Tricia's new toy
Tricia has herself a fancy new sewing machine which does embroidery and she has been going to town with it. I already have several shirts and caps with embroidered designs. Family members or friends with birthdays or special occasions can pretty much count on getting one of her special creations. Plus, she has a commission from a girl's soccer team for logo shirts.
I have mentioned her quilting business more than once here before. She can make quilts to order or do the quilting work on pieces that others have sewn up. You can check out some of her work at her own website.
history
We laid Mama to rest in the little graveyard on the prairie. The farmhouse where she was born and raised was just a short ways up the dirt road. The house is gone now but if you stand just right and look through the trees you can almost see where it stood.
Mama and her sisters used to walk by the cemetery and smell the fragrance on the air from all the flowers. She said it was like a garden.
Later on she taught second grade in a little 2-room schoolhouse further down the road. This was back during the war years. Something I just learned last week was that one of my cousins was in her class in that little schoolhouse. I am going to steal the story he told me.
It seems that he had a schoolboy crush on his teacher. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
One day when they were outside playing at recess a car pulled up and a tall lanky man in a soldier’s uniform got out of the car. His teacher went running toward the soldier and threw her arms around him. This made him really jealous.
Of course that soldier was my Dad returning home from the war. Mom and Dad were together for 60 years after that and it took his death to separate them. Somewhere now they are together once again.
mom
My mother passed away yesterday morning. We had just visited with her on Saturday. The doctor had given her some antibiotics for some flu symptoms and she had very little appetite. Except for that the visit seemed like many others.
When we arrived she was in bed. She talked about the quilt she was covered with. It was one Tricia made using some blocks she found in Mom's sewing basket and some photos Tricia had printed onto cloth. She often talked about the quilt on our visits. She especially liked the picture of her sister. She did not ever seem to remember who made the quilt or where it came from. She knew she had not made it herself though, even though it had her name embroidered on it. She always looked doubtful when Tricia explained where it came from.
We went outside in the sunlight and she wheeled herself around in her wheelchair a little. There were some pansies outside in a bed and she looked at them and asked me for some scissors. She said she wanted to cut them out and make a handkerchief to keep in her pocket. Sometimes it seemed to me as if she saw things as if they were printed on cloth and she could just cut them out and take the scene with her. Her main interest for many years was sewing and quilting so maybe it was natural to her for the world to be made of cloth.
Her mind was taken quickly by Alzheimers. Just seven months ago I did not even realize it was a problem. In July she fell and broke her hip while taking clothes out of the dryer. In the hospital I thought it was just the drugs that were making her forgetful. We visited every weekend. By the end of the year I was not really sure that she even knew who I was.
anniversary
Most people know this as Pearl Harbor Day. For our family it has a different significance. Sixty-two years ago was Mom and Dad's wedding day.
Possibly they did not even realize they were being married on the first anniversary of such a momentous event. Not that it did not affect them. Dad was actually on leave from the army at the time he married and was soon to be on his way to North Africa.
I am not sure that Mom will even realize what day it is. In the nursing home they all blend in together. In fact I don't even know if I want her to remember. This is the first anniversary since his death.
She no longer remembers the funeral. The first few times I visited she kept asking for details about it. She wanted to know who was there and what the flowers were like. She was disappointed that she could not remember. The last time I was there the most life she showed was when a tall man with white hair walked by and she thought he was Dad and called out to him.
I can't remember Mom and Dad ever making a big todo about their anniversary. Dad was never very big on celebrating events of any type. But two years ago we gave them a small party for their sixtieth anniversary. It was just an open house but there were a lot of visitors and Mom took a lot of joy from it. When we were planning it we wondered if they were going to be up to it. I am really glad now that they had that.
moody weekend
The weekend was the kind of damp, moody fall days that I love. Cloudy and rainy weather seems to bring out the colors of the fall leaves best. Unlike some people I enjoy a little cold and damp. I like walking outside when it is just cold enough for a sweater or a jacket.
Saturday Tricia and I returned to Reverchon Park. We wanted to collect a few more of the burr oak nuts we had seen there before. We explored more of the park this time and found more of the trees.
The park is in a valley and one hillside has an intricate web of stone paths and stairs built in the 1930's. On our previous visit I had been intimidated by the groups of young men hanging out along the paths. This time it was earlier in the morning and they were not out yet. Tricia did not want to climb the steps because of her bad knee so I left her to saunter down by the creek and set off on my own to see where they led.
There are picnic tables back in the woods too and old stone fireplaces which have been stopped up so that you cannot use them anymore. And lots of stone benches set into the paths.
Coming down from the hillside we followed the creek for awhile. We had this part of the park all to ourselves. We found one of the big burr oaks back there with lots of the nuts and filled up a canvas bag. I have promised to trade some for some other seeds and I will keep some for myself too.
Ever since my father's death I have felt like I have been acting out scenes in a play. It's a familiar play and I know the scenes but I have not played this part before.
It keeps you busy for a few days, making all the arrangements and then gathering with friends and family. Then suddenly all the scenes are played, it is all over and mysteriously someone is missing. Just like you knew it would be.
a drive in the country
In my memories Fall always arrives with a brisk cool wind the first weekend in October. This Saturday was true to form. It was cool enough for a long sleeve shirt when I finally got up. I was tired from working late and staying up late the last two days. I would have liked to have spent the day working outside but I had already prmised to visit my mom.
When we arrived at the nursing home my mother was talking about her "poppa." We decided to take her out for a ride in the country, back to the farm where she grew up.
The countryside was golden. All of the fields were filled with goldenrod. Mom did not recognize anything along the roadway but she always enjoys a drive. We had picked up some sandwiches and had a picnic in the big oak grove next to the old cemetary. That was the one place mom recognized. For years she has gone to picnics and reunions in the old oak grove.
Sometimes she has more memory than others. Saturday I think she thought I was her brother. When we got back to the nursing home she did not recognize where she was.
She seems to have adapted to living there reasonably well. She talks to the other ladies and their families. The conversations are a mixture of reality and the fantasies of various people. Mom thinks she is staying in a hotel most of the time but she does not know how she got there.
memories
This has been a difficult week. I have mentioned earlier that my mother fell and broke her hip. Her hospitalization and subsequent care has focussed attention on something that I had been trying to not notice.
Earlier in the year she started to give up her hobbies of sewing and quilting. She complained that she couldn't see to thread the needle and we moved the machine and got better lighting and brought her a threading device to make it easier. But still she wouldn't try and we gradually realized that she couldn't concentrate on a project any longer.
For as long as I can remember Mom had always been the one who kept track of the family bills and wrote the checks. Then one day when my father questioned her about one of them she handed him the checkbook and told him to do it from now on.
When she was hospitalized there was a lot of disorientation, but I passed it off as due to the drugs and pain-killers. But it is persisting and it is clear now that she is losing a lot of her short-term memory. She asks the same questions repeatedly.
She remembers every detail of things that happened long ago however. She has a quilt that she made when she was 16, and she still sleeps under it sometime. Like many old quilts it was made from scraps. My mom can tell a story about nearly every piece of fabric in that quilt - dresses that she or her sisters wore to school and church, which ones they liked and which ones they didn't.
I have been looking into nursing home care this past week, but I find it very hard to do. Mom has never been an out-going person and she doesn't like unfamiliar things. I think she will go down-hill fast there. For now we have arranged for her to have someone in her home with her to help see to her. She seems mildly amused by that so far. She said she it made her feel like a rich person.
