Category Archives: Aging

June 21, 2023 · 4:37 pm

I am not my mother

My mom has been gone now for a few years and I know I had the best of her.

She was an experienced mom by the time I came along as child number four. I was born January 1965 to Dorothy Marie Stallman Traylor, a strong woman of German heritage. Her grandparents were immigrants, and the Dutch-American slang with a few German curse words still slipped from my grandma. Although mom did not speak German, she understood some. She understood more than that.

Born in 1925, mom never described her childhood as lacking although by most financial standards today, she would be considered poor. She had rickets from not drinking milk and ate a lot of homemade peanut butter. She still portrayed her life as an adventure.

My mom was a knock-out in the looks department and was adored by men and women in her town. She had black brown thick hair, dark brown eyes, and petite features of 36, 26, 38 (according to her). She was described by her friends around her as she was always smiling and accepting of everyone.

Post WWII, my mother and father married in a quick ceremony at a Catholic rectory in 1948. No she was not pregnant, but were in love. They had dated for 3 years on and off. Dad decided he could not bear to see her wed to anyone else. He realized he must be hopelessly in love with her. He did not like that feeling but gave in to it (his words not mine). She was a dependable hard-working wife. She cooked in a restaurant, pumped gas, sewed her own clothing, made meals in a pressure cooker and on a hot-plate, and lived in small rooms as a new wife. Her description to me was that she was happy because she was with him and it didn’t matter where they lived. She walked to work, she had two dresses, and made leftovers last several days. Wow. I am not my mother.

I only know the stories of all of the moves before I was born. Dad was back in the service, going from base to base, and still had money making ventures of building houses and selling cars on the side. At one point, he parked in Southern Indiana with our family for several years, built his own house, and we enjoyed friends and being closer to family. His dreams never let him feel fulfilled even though mom seemed at home where ever he took us. Dad loved to make profits and keep track of his gains and losses in journals. His plan was to retire a million dollars richer, and he spoke of these plans with mom while she cooked, cleaned, or read books. She smiled and nodded a lot and learned to pack a house up to move in a day if the Army required it. A flexible and talented soldier’s wife. I am not my mom.

The role of mom seemed to come natural to her, and she excelled at being a great homemaker. One homemaker skill of the fifties she proved time and time again was to make clothing and other things needed in the house. Sewing our pajamas, shirts, pants, and even a few suits, while bringing in some extra money sewing logo patches on hats for a local company. She spent 4 hours a day sewing typically during the fall before Christmas. She sometimes made her own patterns from store bought, adding paper, adding marks, and tailoring them for our short family. She fashioned car seats, ottoman covers, protective covers for dad’s recliners, drapes for the house, and repaired a lot of things dad asked for. Her patience for ripping out seams and doing over to make it perfect surpassed my abilities in every way. I most definitely am not my mom.

I never met such an accomplished listener as Dorothy Traylor. Her ability to listen and make a face or just ‘uh-huh’ noise was sometimes all her kids or grandkids needed to understand her. Endlessly empathetic but firm when you were screwing up, she never failed at making us want to please her by trying to make her proud. Her face was easy to read for most people who knew her. Although I rarely saw her mad or really angry, if she was, that face showed it. The lips tightly pressed and eyes narrowed with head slightly tilted down, and if she was really mad, her eyes looked out above her glasses rim and her closed fists propped on each hip. Then the index finger. If one fist left its tidy perch upon the hip and formed into a pointed warning to your nose, you knew a spanking was near if you didn’t “straighten the hell up”. She rarely cursed except behind dad’s back when she was real mad and stuck her tongue out at him and whispered “ass” as she walked into the other room. My mouth was not as civil as a young wife and mother. I am not my mom.

She imparted a role of the hostess and keeper of the house by never turning away anyone who showed up by invitation or not to sit at our table for a meal. She had supper on the table at 5 pm every day, for all 53 years of their marriage unless she was in the hospital. Friends of her kids, grandkids, her husband, neighbors, all could count on a plate of food if they showed up at regular meal time. My friends called her mom Traylor as did many people who came in the door. She never demanded good manners, or denied anyone if they smelled, or if they had no appreciation.

Now as my daughter becomes a mother and I slip into the role of grandmother, I think a lot about my mom. She would know how to do this better. I hear her voice telling me these things over the years but as a speech. “You are not me. Don’t try to be me because I was not perfect. Remember what I taught you – treat others how you want to be treated. Stop trying to be something else and just be who you are. You can’t teach them everything but how you respond to their mistakes you can control.” I see her looking out over her glasses with head tilted down.

I can’t be my mom. She was a mom in the 50s.

She lived through the depression, WW II and more challenges than I will ever face as a woman. She had no conveniences as a kid and started making her own clothing at 15 so she could express some of her individuality and have nice things. She worked physically very hard by working, studying, and then she played hard with friends. My mom was taught that she should strive to be a good wife and mother over anything else. Though she achieved that goal and more, she also raised me to know I can be whatever I want to be. She taught me how to take care of myself and others.

When I said I wanted to be a firefighter when I was seven, she smiled and just said, “that sounds like something you could do but why do you want to do that job?” She let me look at myself as more than a girl. That was forward-thinking in her time. Because she didn’t raise me just like her mother had raised her, I became my own woman.

After I gave birth to my daughter, I was crying over the phone to mom on my first day at home alone with my newborn. I said, “I don’t know how to do this!” She said, “There is no instruction manual for parenting. You will figure it out as you go like everyone else. When you make a mistake, say you are sorry and you love them and move on. Love her and take it a day at a time. You will be fine. You can do this, I know you.” I believed her.

Sara cannot be me because I was a parent in the 90s. I am not my mom, and my daughter is not me. There is no instruction manual.

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Filed under Aging, Inspiration, Motherhood

June 21, 2023 · 4:36 pm

Waking up…

Physically waking up is a major triumph when you know 3 of the 6 names in the obituaries every day. Just getting from breathing to dressed in the morning is a wide gap faced with reapplying makeup after sweating it off during a dozen hot flashes in the first hour.

Waking up when you are 20, 30, 40, and 50 are so very different. I really don’t remember 20 so I can’t say I miss it. I do remember at 30 jumping out of bed because my day was full with a kid, a job, a husband, a life.

Forty, the wake up was more of a slide into the needed activities of the day, followed by grumbling and self-loathing after a long day.

Fifty waking up having hurt myself during the short sleep has been usual. I feel like I have done this before I tell myself. Repeated gestures lead me to forget where I am in the process of waking up. Did I turn off the light in the bathroom? Did I remember to turn off the coffee pot? Where’s my work badge? Waking up now takes half the day and starts over at 1 pm when the energy drops and a nap is needed. Work is a state of being that holds some pride but obviously I would not do it if I was financially able to stay home in pajamas.

Waking up to aging happened when I looked in the mirror and decided make up was not needed because it wasn’t going to get better. Who was I trying to impress and did I really give a shit? No, so no more make-up or hairspray. No acrylic fingernails or long hours at the hairdressers paying for hair color. Embrace the grey. No more trips to the store for menstrual pads or cramps medicine. Menopause has a few perks.

Waking up in relationships happened before I married for the third and last time. When I basically decided I didn’t really want a man again, I found a good one. He accepted me and I him just as we were. Some days we are great, kind, thoughtful, and others we are just assholes. But that is okay.

Waking up to your sense of self is the best part of aging over 55. I know who I am and have no big career goals to meet. I am looking forward to grandkids and retirement as I get closer to my 60s. I accept myself with flaws and wrinkles. I have no illusions that I will beat death or become well known in my lifetime by anyone other than family and friends. I don’t expect to be perfectly happy everyday and that is okay. My biggest plan for tomorrow is to…wake up.

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Filed under Aging, Faith, Inspiration, The Past

April 10, 2022 · 3:31 am

Getting Older and passing through my story.

The older I get, the more I find myself contemplating things. Life, people, the whys and whats of living and finding purpose. As years drip away, it seems easier to leave material things behind because I know I don’t need it where I am going in the future. I have been reading a few books lately about Near Death Experiences (NDE) because I find them a wunder. A miracle that such traumatically hurt people awaken and recovery quickly and bring with them such common stories from young to old NDErs.

I have always had lots of doubts because I want to understand things, how things could possibly work. The human body is a wunder as well, and we still don’t know all of the ways the brain and neurological system heals itself. Just because I don’t think there is a way to know it all and that is how it is suppose to be, does not mean I don’t want to seek those answers. God makes us seekers of truth and knowledge, his inquisitive children. We are never really satisfied in our life on earth and always looking for satisfaction in some way. Probably because we are wired to seek something in Heaven and we are looking for it on Earth. What has kept me up nights is a fear of losing myself and all I know, my family, my friends, my memories, who I was when I leave this world. Reading this book has given me a sense of peace with that annoying worry and driven it away.

I feel assured and more confident that my life force will pass into a different dimension of Heaven some day where there is no fear, no pain, no time, and all the people I love will be there enjoying the same spiritual dimension. I will not be the same in body, but my thoughts, my true self will evolve into a full meaning and full complete self when my spirit is set free from the limitations of my body.

I find solace in the fact that NDEers have come back to say that they immediately knew answers to anything they wanted in Heaven and felt fully aware of a full communication with a loving God and reunion with all loved ones who were happy and present. They were told all answers would come to them after their second return since they were being sent back. Most did not want to go from that wonderful place of peace and happiness. However, they knew they had to return to share what they found and who they met.

In this Easter Season, even as a doubter, let’s agree that it is a year of birth and death.

The cold and rot of winter is breaking to allow a rich fertile harvest to begin. Allow some seeds to be sown of new beginnings. If you are not a Christian, know you are loved and welcome to share in the grace of God at any time you accept.

For me, I am just a story waiting to be told.

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September 21, 2020 · 3:25 pm

She was a prisoner on the inside and we were prisoners on the outside.

I want to talk about my mother by writing a book. I lost her recently and my way to deal with pain is to write. She was 94 and mortal, so I didn’t expect her to live forever. There is never enough time to do all the things or say all of the things you want to and death seems to focus that reality. Regret, guilt, anger, longing, only some of the feelings to bear with grief. But to write a book about it in a way that helps others channels the emotions into a positive light.

I write for many reasons. In this time of grief, I also want to help others. My mother was in a nursing home and during that time she contracted COVID-19 from a worker. It was difficult enough that they closed the facility to protect the residents two months prior, but then they actually carried it in to her and passed it through a lack of attention to infectious disease protocol. So, I had to start making notes to myself to decide what the purpose will be in writing this book.

I always begin with the same three questions:

Am I writing to entertain?

Am I writing to inspire?

Am I writing to educate?

If the purpose of my writing is an emotional or cathartic release, then it is a diary and is not likely to help or inspire others as much as to help me cope. Although a book can serve all three of the purposes listed, one usually stands out as the primary purpose. In my case, I feel that I need to educate by offering a map of transition from home to nursing home and help others understand what happens after those decisions are made. The next questions I ask relate to the expected outcome. I ask myself the following:

What outcome do I hope for the finished product and who might this book serve?

Is this book going to instruct someone on how to navigate a similar circumstance or problem?

Is this a platform for change?

Once I have answered all of these questions, I am able to identify the type of book I want to write. The next question is imperative to understanding my mindset at the time of the writing.

What essential question do I want answered or what is my strongest desire to fulfill in writing this book?

In order to really stay focused on writing, I have to be passionate about the cause or the purpose for writing. I try to stay on track and not go off on wild tangents that are fueled by anger or regret in a story, but ultimately it happens. That is why I edit later and do a lot of rewrites. But getting as much down as fast as possible is typically how I roll once my basic outline is set up and beside my computer.

I was a nurse for 30 years and have 15 of those in long term care. I understand the system from both sides. I understand the nurses mindset and how they cope with low staffing and not enough time in the day to do all that has to be done. I understand the endless charting to cover your butt from lawsuits and the state and federal laws related to long term care facilities. I was an administrative nurse acting as a DON at an assisted living facility for two years and met with state reviewers during annual reviews. As a family member with medical training, I witnessed poor care, substandard PPE use and lack of professionalism during care of my mother when I was visiting. I understand the feeling from the point of view of a family member with no control and limited information of how my mother was treated day to day. in my absence. I visited, helped with what I could, and walked away hoping they would care for her but knew it would not be with the same detailed care I could give.

That is how I begin. I am beginning a book about my mother. I will probably write two. One will be to help others to navigate the maze of long term health care for the aging, and the other will be about who mom was before she was seen as an old lady. Understanding the difference in these books and separating the two by purpose is important so the audience is not trying to navigate an unclear trip through a grieving brain of a motherless daughter.

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Filed under Aging, Inspiration, On Writing, Uncategorized

August 30, 2020 · 9:44 pm

The Nursing Home Dilemma

You never want to face the day of placing a loved one into a long term care facility. It makes you feel like you are sentencing them to a slow and boring death. However, there is a time when you can do no more for them yourself, or your parent or loved one cannot care for themselves safely. That was what happened to my family as my mom entered her eighties.

At the age of eighty-eight, mom was no longer able to get around as well, and we were doing the outside work and maintenance to her ranch home. She was still doing what little shopping needed for food and clothing. She was still able to pay her bills and keep her checkbook, but it was time for a change. I was the one who suggested a senior community knowing things were changing.

There were four of us kids, spread out over twelve years of age from the oldest to the youngest. I was the youngest and my daughter and I had been sharing a home with mom for ten years. We had seen her through a hip replacement, a broken leg, and several hospitalizations for ailments. My daughter had left for college now, and I had met a man who would later become my husband. The opportunity had come to move to Texas with this man but it would mean leaving mom to be assisted by my family still in Indiana. Because of this move, mom thought it was time to sell the big house we lived in. She was a realist and that was a blessing. She looked at retirement communities and we agreed on a senior apartment complex with a shared dining and common areas. The move happened quickly and I was in Texas a month later.

It went well for her for three years with me in Texas and the rest of my family in Indiana. She had a small apartment but privacy and could come and go as she pleased. She began falling, and then she took too many of her medications in one day. She was hospitalized, and later found to have a failing heart and kidney failure. She needed heart surgery at 91 years old. It was a risk, but if not done, she would not live long. I came back to take care of her for three weeks after she came out of heart surgery like the strong woman she was.

Strong or not, she was getting older and an assisted living facility was the next big move to assure her medications were controlled and her finances were monitored by my sister since she had a habit of sending money to every cause that called on the phone. I went back to Texas for a year before moving back to Indiana for good. Mom’s vision was slipping away due to glaucoma and she was labeled as having mild Dementia related to age, heart, and kidney disease. She was forgetting what happened yesterday, the day before, and some of the months were running together. She had covered her forgetfulness for several years from what we saw on her finances and closets full of overbuying things she had already purchased only days before at a forgotten grocery store trip.

These were only a few of many signs of rapid decline in my mother’s ability to care for herself that we saw. She could still carry on a conversation, sounding as intelligent as she had always been and covering her forgetfulness blaming age and being tired. For the most part, it was working for her until her health decline made us aware of her ways of hiding things. On top of facing our changing roles between child and parent, we had to become the advocate for her minimum standard of care in the aging long term facility model in the United States.

Long term care should be labeled, “Death by discard”. It may sound harsh, but often elders are left in these homes for the old with few visits by family. It gave me an extreme amount of guilt and depression by committing her to live in a facility because I knew the visits from family would be few. By “few” I mean, once a week for an hour on Sunday afternoon with grandkids in tow kind of “hi Mom-love ya” visits.

I am not dismissing that I did the same type of quick visits while living my life, working, paying bills, and caring for my kids. It’s easy to forget to call mom every day and to make a point to stop in every couple of days just to check up on her. Soon I started to see healthcare from a different perspective. I had lived as a nurse for 30 years with 16 being in long term care. I made excuses of knowing how understaffed facilities were and that it would not change. I tried to take on some of the burden of meeting mom’s needs until I saw an ever narrowing gap between a minimum standard of care teetering on the precipice of neglect. I knew what should be done, what was not being done, and recognized lack of training and care when I saw it because in my day in a facility I was one of those tyrannical nurses that CNAs hated working with. I was demanding to make sure residents received above standard care. I dealt with a lot of families but none ever accused me of not caring for my patients.

I was still hesitant in becoming “that daughter or son” in my mom’s facility. The one was the kid I dreaded dealing with when I was working long term care. The one who came in once a week and thought she knew everything that should be done and how. The one that complains all the time and doesn’t see mom’s confused days and bad days and is on her best behavior on the days of a visit. I get it.

I did become the one. I saw dirty toilets, unchanged linens, trash overflowing, and lack of staff. I heard excuses of trying to meet the needs of so many with so few. I was the one who was not notified when mom fell and I saw her three days later with massive bruising on her right side with dried bandaids over a skin tear which would retear when the bandaid was finally changed. I was the one who worried at night in my bed if she was falling or messing her bed with no one to help because the night shift was short. My parent had become as much a worry for me as I was for her when roles were reversed and I was the sick child in the care of someone else.

As we have moved into the future, my mom is 94 and now in Hospice care. The last three weeks feels more like a year with mismanaged care, agency nurses covering a failing assisted living facility and Covid 19 infection outbreak that has pushed my mom’s health over the precipice. She regains to a coherent state for minutes a day instead of hours, overshadowed by confusion, fear, and a moaning ache of age and discomfort as her days dwindle. My role as her advocate for respectful care has become as a lion over a cub. While others dismiss that she has lived a good life, and some justify that she should be drugged to keep her stoic and safe, I continue to fight for her right to be monitored, respected, and loved for where she is in life and not push her off the cliff to make room for the next one.

This small shriveled woman sleeping her days away is the same woman who sat up nights holding washrags to her kids fevered heads. This is the woman who picks up the falling toddler. She is the woman who hangs sad silly pictures of nondescript animals on our refrigerator and always has a warm meal and seat for a stranger. She is the brunt of dad’s stupid jokes and our pranks. She is the patience blocking dad’s anger and our butts on a bad day. She is the magician who makes a meal for six stretch to eight when dad brings home guests. This is the healer who had endless bottles of mercurochrome and Bactine covered with bandaids. This is the gardener who canned enough food to last all winter from her hard tended garden. This is the dark figure sewing pajamas at 2 am the day before she made Christmas dinner for 35 people by herself. This is the chauffeur, PTA member, seamstress for school plays, church social participant, kleenex holder and carrier of the mom purse of wonders. Her very existence is my inheritance and making a caregiver see that vision of what she has been and what she is to us is hard when they view her now, shriveled up and quiet.

While you never want to face the dilemma of long term care and being a parent to a parent, it may come. If that day comes, never take a backseat. Be that one kid. Be your parents advocate for care and respect. As the roles change, know that you will be in her place some day and pray you will have the same grace of someone loving you so hard that they are the one.

If you are considering long term care for yourself or a loved one, check back on my blog next year. I am working on a book to help families transition and navigate this journey.

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August 30, 2020 · 8:05 pm

Aging Without Grace

There is nothing graceful about getting old. One day you awaken to sore joints after a day of exercise that twenty years before was relieved with a good night’s sleep. Suddenly, everything hurts from your head to your toes. You notice that certain foods now cause indigestion or end up making you feel bloated. Your balance is questionable as you fall over invisible bumps in the floor. You go into rooms and don’t remember why. You forget where you park and roam around parking lots pushing the warning beeper waiting for a car to talk to you. You wear two different socks and don’t care. Clothing choices are based on comfort more than style or fad. You drive with a purpose and realize you are a day to early or late to the appointment. You get tired and get ready for bed before the sun goes down. You become less spontaneous and more predictable. Your eyes, ears, waistline, and height change but not for the better. You stop looking in the mirror and avoid getting your picture taken. Going to the doctor more is a given. Suddenly, vitamins seem like a necessity instead of a good idea. These signs of age related changes do not hit any one person at the same age, but inside your skin, you know and try to avoid the obvious. I am getting old.

When you recognize this fact, you start avoiding some activities because it creates an unwanted result the next day. I no longer stay out in the sun all day. I no longer plan a trip without taking a pharmacy along. I no longer stay out after ten at night when I have to work the next day. These are just things that eventually create such a difficulty functioning the day after that it is not worth the effort. I am getting tired.

The next phase of aging comes when your parents or other family begin to get old, sick, and die. This awakening to your own mortality hits hard. Watching people you love begin losing their memories, misplacing things, forgetting dates, and driving dangerously is a frustrating decent into becoming a parent to your parents or guardian to your guardians. I am weighed down by my responsibilities.

For many of us, the path to your parents slow roll toward dependence upon their children for care is slow. For some, that total dependence upon children for care is sudden through stroke, heart failure, muscle disorders, or one of multiple forms of dementia. The sudden forced role change can be unhinging to your life and to your mental state. The path is varied but all have the commonality of forced role change between the parent and the child. Who will take care of me some day?

Aging gracefully is a pleasant fairy tale. Aging is more like an endless roller-coaster with changing tracks somewhat like a Twilight Zone version of the It’s A Small World ride at DisneyLand. The only way to deal with it is to find humor, enjoy the small joys of breathing, and face each day as it comes. Worry and frustration does not change your current state, but your attitude can make it more bearable for those around you. Aging sucks, but I am not ready for the alternative yet!

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