Hannah's Blog

R.I.P.

This is a picture of a woman of a certain age (98 years, to be precise) resting on the "box" her grandson made for her eventual cremation. That event will occur in the next few days, depending on the holiday schedule of those who provide such services.

I thought I was ready to go into detail about why this is the first day of my life, but the explanation for why I suddenly feel free is going to have to wait.

*****
December 26

Didn't want to leave the impression that it was somehow too hard to describe my new-found freedom. It was just that with the holiday rushing at us, I just didn't have the right focus. There were so many other things to attend to. And just wallowing in the luxury of so much leisure and free time was really irresistible--including the opportunity to indulge long, unhurried walks in the early morning. I really hadn't realized how every activity, especially in the last few months, had to be rushed because it was impossible to predict when an apparently lethargic person would suddenly demand instant attention and, if it wasn't immediately forthcoming, would just take off. A leisurely shower was out of the question. It was as if the sound of the water pump was a signal that someone's attention was not properly fixed.

To say that Emilie Margarete Pontzen (that was her full name which, even after her brief marriage was ended, she never changed) needed to be the center of attention is to put it mildly. It wasn't just that she needed to be focus of other people's interest, the more the better, but she needed to hold that attention with her speech.

Which is why the fact that I, her only child, always hated the sound of her voice is truly ironic. How could nature play such a trick? There's been some suggestion that it was nurture, rather than nature, or the lack thereof, which generated the sensation of being repulsed by the maternal voice, but there's not one behavior or act I could associate with that. I just know that as a very small child of two or three, when I was a regular at the neighboring farmer's table, I already cringed when I heard from her voice that I was about to be taken home. That I was going to be examined for flees when we got back to our two-room hut wasn't that onerous an experience. Though it may account for the somewhat extreme sense of personal privacy I've exhibited ever since. Or maybe that was just a reaction to the fact that she had almost none--a characteristic she ascribed to the fact that she'd been in the theater where people were used to being on display while taking care of their personal hygiene needs.

No, I'm pretty sure it was just the voice that turned me off, combined with an accute sense of hearing on my part. Part of the problem with that voice was that it was always too loud. I could not speak in a whisper and seemed entirely incapable of modulation in response to its surroundings. There were just two settings: loud on or off. And off was definitely not the default.

Since the owner of the voice box, at least during the sixty-four years of my existence, tended to relocate every two years, on average, getting a new audience for that voice was not that much of a problem. And, of course, the relocations themselves were the subject of introductory recitations and, after those were done, there was always a long history to recount. I suppose one could say that her whole life was lived in pursuit of an audience. Perhaps others found the voice just as grating and managed to absent themselves in response, thereby contributing to the sensation that it was time to move on. Perhaps they even felt guilty and that accounts for many faithful correspondants--people who were content to keep in touch via letters over many decades. Certainly the recipient as often as not found herself at a loss as to why these people were still writing; why they were sharing experiences in which she obviously had no interest. If they weren't available to talk to, then the only thing worth noting was their expressions of support, praise and good wishes for her continued existence.

Obviously, I was never able to effectuate a permanent absence. And, living at some distance wasn't much consolation either since it meant that I developed a strong resistance to answering the phone to avoid hearing her voice at the other end. In addition, if opportunities to "converse" were sparse, each conversation had to be that much longer to make up for the neglect. Of course, that was the case when she shared the house as well.
Any conversation with anyone else, whether in person or on the phone, had to be paid for by conversing with her, as compensation for her deprivation. Because that's how any interaction, even attending to the evening news on the TV, was interpreted--as a deprivation of attention that was her due and, therefor, an occasion of resentment.

Telephone conversations in which she was not a participant were a particular source of distress. Not only was she not the one speaking, her interruptions to assert her presence were likely to be ignored and that was really irksome. No matter how much the other members in the household reduced the number or length of telephone conversations, she accused them of "spending all their time on the phone." During the last year, answering the phone was almost as certain as taking a shower to elicit a demand for attention via the ringing of her little brass bell.

The spouse considered my giving her a bell to ring for assistance a bad idea. Partly, I suspect, because his progressive deafness let him shut out the voice, but not the bell. But, what he didn't realize was that the bell was part of my continuing efforts to minimize the number of times she would have reason to talk to me. If she rang the bell, which, as often as not, she actually refused to use, then it gave me the opportunity to start and stop the verbal interchange--to ask what was needed and then to absent myself to get it. Performing a task was always preferable to giving a listen to her musings. And it wasn't just because over 60+ years the musings were rather invariable, usually prompted by resentment of someone else's success or the failure to give her whatever she perceived to be her due.

I say "perceived" with good reason because getting her due, or more, did not provide any satisfaction. While she recognized, for example, that I had long provided for her physical well-being, she referred to my, behind my back, as "the boss." And to my face she conceded that I had been "a good nurse." My reality as her daughter was a foreign concept and, indeed, during some of her periods of reduced rationality in the last year, she forgot that she was a mother entirely. Or perhaps that was actually increased rationality, since she hadn't ever been much of a mother.

I think I began to realize that when she got her first dog after having been without one since before I was born. Because I suddenly recognized that her manner of talking to the dog, grooming it rather incessantly, and expressing her displeasure with its behavior were exactly the same as I remembered from when I was a child. The dog, a schnauzer, did not respond well. It bit her from time to time, but I suppose she appreciated that it shared her antagonism towards all males, even if it had to be locked in the bathroom when any visitors arrived. That her bridge group had to be seated before the dog could be let out was yet another opportunity to dominate the situation. Why people put up with this regimentation week after week is beyond me. But I did appreciate their forbearance since these social encounters, as did her string of foreign students who wanted to practice their English, provided me with some hours of independence. On the other hand, the dog's antagonistic behavior added yet another reason for curtailing our own inclinations to host friends and relations.

The dog having to be walked, four and five times a day, did insure a level of physical activity which kept her basically healthy. But when the dog began to suffer from various infirmities, she simply had it put to sleep and then focused on here loneliness, a factual condition since she had, yet again, terminated her association with our household (having shared it for about six years--three times as long as when she first retired in 1970). So, she decided to relocate closer to where I had moved in Georgia, to an apartment in a large complex where, I suspect, she expected a larger audience. It didn't materialize and within about two years she was spending much of most days sitting in her rooms, doing nothing but waiting for me to attend to her needs.

Even the first summer, when we went off to New Hampshire, she called every morning to let us know she was still living. That was not an ideal situation but since we knew who was calling, we could decide whose turn it was to answer the phone. Then, when it got to the point where she was no longer leaving the apartment, we determined to have her come live with us while building on a necessary addition to the house kept me too busy to do much talking.

But, she resisted coming with us to New Hampshire until we promised to get her another dog to keep her company while I was busy with gardening and the rest of the family. The stray mutt we found in an ad in the paper wasn't nearly as temperamental as the schnauzer. In addition, though I'm not keen on pets of any kind, I made sure that this one got some real attention, including an obedience class where it learned to walk slowly to accommodate a doddering old lady. Even so, as we all expected, it eventually got to the point where the dog was too frisky (going after a squirrel) and she ended up hitting her head on the curb. After that, walking the dog became my responsibility. Or rather, I took it on. The old lady seemed quite ready at times to have it put away since she wasn't able to care for it as she wanted. Every couple of weeks, whether or not the dog was to be killed became a topic of conversation. But "the boss" never agreed to it.

Don't think that this was reassuring. My failure to participate in putting the dog away was consistent with my failure to "help" her out of her misery, as well. Though it remained doubtful to the very end that she actually wanted out. After all, she'd been talking about her imminent death for thirty-five years. So, it seems fair to conclude that this was just one of her favorite attention getting spiels. She even tried it on the hospice nurses who came every week in the last three months. They seemed relieved to be able to respond with a rather flip assertion that that's not their job, since I was able to assure them that this conversational gambit hadn't ever been supported by any relevant act.

As recorded elsewhere, in the last three weeks she left her bed less and less but the volume of conversation increased even as it made less and less sense. At times she was talking to long-dead relatives and obviously reliving child-hood memories. Then, about a week before her voice was finally stilled, she announced that she would probably die because she had finally decided that she wanted to live. But, that was a fleeting position or perhaps just a fleeting moment of clarity. During the last two days, her utterances, albeit punctuated by brief silences, became almost constant day and night, until I had to turn down the monitor just to get a few hours of sleep, counting on the sounds of real distress to wake me up.

So, when she'd taken her final raspy breath and I could detect no more motion, I had to keep checking for an hour and a half to convince myself that the voice I had heard my entire life was finally stilled and I was free.

There are some things that one cannot change.

Posted by Hannah at December 23, 2005 02:08 PM