Leaving Victoria

9:45am, Monday, April 22, 2013.  It’s a brilliantly blue morning in Victoria, and I’m in the Schwartz Bay ferry terminal waiting for the 11:00am ferry.  I thought that I would arrive in time for the 9 o’clock sailing, but I just missed it.  They stopped the boarding at the car in front of me, a Mini Cooper S whose driver, a cute young woman who looked as if she hadn’t been denied much in life, was some irritated.  I got out of the car and approached hers to ask if she knew when the next ferry would leave, and she pouted, “11 and I’ve got such a small car.”  I had taken 2 pillows to mom’s, so I pushed back the seat and rested on them for about 20 min., but the thought of coffee wouldn’t leave my mind, so I rose and wafted into the terminal café for a Starbucks kick in the butt.  I’m a certified caffeine addict now.  Mom’s breakfast every day is a bowl of very healthy cereal, a mix of 4 unsweetened wheat, bran and oat cereals with some fruit or raisins and a cup of tea.  It’s ‘good and good for you’, as she says, but so unrelenting.  While I was with her I learned of every location within a reasonable radius of the hospital and their place that served good coffee.  One of the best was Barbara and Terry’s; they have an excellent hazelnut coffee that I would recommend to anyone visiting Vic. West.  They also make a savory Spanish garlic soup.  When I joined them for lunch one day after about 10 days at mom and dad’s where garlic is strictly banned, I found it hard to resist lifting the bowl and pouring its contents down my throat in one long gulp.  Mom didn’t weaken where garlic was concerned.  She has eaten and enjoyed it in small doses at times, but dad can’t bear it and she seemed to be enforcing his edicts even more strictly in his absence than she usually does when he’s there.  They both have enjoyed coffee in their day; however, and she readily joined me for a coffee when we went for lunch at the hospital.  She even learned to appreciate an Americano, my cup of choice at the moment.

The other day, I thought of Jay’s story of Mark Van de Vyvere saying, “Oh my shattered nerves.”  Jay was delighted to hear such a big man utter a phrase that is usually associated with delicate ladies.  It came to my mind when mom suggested that we go for a drive in her car so she could make sure it was still running before I left.  Of course it had to be done, but I had been hoping that she would forget about doing it, find out it didn’t work after I had left and take taxis to visit dad.  No such luck.  She may wheeze a bit after rushing or walking too far and wave her cane in a dangerous and dismissive way when she’s angry.  Her face might cloud over instantly in a mask of anger when crossed or misery when the pain of neuralgia overwhelms her, but her will too carry on with dad is never to be denied.  And for that to happen, she must drive the car.  So we did.  I was happy to see she had a cushion to sit on, so she does see over the dash.  And aside from swinging left before turning right, going through one red light and almost creasing a parked car, she actually drove quite well.  I think she will be better when she’s alone because my presence made her nervous and she also wanted to show me a good time by pointing out interesting things along the route which I was too frozen with fear to be able to turn my head and appreciate.  She parked the car at Willows Beach, and we had a good walk along the shore.  She actually enjoyed letting the wind blow through her hair.  She usually walks with a hood up or a horrible plastic rain hat on because wind either threatens her ‘do’ or makes her neuralgia hurt.  We ended the trial run with a lunch at the Marina Coffee Shop.  It was a complete success.  I hope all goes as well for her now that she begins her solo drives to the hospital.

The rumble of the ferry’s engines and the mumbling of passengers’ voices surround me as I write these final words.  It’s a glorious day to be on the ferry, blue, windy and warm.

I spent the first hour walking around the decks taking pictures and thinking about all the times I’ve taken this ride to and from Victoria.  It’s a drag if you miss the sailing and it adds hours to the trip, but whether the weather is fine or not, it’s always invigorating to walk along the decks and look out over the water and to sometimes see the ghostly snow capped mountains in the distance and the islands and boats that pass.  As I watched the wake bubble up between the island and me, the overwhelming sadness of leaving mom and dad to the difficulties they face combined in equal parts with the fresh air and clarity of the sea and the freedom of leaving.  I took deep breaths and tears filled my eyes, as they do now.   

I will end with the image of mom that stayed with me as I drove back to Vernon.  I got up early to leave for the 9am ferry.  I had all my stuff in the car and was returning to say goodbye to her.  I opened the door to see her careening around the corner from her bedroom, hair disheveled and wearing nothing but her fine wool bloomers and matching wife beater, her frail limbs akimbo.  She looked so cute.  The same cuteness that often infuriates me melted me this time.  She was upset that she had wakened late and was now rushing to help me with my last things.  I waited for her to put on her laundry day clothes and we shared a final glass of orange juice.  Then she came out to the car with me to see that the little Mazda really does have ‘inner bigness’.   We had a parting hug, and I left with a touching image of her that erased the memories of past anger, for a while. 

Barbara and Terry in front of their house, dressed for spring and her birthday

Burke Boyce struggling to roll over for the first time

Great grandma and grandpa Boyce in his room in the hospital where he is struggling just as hard to get back on his feet

Part of the view from mom and dad's balcony at sunset.  I did my physio on there every morning and evening.  There were 2 bald eagles who often perched at the top of the big cedar in the background.

Snow covered Mount Baker in the distance as seen from the ferry to Vancouver

Me looking windblown in the mirror window at the bow of the ferry.

Good news

Dad is so much better that this morning he wheeled over to the sunroom on his floor and called mom from the phone there.  She squealed with joy when she heard his voice.  What a pair!   The next call was for me from the occupational therapist.  Yesterday I had asked to talk with someone about the procedures the hospital has for the release of patients like my dad, so I was pleased to get such a quick response.  Mom, always alert to everything in her ken, surreptitiously listened to my every word.  The woman said that they have a comprehensive discharge system that includes looking at the place the patient will be returning to and making sure it is suitable.  Am I glad to hear that!  Dad’s room is a rabbit warren of clutter and jerry rigged stuff.  He’s had both his falls there because he can’t get the walker into the cramped corner where the television is and where they each have a comfy chair, footstool and tv. table, not to mention magazine rack and book shelf with a complicated light system that involves dangerous old cords wedged behind books and around a pipe rack full of pipes dad hasn’t smoked in two or three decades.  I’m afraid to touch anything in the house because it’s all in such a state of decrepitude it could crumble at any minute.  I just hope I make it out on Monday without having ruined one of the many old things on which they depend but which are as fragile as mom and dad are frail.  The occupational therapist asked me about mom’s health because dad always says he has his wife at home and that they can get along quite well alone, but the staff have noticed that mom is quite tiny and stooped and wondered if she would be up to it.  In the politest way possible, I told her that mom is small but a powerhouse.  This isn’t entirely true; she tires easily now but her will is still up to anything, and I certainly don’t have the courage to raise her ire by suggesting within her hearing to anyone at the hospital that she might not be up to managing the apartment with dad.  ‘The Force’ is still with her, and she can move material objects with one of her looks.  She can make me leave the scene with a pained glance and a waft of the hand.  I didn’t have much to tell her after the call because my half of the talking had pretty well painted the picture.  After years of reaching conclusions based on the bare minimum of information, she knew what was up and was pleased.  Whew!!!!!  Dad’s release is not imminent, but mine is.

I called Dr. Inkpen’s office ( Mac isn’t happy with that word, but that’s his name) yesterday and got an appointment for next Wednesday.  I’m happy about that for 3 reasons:  a) my shoulder is making no progress, and even though the physio. said that the nerve could take as long as 5 months to recover, it’s hard to keep up the exercises with no results, so I’m ready for a second opinion.  

                b) I have a legitimate reason to leave mom and dad to do what they must, make their own decisions about their future.  I was so desperate not to get involved that I was willing to say I had an appointment even if I didn’t.

    c) Mom and I will not be able to keep our fragile truce for much longer.  I’m overjoyed to hear that things are carrying on in Korea as they have for 60 years, but mom and I aren’t capable of that. 

Time in Victoria

So much for my vaunted calm, mom and I have already had another screaming argument.  It’s easier to be patient with strangers than with your mother who’s every move and word elicits a conditioned reflex that probably had its source in the womb.  Mom is capable of sitting in her plaid flannel pajamas on the stool of her vanity that has functioned as her desk for the last 25 years looking over papers and cards that have come in the mail for I don’t know how long, and I don’t intend to find out.  I walk into her room and suggest that we set a time for when we will leave.  It can’t be less than 45 minutes because it takes her more than that to prepare for the day, dress and put her face on, as she calls it.  I then go back to dad’s room, get ready to go and vent my frustrations on this laptop.  Yoga breathing just doesn’t do it; I’d hyperventilate before she finally hung her cane on the front door, so as not to forget it, as she frequently does, and sat down to put her boots on.  At 66, kids tire you out with their unstoppable activity and older people wear you down with their unbearable immobility.  The former make you feel old and the latter make you realize that you almost are, so you’d better get moving because time is and soon you won’t be able to.

Enough!  The sun just burst into the room.  It was really cool and rainy all yesterday and today started in the same way, but perhaps it will stay bright and I will walk by the ocean after mom and I shop for groceries, I drop her off at the hospital and come back to unpack and prepare dinner.  I have to say that when mom isn’t worrying bones to no purpose, she is spunky.  This morning as I was doing my physiotherapy exercises on the balcony, she arrived lugging a pail half full of water for the plants.  I helped her and then she started worrying again about how I was going to carry all the heavy groceries into the apartment.  I had to remind her that I am 25 years younger; she almost seemed surprised by the fact.  Ever since the time about 30 years ago when she returned from a trip somewhere south with a bikini for Cathy, Bill’s wife and I grant you about 5 years younger than I, and a bathing suit for me that was the same in everything but color as the one she had bought for herself, I’ve suspected that she’s slotted me into an age bracket so similar to hers that it’s hardly worth noting.  Enough!  For sure this time.

Dad has had a bit of real luck.  The people at the hospital have decided that rather than send him directly to the Aberdeen Rehab. Unit, they will keep him where he is, only moving him from the recovery to the rehab section of floor 6.  Now he’s in a room with a nice man named Steve, and he will be getting really good physio.  The exercise room that they have would be the envy of any health club.  He seems to be in better health and spirits every day but still worried about his ability to ever get moving.  He was nervous about going to the Aberdeen, but he may not have to.  As mom says, he didn’t walk well before the fall, so if he can just get back to that point, they can continue as they were for a while longer, or forever, in their apartment.

It’s one of those, ‘wait 5 minutes,’ days in Victoria today.  I’ve just returned from a walk along the shore that included: blue sky, sun, rain, wind, hail and merely grey.  Now I hear hail again tapping lightly on the window as I type.

A heron walking along the shore at low tide this afternoon

The Oak Bay Beach Hotel across the street from mom and dad's

It’s April 8, Jim’s birthday, the third anniversary of his funeral and still he’s helping me with my difficult family relationships.  He was the one who kept me in touch with mom and dad by suggesting and largely organizing their visits to us in Mexico and for 2 weeks each summer for years.  Even within those 2 weeks, he would plan a 2 or 3-day road trip to Montreal or Stowe or some other nearby place of interest.  Today, he seems to have influenced our lives even from the urn. 

Dad seemed to be in pretty good shape yesterday, so mom was in good spirits last night and this morning we enjoyed our breakfast and talked a bit of Jim.  Then she went off, pushing dad’s walker, piled with dirty clothes in an ancient crumbling plastic basket tied on with a shoe lace that saw many years service on a runner before it was taken by my dad from his drawer of old things too good to throw out and attached to that walker for that purpose, to do the ritual 8am Mon. morning laundry.  I took advantage of this blessed moment of action over worry to drive to Canadian Tire to buy and have installed 2 new windshield wipers.  I picked up a few groceries and returned home to find mom in the laundry room folding underwear, her face a mask of misery.  When she saw me, she burst into tears.  I got her back to the apartment and sitting down.  When she stopped sobbing, she explained that a nurse had phoned to say that as dad wasn’t doing well there would have to be a meeting about his case and that they were considering sending him to the Aberdeen Centre.  Mom knew nothing about that place and assumed the worst. 

She told the nurse that she couldn’t talk about it and said she would be at the hospital every day between 11 and 7.  She sobbed that she couldn’t take it any more and that ‘they’ weren’t taking very good care of dad, etc.  And this is where Jim came in, or rather I pulled him in.  I began to talk about a few moments that he and I had lived through as we were slowly coming to terms with his cancer.  Mom actually listened without accusing me of being on ‘their’ side.  She calmed down, and we talked.  Then she got dressed and made up and invited me out to lunch at Kate’s Place across the street from their apartment.  I drove her to the hospital and went home to make macaroni and cheese for our dinner and Skype with the Pollocks and Jay.  It was good to see and talk with them and Jay, as usual managed to find the humor on the dark side.  He told me I had to appreciate that what mom is going through is similar to what a criminal does when released after 40 years in jail.  She and dad have been ‘institutionalized’ together in their own little world for almost that many years, and she is afraid of being out in the big world alone.  He made me laugh with stories of some of the cons. in the half way house he worked at in Ottawa one summer who would try to make a pay phone work with a nickel or narrowly escape being hit by cars as they crossed busy streets as if they were the exercise yard in the jail. Much relieved by these chats and laughs, I picked mom up at the hospital and she also was in better shape.  She and dad had actually discussed the situation.  Up until then, they had each tried to protect the other from the truth and both worried without any idea of how to settle the situation.  Now mom has talked with her friend, Marilyn, who told her good things about the Aberdeen, and I have talked with Mo who has given me some insights into the medical system and how to make it work for you, so we enter the battle with a few weapons this time.

Meanwhile, dad’s still tired and weak, but he was sitting up in a real wheel chair today.  That’s the good news.  The bad was that my new wind shield wiper on the driver’s side didn’t work in the serious rain that was falling this morning, so I had to drop mom at the hospital and go back to Canadian Tire, straining to see through the passenger side, to exchange it.  I think that I have learned to master my temper to a certain extent.  The man in the service centre even commented on how calm I was.  I told him it was the result of spending hours in hospitals and practicing Yoga breathing and balance moves.    

Matti, Burke and Cleo in Matti's new truck.  Note how the Tim's cups make this the quintessential Canadian family photo.

April 5, 2013

Thursday, April 4, 2013 began with mom discovering that another thing was broken.  Their 1991 Honda Accord, which the Honda people say is a beauty; 1991 and 1993 were apparently vintage years for Honda, wouldn’t start after spending 5 days parked in front of the apartment while the underground parking was being fixed up.  I could hear her cranking it over but didn’t go out to help because she is very pleased to be in charge of driving now and wouldn’t want me to suggest that I could maybe do what she couldn’t.  A man of course would be able to help, but not a woman.  We decided to leave it and call ICBC in the evening.  And dad is not in very good shape today.  I drove mom to get her hair done and then we came to the hospital.  When mom first saw dad, he was flat on his back and sound asleep.  She got his attention, and all he said was, “I’m falling apart.”  By the time I had parked the car and arrived in the room, he was sound asleep again.  I left mom with him and went to the sunroom to read.  A few minutes later I heard mom talking with a nurse.  Mom was in tears and couldn’t figure out what was happening.  She was angry that ‘they’ were wearing him out.  For once I didn’t aggravate her but rather was able to calm her by saying that they’re only doing what they have to if he’s ever going to get out of bed.  I expected she’d accuse me of taking ‘their’ side, but she didn’t.  She merely nodded and stopped sobbing; we walked back into dad’s room.  He slept until lunch came, ate all the juicy things on the tray plus about 3 bites of tuna sandwich and then went back to sleep after telling mom and me to take care of ourselves and have some lunch.  He was sound asleep when we got back; I left mom with him because she didn’t want to do anything else.  I’m in the hospital lounge, in a comfy chair by a big window looking out at the grey day, the soft rain and water falling over grey rocks.

Dad was better by the time I got back and we left him ready to sleep.  We went home, mom tried the car again with no luck, and we called ICBC.  A man came within an hour and started the car after a couple of turns.  Whatever!  We were just happy to have it back in the underground parking, where it will stay for a while because I’m doing the driving while I’m here, which might be for a while.  Mom is still convinced that dad will get back to the apartment.  She doesn’t want to talk to anyone about the future.  There’s a nurse/liaison whose job it is to work with patients and service providers to find out what the best plan would be for when a patient is released from hospital; she approached dad who told her he can’t think of what to do.  He told her to talk to his wife, but when he mentioned it to mom, she just shrugged and said that she wasn’t going to go looking for her.  If the woman finds her, they’ll talk, but mom wants to put the meeting off as long as possible, hoping dad will make some miraculous progress in the mean time.

Now it’s Friday night.  Dad was the best he’s ever been today except that he was worrying that ‘they’ were going to move him out of the hospital with no warning.  Mom was worried about his worrying so she finally went to the nursing station to get some information.  Fortunately an older nurse was there who talked well and at length with mom so that she could return to dad with some information to calm him.  I think that he’s almost over the effects of the anesthetic and drugs and will be able to get down to physiotherapy next week.  I’ve always had more confidence in the people who are looking after dad than my parents have, but I agree with them about the fact that patients are not well informed about what’s happening to them.  Mom tells dad to stay calm and he tells her to do the same, but the patience they have between them could stretch out on the head of a pin.  I’ve just finished spending about 20min. on the balcony doing my physiotherapy exercises and will soon be lying in bed reading and listening to the shuffle on mom’s slippers as she roams from room to room restlessly moving small things around and preparing the breakfast stuff.  

Odd and beautiful

‘Odd’ is a word mom uses a lot.  In our most recent rows, she has angrily blurted out, “Oh, you’re just queer.”  The latter word is not at all associated with homosexuality in her mind.  It is the superlative of ‘odd’.  Anyone whose opinions, inclinations or immediate responses deviate from hers and dad’s, whose have become indivisible over their 70 years of marriage, is, ‘trying to prove something’ with the express intention of irritating them and is therefore not normal, odd.  As they get older, the number of such people has multiplied to include all those who call either of them by their first names when they don’t even know them, talk in a casual overly friendly way that they interpret as disrespectful and patronizing to the elderly or who say, “No problem” instead of “You’re welcome”.  Most of the nurses and hospital staff fall into one or all of these categories, so mom and dad don’t have confidence in any of them except the doctors because most of them are male and mom and dad’s generation has an unquestioning reverence for men with a certain educational, economic or social position.  I flatter myself that I am broader minded and more understanding than they are, and of course, when I’m with them I actually seem to be so.  I also seem to be young when compared to them, which, at 66, I’m not.  And the nut hasn’t fallen far from the tree.  I am by nature and nurture inclined to be contrary. As our arguments wind down, I become merely ‘odd’.  She is downgraded by me from ‘selfish and intolerant’ to ‘ understandably upset and too quick to get angry at young people who are trying to do their best’.  We settle into, with no written declaration, a truce that is no more official than that between North and South Korea.  But I hope the two truces last as long as I am in Victoria and Jay is in South Korea.   Mom has also said, “Isn’t it odd?” in reference to the fact that since dad broke his hip and I have been living with her, the garberator and coffee maker have both ceased to function.  Well, it isn’t if you consider the age of dad, 93; the garberator, at least 40 and the coffee maker, well over 20.  I heard a young man on the CBC radio the other day singing the praises of his 10 year old Sony MP3, the oldest thing he owns and a miracle of longevity as far as he’s concerned.  He should come here where everything’s a miracle and there’s nothing odd about that. 

Priscilla and other members of the VOC on the first Tuesday ramble along the Grey Canal

The ferry crossing to Victoria

Sunset from the ferry

I walked by the ocean today for the first time since I arrived in Victoria.

Seagulls preening on Cattle Point

A garden near Willows Beach with the ocean in the background

The same garden

Again, it was beautiful.