Category Archives: Aging & dementia

I’m in trouble if the the pack rat gene is inherited

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You may die, but your stuff lives on.

The last few days brought to mind comedian George Carlin’s riff about stuff: “Your house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”

You can say that again.

It’s what we’re dealing with as we try to get my mother’s stuff of all kinds under control.

clearing the houseI stared yesterday on two closets. I moved out the clothing first, which will mostly go to Goodwill or one of the groups who sell to Savers. This was hard. In the last several years, she had a few favorite, easy to wear shirts. I tried not to pause to take in each one. If I did, I would never get through the job. On the other hand, I had to check every pocket because my mother always told of hiding bits of jewelry and then forgetting where it had been safely hidden. It was a slow process, but the clothing pile grew. Bonnie will do another cut through it, pulling out nicer items to go to her church thrift shop.

I previously mentioned the genealogical files, papers, publications, notes, history books on specific counties, correspondence with other genealogical researchers, photos of long dead ancestors, notes about distant cousins discovered through detailed digging, and on and on. It’s not like this is all in one place. It’s everywhere. I’m not finished going through the second closet and have already found lots of things that, for now, are just being piled up in one spot for further evaluation and sorting.

In amongst all this are bits of personal correspondence, more papers from Carey D. Miller, photographs and negatives. Yesterday I found boxes and bags filled with old recycled Christmas gift wrapping, plastic bags so old that some had biodegraded in place, newspaper ads for various “investments” carefully clipped and set aside, even boxes of empty boxes. Pieces of broken or damaged jewelry, most of the costume jewelry category. Newspaper clippings going back 40 years or more, including things like yellowed columns by the late Sammy Amalu, Bob Kraus columns about Hawaiian places or historical figures, feature stories about places she had been and people she had known. And did I mention the two hefty stacks of obits? When you are 98, most of your friends have already departed, and she faithfully kept the information about all of them, it seems.

Need I call attention to the humming bird’s nest my sister brought back after a visit with my dad’s relatives in California 59 years ago?

–> Check out today’s small photo gallery featuring this small house of stuff.

Last gift (after Rivera)

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Not long ago, my mother had noticed that the mainland fruit company, Harry & David, had a sale on their Royal Riviera Pears.

These are my mother’s favorites and, despite sometimes hefty shipping charges and her congenital frugality, they regularly appeared on holidays, special occasions, and of course when they were on sale. In this case, the special occasion was Meda’s birthday on January 22.

But by the time the pears arrived, my mother had fallen, been processed through the Straub emergency room, and moved to the Palolo hospice house where she died yesterday morning.

I opened the shipping box a few days ago. The card read: “A gift for you.”

It might have read: “A final gift for you.”

In my mind, I could see the poignant final painting by Diego Rivera. We were fortunate enough to have seen the original in a Rivera retrospective in the Philadelphia Art Museum years ago. This morning, after our walk, I put my old Canon G10 into macro mode and went to work. I had one thing Deigo Rivera didn’t benefit from–a gray cat as background. By the way, there’s a Hawaii link back to Rivera. The style of the great Hawaii artist and muralist, Jean Charlot, developed when he studied with Rivera as a young man in Mexico the 1920s.

Pears

Pears

I don’t know if this does justice to my mother’s many gifts, but it will have to do for now. As always, click on either photo to see a larger version.

Thank you all for your expressions of condolence and support. They are much appreciated as we deal with the many complex feelings left by the huge void that has been left behind.

Helen Yonge Lind 1914-2013

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My mother died this morning at about 7 a.m. in a hospice house in the back of Palolo Valley.

The first photo was taken on Kahala Beach in late 1941. The second taken on Easter Sunday, 2012, during a visit to our home in Kaaawa.

1941 photo

2012 photo

Before her recent decline, she wrote her own obituary.

Here’s what she wrote, more or less. The original was written in her own hand.

Born Honolulu. Graduate Kamehameha School for Girls (before coed), and UH Manoa. Former instructor in Food Science, UH-Manoa. Also former secretary, Hawaiian Historical Society.

Survived by son, Ian Yonge Lind and wife, Meda, of Kaaawa; daughter, Bonnie (Lind) Stevens of California and Honolulu; granddaughter Christine (Lamont) Kemp and son, Kimo Lamont of Manteca, CA, and several great granddaughters.

Memorials to the Helen Yonge Lind Scholarship Fund
University of Hawaii Foundation
2444 Dole Street
Honolulu, HI 96822

Thinking about “death with dignity”

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Another morning with no overnight telephone call from the hospice house in the back of Palolo Valley where my mother has been for the past week. It means she’s still alive. Barely.

On Friday, I was sure she would not survive the night. On Saturday, I was sure she would certainly not survive another night. Yesterday, as I prepared to leave, again for the last time, I just looked at my sister, Bonnie, and said with a shrug, “she may surprise us again.” And she has.

I want to think that my mother is aware, at some deep level, when I’m there at her bedside. I have short, one-sided conversations with her, trying to convey a sense of calm, letting her know that any past issues have been resolved and that she can go any time she chooses. It’s all okay now, is my message.

Perhaps, after nearly 99 years, there is just a lot of life to process before being ready to move on. Perhaps your life doesn’t just flash before your eyes, but is recounted at a slower pace as you prepare to walk that final path. Maybe you can choose to watch the life story to the end, or walk through the door at intermission. I don’t know. It’s all part of the mystery.

What is clear is that dying is hard work, and she’s been working at it for more than a week. I’m exhausted, emotionally and physically, just from watching. She must be as well.

In a recent comment, one person asked: ” Without sounding insensitive, am wondering if your experience has affected your views on end of life choices, including assisted suicide.”

Short answer, not really. It has strengthened my general support for Death with Dignity legislation. But it also raises the question of when and how a person’s wish to die with dignity would be fulfilled.

In my mother’s case, even after her personal physician and a hospice doctor said she was not expected to live more than six months, she assured us that she was not dying, despite the hospice diagnosis. And as long as she wasn’t dying, she would not have taken advantage of a system of physician-assisted death, although I think she would have wanted to have that option. Then her health quickly deteriorated in the past couple of weeks. She now realized she is dying and even said at least once she had already died, but she was now in a mental fog and would not have been capable of exercising her right to die with dignity. Would the responsibility of fulfilling her wish fall on us? If she had gotten an end-of-life prescription, would it have been our job to administer it?

This is only the second time I’ve gone through this death experience with someone very close. My dad died just a couple of years ago, and now my mom is near her end. But we’ve gone through it with a number of cats who we also loved. Cats have a way of telling you when they are ready. They stop eating, and stop caring for themselves. If allowed, they would probably find a place to hide in the hard and just wait to die. But we intervene at that point and seek the help of our veterinarian to make the passing quick and painless. It’s always very hard on us, the survivors. But much easier on the one who is dying.

Given my mother’s condition for the past ten days, quick and painless would have been a blessing, and could have avoided the lang, drawn-out, difficult work of dying.