Letter to my children: Why do Baba and Meme live with us?

Dearest Beloveds,

The subject of this letter was in my original outline that I wrote before Baba died but the sentence sounds better with a double barrel as opposed to just Meme, so there we are.

Meme lives with us because when your Momma was in my early twenties I helped Meme put Grandma (her mother) into a series of assistant living and nursing homes. Depending on the medicaid insurance doings she schlepped from one to another - finally ending up in a nursing home where she died. I drove with Meme all over the outer Beltway region to visit different homes, all of them smelling mostly the same - strong bleach, old people, overcooked vegetables, sensible shoes, and most of them with the entryway.

The entryway would invariably be a corridor or a vestibule where a line of wheelchairs flanked the walls (depending on the weather they might be outside under the overhang). Various stages of a lateral list and/or drool would be evident in the occupant of the chair. There might be muttering. There was invariably someone screaming or picking at their sleeve or shaking or twitching. Past the entryway there would be the hallway. Nurses in scrubs may or may not be speaking loudly and with perfect enunciation in a room asking Mrs. Smith about her bowel movements - for us all to hear.

Your mother found it gruesome on a variety of levels. A part of me was probably repulsed by the bodily decay. A part of me was probably shocked to see such deterioration, such sickness of body and/or mind. A part of me was also furious that these places existed at all. The family unit was nowhere to be seen. This was outsourcing at the most fundamental level.*

I promised Meme on one of our drives that I would not do that. I would not put Meme and Baba into a home - they could come and live with me.

So, Dragon, when you were about 5 months old, Meme and Baba moved into the cottage that we built for them. It has been what your Momma expected and then not at all what I expected too - rather like life in general.

For example, this morning, I am stirring waffle batter and listening to the two of you talk.

Dragon runs in from the playroom. “Bean, do you remember when you came in my room and told me that the Easter Bunny hid all of the candy?”

“Yes, I do.” Bean, you are sitting on the counter applying your latest lip balm - bubble gum flavor. We had our adventure yesterday and you spent 20 minutes browsing through a CVS and then we went to the toy store and you spent 10 minutes browsing through there. You purchased the balm with your tooth fairy money - 8 dollars/teeth so far.

“Remember how we had candy before breakfast that day? And how Momma and Dada took the chocolate?”

“They didn’t take the chocolate, the Easter Bunny did.” Bean, your lips glisten with your devotion.

“Oh right right right right.” Then you run around the counter a few times. “Look Momma, my funny run!” And out your legs go kicking to the side as your run and bop your head back and forth.

The phone rings, I see it is Meme and pick it up laughing. “Morning Mom, what’s up?”

“Corinna, this has never happened to me before. I woke up shrieking, SHRIEKING with the pain. I need someone to come to the house today to help me with this.”

Meme fell about two weeks ago.** Nothing is fractured, but the CT scan did show that she has severe arthritis in both hips. The odd thing about all of this is that her pain seems to be increasing the further she is out from the fall and it also seems to depend on her mood and whether she is distracted or alone or eating or in a car or playing the piano.... In other words, we don’t know how much of this is dementia or how much of this is physical and honestly at the end of the day, who cares, she is uncomfortable and we will try to fix it.

“Mom, you have PT scheduled next week, the first time we could get you in.”

“I need someone to come to the house. Today. I remember in the city we would have people who came to the house and worked on us.”

“Well, we will see what we can do. And there are people who can come to the house here too, remember all of those amazing people who visited Dad last summer?”

“Oh yes.”

“Okay Mom, I will come over as soon as I can.” The waffle maker is ready and the two of you look at me when I get off the phone.

Bean, you speak for both of you. “Is Meme okay?”

“She is having a hard time with her fall, so I will go over and say hello soon. Who wants applesauce with their waffles?”

“I do!”

“I want maple syrup!”

Dearest beloveds, this is the definition of a sandwich. I run over to visit Meme while the two of you are talking to Dada on the phone as he drives to work - keeping you company while you eat. Just as Meme is settling into a groove, Bean, you show up at the door.

“Momma, the pot is spitting! There is water everywhere!!” Your hands are making frantic spurting waves in the air.

Oh right, beans for our Taco Thursday.

“Gotta go, Mom, I will come back as soon as I can.”

Thus the day starts with a ping pong between one generation and the other generation. I did not know when I offered my home at age 22 there would be my own children present and very much still children. I bet I envisioned my children in their twenties , if I envisioned them at all.

And yet, here we all are together. An 80 year old woman with dementia, two of us in our 4os, and then the two of you - 7 and 4. Thank the big wide beautiful Universe that Tia and Michael live in the village. We are all chugging through each day as best we can watching our blood sugar and sleep needs and savoring the anticipation of strawberry picking season in a few weeks.

I love love love love you both so so much.

*The obvious question is why didn’t Grandma move into our house. If I remember correctly Baba was not in favor of this idea. I think it is also why Meme and Baba wanted their own house when they moved here, as opposed to all of us sharing a kitchen on top of each other. As Meme told me when she moved here, “Our kitchen is 67 feet from your bedroom and your husband is a good man.” The second part is most certainly true my dearest ones. Your father when I asked him about this years ago gave me only response he has ever given me when asked.

“It is the right thing to do.”

**Hopefully you kiddos will have forgotten this particular saga by the time you read this.