Between e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, I've probably received over 700 notes of condolence on the passing of my mother…so individual "thank you" notes are not possible. I appreciate them all but a number of them did seem written on the erroneous assumption that I was grief-stricken and in need of comforting. (I did appreciate the "If there's anything I can do to help" offers, even the one from a stranger in Sweden. I'm still trying to think of anything the guy in Sweden can do to help me…)
Really, the point I was trying to make in telling you what I told you is that the loss of a loved one doesn't have to be a point of emotional devastation and personal collapse. I had an absolutely perfect relationship with my mother. We were as fond of each other as any mother/son parlay in history. Increasingly over the last few years, she was unable to do anything for herself so managing her life fell to me and that meant vast amounts of guilt on her part about how much of my time and money she was consuming. It didn't bother me. It bothered her. I was directing a recording session when she had her final heart assault and pretty much the last thing she said before losing consciousness was that I should be notified but that I should be told not to leave anything important I was doing and rush to her side. (That was what she always said. Before I'm done with Tales of My Mother, I'll relate at least two anecdotes about that, including the time I was told that on my way to the stage to accept an Eisner Award.)
For about the last decade or more, she had been irreparably sick and understandably depressed. She made it to the age of 90 and a half. If at any time after about 78, a magic genie had made her this proposition — you'll be able to walk and travel and eat anything you like for the next week, then you die — she would have been on the plane to Vegas before he'd reached the end of the offer. Her life came to be divided into two activities…
- Being in a hospital or nursing facility, eating mediocre food (except when I or the caregiver I hired brought something better), undergoing unpleasant tests and wishing she was back in the home where she'd lived since 1953 or…
- Being in the home where she'd lived since 1953, waiting for the next illness or attack that would put her back in a hospital or nursing facility.
Oh, and there were also endless visits to doctors but all in all, it was No Way To Live. When the attending physician told me she was gone, I was not — to tell the truth — all that unhappy. Because she was so unhappy and she had literally nothing to look forward to in life but sadness. She had about 10% of her vision left and her ophthamologists said she could lose even that at any minute and surely would within a year. She also had Assisted Living — either leaving forever that home of 59 years or having full-time live-in caregiving there — in her dank future. She dreaded either version. Every time I mentioned maybe having to move her into an Assisted Living facility, she said "That's where people go to die." And the way she said it made me decide she'd do just that before she allowed that to happen.
Which she did. I really regret losing my mother but I'd been losing her for years on the installment plan. Every time she got out of the hospital, there was a little less of her.
I had her in a nursing facility the last few weeks. It was a good one — a 90 minute drive from my home but worth the commute. I'd had her there before and when I first picked it out, I hadn't realized until I'd signed her up that it happened to be a few blocks from where her caregiver lived. A happy coincidence. I put the caregiver on retainer to be available when I couldn't get down there to do things for her so my mother not only had round-the-clock nurses, she had her own private caregiver on call. The place was perfect, being only two blocks from a big hospital. It was also friendly and caring and they had a great physical therapy department that actually helped her a microscopic amount with her mobility problems. When she'd been there before, it was for rehab but when I put her into it this time, it was with the strong awareness that I was choosing the best of all available places for her to die.
When I speak to wanna-be writers and actors, I always tell them that one secret to show business is to find that sweet spot between Optimism and Pragmatism. I believe the number one reason for career-type failure is too much of one, not enough of the other. You have to be rooted in your dreams but at the same time in reality, and you have to constantly balance one against the other. In the case of my mother, I had to weigh what I wanted to happen for her against what could. And at one point, I had to make the transition from "What can we do to heal this woman?" to "What can we do to make her last days less painful?" That was a difficult pivot and I'd like to think I made it at about the right time. I do know that if I'd made it way too soon or way too late, I would have caused her a lot of harm and done her no favor. I would also have done myself a certain amount of harm.
If you have an elderly parent or other loved one in similar condition, you will not help this person by pretending a miracle cure is possible…or that all that what matters above all is that their heart continues to beat. Quality of life matters. Dignity matters. Happiness matters. Your job — your responsibility — is to be there for them when they can no longer be there for themselves and to just plain take care of every damn thing. There may be a lot of them so just accept that and do the work.
My mother and I did a lot of things together in sixty years. What was good for her always seemed to be good for me and vice-versa. The last thing we did together was to jointly and without a lot of discussion, time her exit. You may not believe this but I think I will always include that in my little trove of fond memories. As a mother, she was always there for me and she did just about everything right. That included knowing when it was the right time for both of us that she not be there anymore.