cried that she couldn’t bear the fact that all her grandchildren were moving away from her. What she really meant was that life was pulling away from her, pushing her further and further towards the abyss of nothingness. She felt sorry for herself and would not be consoled that this was the natural progression of things (To everything turn, turn, turn, etc.).

I don’t blame her, though. If I had as much awareness as she does and woke up each day to find it wasn’t a nightmare but my real existence, the nursing home, I’d cry too. She can never go home again. She won’t be home for Christmas, not even in her dreams.

By Marilou Newell

 

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