My father's birthday April 3, 1922

This is the day in 1922, my father, Louie Ball was born in western Pennsylvania coal mining town to a coal miner, Frank Ball and his wife Anna Kudzia Ball. He was Christened Ludwig according  to his baptismal certificate, but all his life known as Louie.   As you know if you know me, I never knew him, he knew I was on my way but he did not know he'd be gone from this earth before I arrived.   He'd have been 91 today but his life was short, over in 1944 at age 22, when his B-24 plane with crew disappeared into the Atlantic.  He was only 22, a pilot in the US Army Air Corp, leaving a young widow,  Mom who was supported by her family and me on the way, a WWII story..

This photo is the only baby photo I have of him.  Elsewhere on this blog I have compared his and my baby photos and written about him.  Oddly today is also the birthday of the youngest daughter of his oldest brother, a cousin I have never met who lives in western Pennsylvania.

Lt Lewis  S Ball,  Dorr Field, FL
1943

We wonder what if and can imagine what might have been but that changes nothing.  What was has been and we are now in the present.  The future is ahead.

Mother in law continues to hang onto life at the skilled nursing facility in our town, but since  her discharge from the hospital, a week ago today,  she has declined mentally, losing the small bit of cognition that she had at 96.  Perhaps it is the anesthetic remaining in her system, perhaps it is the trauma, perhaps the pain medication was too severe, all together  everything plays a part in her decline.  She no longer knows why she is where she is, she cannot fathom  that she has broken her hip and had surgery, yet she knows who we are.  She is a very difficult patient, tiny but very demanding, frail and stubborn and is best when she is sleeping.  She does get up for therapy and sometimes eats in the dining  room.  Today she declined to eat the midday meal and was sleeping when we went for our daily visit.  Yesterday she was more delirious and the well meaning aide allowed her to have the walk around phone so that she could talk to Jerry.  Oh right, nothing like a 6:30AM wake up call from someone who cannot string two words together but wants the phone.  We have adamantly asked that they not make phone calls to us for her, it does no good and is disturbing.  She is already delirious  why must we get on the bandwagon?   She is agitated and  demanding.  Somehow she cons a helpful aide into dialing the phone for her, the aide likely  thinks it might help and so  tries to assuage and make sense to someone who cannot comprehend.  When we answer the phone she cannot even talk  and when she does she is not coherent.  What a wonderland, how tiring this is.  How I wish her daughter had her as her responsibility, but that would never be, she did not want to be infringed upon years back and now the option is long gone. Through caring for elderly and years of long term care administration, I have never seen a situation like this. Only one time did the facility where my uncle resided  ever call me to talk to him when he was not making sense,  they figured it out and mostly he was of good temperament and humor even when ailing.  A different person.   She could be like this for how long, she could live on for years, she could improve, she could have ups and downs, all coulds  and no guarantees. Both of us are exhausted at the end of the day.  Maybe we could refer the delirious calls to her daughter or her younger son, let them see what life is like, let them be disturbed, let them not get to do what they want, put themselves on hold, sure right, silly thoughts.  That will be the day.

Someday there might be a funny story here, like Friday night when we returned from dinner and the phone rang.  The nursing home showed on caller ID so Jerry picked up and it was quiet.  Finally a voice said, "who's this?" and when he replied, "Jerry" the voice said, "here's your mother."  WTH?  We had spent 3 hours there earlier and accomplished only an agreement with the therapist to order a wheel chair. MIL  does not ever remember that we were there. Florence (MIL) got on the phone and began to babble and then demand that Jerry come take her home.  As he tried to repeatedly tell her she was home, she faded.  As he shouted into the phone, because she cannot hear either, "get the nurse" she replied, bewildered, "what nurse."  Finally a nurse came along and took the phone, apologizing  that some of the other residents had taken it upon themselves to help her  out to call,  shades of Jack Nicholson and "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest"  the loonies have taken over the asylum.   Somehow when one gets too much of this repeatedly it is difficult to see the humor.

If it's not one thing it's your mother

December 13, Christmas Party
Florence looking at Santa's baby

So goes a pop culture quote that includes books, TV shows, magazine articles, t shirts, even Robin Williams' sayings and some reach back to Freud blaming it on your mother.  But that it has been the mother again here, a siege for us beginning with the phone call Sunday afternoon:  Jerry's 96 year old mother, Florence,  (aka MIL=mother in law) fell  in her room at the  skilled facility where she has resided for two years.  She has been  our responsibility since 1980 when her husband passed away and we acquired the task of looking out for and  putting up with the demands and annoyances of this dependent, manipulative woman as her other two younger children opt out.  Truth, Jerry's full sister, dead since 2004 but who was alive at the time would have stepped up but she had her own siege of medical and financial problems and was not really able to do much.  So it has been that we got the Old Maid.  At 96, you think there is not much  time left but they live long lives in her family and she is the last of the 5 sisters, the youngest, the baby and the less stable  mentally and the nastiest.  All this has been told before, our lives whirling along and finally we have had some degree of freedom with her in the nursing home.  We have been concerned about this potential, she had a walker to use for stability but with her dementia and  bull headedness she often neglects to use it in her room.  The orthopedic surgeon wondered if she had previously fallen.  How does anyone know, her hearing is almost non existant, she does not communicate, she attempts to be secretive, to hide things, much as the hoarding we cleared from her room.  That is another story we filled 4  big trash cans with old  napkins, boxes, paper plates, old newspapers, old church bulletins, envelopes, and the worst used disposable underwear.  The  facility staff try to not  intrude on a resident's privacy but after I discovered the garbage upon garbage, some other protocol must be followed. 

Who knows how it happened, they found her on the floor near her bed, and in pain.  She has a high pain threshold and an ability to ignore aches so when she complained, they knew it was serious.  An ambulance transport to emergency at the Gunderson hospital in La Crosse and ever since  4:00PM Sunday it has been a tilt a whirl; her partial hip replacement surgery at 11:00PM, being up out of bed Monday morning, standing yesterday and declared medically stable and dischargeable back to the SNF today.  Medically stable says nothing about mentally unstable and there's not much to be done about that.  She convinced the hospital attendants to call her son and when she got Jerry on the phone she was belligerent and demanded he come get her.  We requested they not connect a phone, but they try to do what a patient wants or what makes their life easier.  I wish her daughter had interest and would come and sit at the facility, taking care and be pushed to  frustration but that is not going to happen and so we make do.  I watch my own tongue and attitude because I do not want to be mean to an old lady, someday I'll be old too, but what a predicament.  Long discussions with the therapists and nurses at the home this morning about protocols and a new level of care for her. Will she comply, will she attempt to do something she should not and reinjure herself, what next?  All questions to be answered as we look toward Easter.    I'll not be Easter decorating this year, too much else to deal with.  

Full healing may take 6 months.  This is a time of instability when anything can happen.  A cousin reminded me that Aunt Berniece died of complications from a broken hip, but Florence has a strong heart and  body in ways unbelievable for a 96 year old.  Many  nurses marveled at how good she looks for 96 and then they marveled at how nasty she could be,  how she could be foul in disposition and demeaning, I am not surprised.  We hope progress continues.  Such is life.  

Friends are the family we choose

A good blog  friend sent us the most lovely Christmas card, Bea,  yes you did, with a wonderful photo of a cardinal on a snowy branch. with handwritten lines, "friends are the family we choose."  So very true.   Here we are two empty nesters anticipating  more of the care free life and at a time when we  should be free of responsibilities tying us down.     I miss my old folks, or maybe it's that now I am the oldest survivor,  the family historian.  For whoever cares.  That's the point, hardly anyone does care. We have been thinking more and more about things in general this year and how to begin to really live our lives as we choose, not by obligations dictated by the needs of others.   Tomorrow is promised to no one. Good friends recently reminded us of that; another good friend  has suffered strokes and is now debilitated.  We have been blessed with good health.    



December  2012 Florence right seated, blue and gray
 in the SNF with Santa, the annual Christmas party.
For someone who will be 96 in January, not bad.  

 Our retirement move here from CA was to provide a better quality of  life for ourselves. However we had another problem, that remains with us, MIL,  who continues going rather strong physically just as she continues further along the dementia road at almost 96 .  Wherever we moved we had to bring her along and  at the time she still had a sister, aunt Marie living here so she was amenable to return  home to MN.

Florence in the middle uprooting  Jerry and his sister,  Dianne
from MN  for CA 1950

Jerry is a saint he deals with everything without any assistance only from me,  although he has two siblings, neither of whom are involved and neither of whom would be even if they lived closer.  In 1950, shortly after the sudden death of her mother and despite advice and pleadings to not do so, MIL  left MN with Jerry and his sister for CA , to  marry Lyman.   Jerry left CA  returning  to MN alone to live with his grandfather and then enlisted in the Air force at 17, stretching his age to enlist. After Lyman died in 1990, MIL became Jerry's responsibility. She has been one of those women having to be cared for, looked after by someone else all her life and it has worked for her.

Florence and Lyman their 25th anniversary in CA

My career in long term care along with my family gave me an abundance of expertise and experience yet it is tiresome.  Jerry's  full sister has been dead for several years but the other two, his halves, the  younger Larson children,  roll along merrily without any responsibility for their mother. I suspect if they think of anything, could be that they will not inherit the $$ they thought they would; it is being paid to the SNF which has enhanced our lives. Still it is the  overseeing, frequent check in visits, follow ups with medical issues, appointments, my doing laundry, keeping her in clothes, buying, and on it goes.  We have more freedom to travel today yet hesitated to plan too far ahead, the back of our minds nag,  "what if...."   It makes me laugh out loud when some of the "family" say that they would like to come to see her, but then they never give up any part of their lives or plans and so they merely chatter along.  So many excuses.

But slowly we are working through this trial just as  we have others in our lives. Today we booked a 20 day land tour and cruise package to Alaska for August 2013 John Hall's Alaska, the Klondike, the works.  It is expensive, but we are also looking forward to spending our  hard saved money while we can.  Here is the link to the tour package by a local MN company out of Lake City.  They will even babysit our car and take us to and from Minneapolis for the  connecting flight.  http://www.kissalaska.com/   Destined to become good friends,  that's what happens when you lack family, you choose friends. 

Our own plans are going to take first place, if we do not do this for ourselves,  there is no one else who will.  Besides all that, we deserve it in spades. It's a new attitude.  Make way for us.  This is our time of life,  our friends have assured us of this repeatedly.