Caring

A brown recliner sat in the corner of the family room in the house where I lived as a boy.?My mother read to me and taught me to read in that recliner.?This was back in the 1970s, before my younger brothers were born, when I was the youngest.?I recall that recliner, with a real wood fireplace to the left and a sliding glass door into our backyard straight ahead.?The feeling I have when I think of that place is a feeling of home.?This was the house we lived in when my dad took his amazing ride from Denver to Aspen.?I remember his bike in the garage, next to the yellow 1976 Plymouth Duster and the sky blue, mid-70s Peugeot 504, and eventually the two-tone tan and white 1979 Ford Van that stayed in the family throughout my high school career.

This was the house where my family first landed after traveling across the country from my birthplace in New York when I was less than a year old.?My mother grew up in Long Island, where I was born.?She met my father in college at a small private school in Massachusetts, and they married soon after graduation.?He was in the Air Force and going through dental school, so they bounced around a bit, living in Texas, California, and New York, but with my dad’s military service concluded they were looking for a place to live.?

Coming to Colorado must have been a big adjustment.?My mom did not know anyone out here.?But from the earliest times I can remember it felt like we had always lived in our neighborhood.?My mother had so many dear friends in that neighborhood that our annual Christmas Eve party was like a family reunion.?Her house was like a home for family and friends.?It is no wonder some call her Saint Maureen.

She raised four boys.?She fed us.?She shuttled us to practice and all over the place for tournaments and games.?But most of all she cared about us.?She talked to us.?She knew us.?And we knew that.?Our home was like no other place because she made it that way.?And even after we left the nest, we could always come back to that place.

We moved to a new place in 1983, but that new home, which my dad had custom built, became a home just like the first one.?There were so many good memories in that home.?It had a big deep garage where some stuff from our old house was stored.?It moved around over the years, and eventually some things got lost.?The Masi stayed.?The Masi’s frame pump was carelessly destroyed (I think by me) and I’m now searching for vintage frame pumps online.?Some old bike gear hung around for a good 20 years after the ride, but eventually was purged during the house renovation or my parents’ most recent move.

Life makes us move on.?It makes it hard to keep things.?The fact that we still have the Masi is special, considering how many years and moves and phases of life it survived through.?Over that same amount of time, my dad worked in four different offices.?His original staff served him well for many years, but when they retired he had to adjust to totally new people from a newer generation.?The practice became more complex as well.?Eventually, my mother, after raising four boys, became his office manager.?She managed numbers, people, challenges of a full-time job only to come home and continue to be the person she always was. She rarely complained and always handles things in a positive way.?

When she became a grandmother, she was devoted and loving and her grandchildren instantly formed a special bond with her.?She worked, managed a large household, and was a star grandmother for many years.?Then when my father retired, and when many might have finally taken a rest, she kept being the amazing grandmother to five more adoring kids.?She also cared for my father as medical ailments started to slow him down.?Then last year after a difficult surgery left my father in rehab at age 79, he had to remain in a room at the rehab center for three months.?We were warned that the anesthesia and recovery process would likely make the dementia symptoms worse, and they did.?He was a fall risk, and so we needed to have someone with him at all times.?They pay people called “sitters” to do this, and those people are very kind, patient and good people who do their best to help.?But my mother would stay there with my dad, sometimes 16 hours a day, even when the sitters were there.?She was home to him.?She was the only familiar thing he had.?And there were hard times.?Irritability or combativeness, senseless behavior like a two-year-old, not recognizing family, all of these things are common with dementia.

Long after many would have turned away, given up, justified their need for relief (and it would be well justified) my mother endured.?We visited as much as we could, brought food, took my dad and mom out to the patio of the rehab facility (an ordeal with all the cords and tubes coming out of him and in his weakened condition) and scheduled sitters to be there as much as possible.?We even urged her to take breaks, and she did, but it was hard.?Very hard.?She sat in a room, in a chair, for hours and hours, for months with her husband of over 50 years watching him seem to lose touch with all reality, wondering if he would make it out.

The facility, like so many after the pandemic, was understaffed.?Despite being one of the better facilities, the hallways and room sometimes smelled like pee.?The garden area was small, but nice, when he was well enough to get out there.?But my dad was going downhill at that place.?His mood and mentality were that of the old one in the pack, confused as he was, still able to sense the feeling that he was slowing the pack down.?Being at that place was killing him.?It was killing both of them. ?We had to get him home.

My dad would always give me little talks when I was a kid, and one theme he came back to over and over again was how important it was to marry the right woman. ?He always talked about how the best thing he ever did in life was marry my mom.?He could not say enough about her.?And more than 50 years later his words couldn’t have been truer.?I listened to them.?I found the love of my life, Sarah, when I was 39 years old.?I can only hope to be with her for 50 years.?She has been so loving and caring to my mother and father through their whole ordeal that it amazes me.?She saw how hard it was on my dad, my mom, and my whole family having my dad at the rehab facility.?The facility started hinting at putting him into a nursing home and we were all against it, but we could not imagine how he could live outside of a medical facility.?He needed constant supervision.?He was fed through a tube and would refuse real food, and it was that way for months.?He needed physical therapy to stand or walk after months in bed.?He needed help bathing, going to the bathroom, getting dressed.?But, he needed to be out of there, and my Sarah said “let’s get him home by Thanksgiving.”

I drove my dad home from the facility.?It was a clear fall day.?We took e-470 and cruised along with some music playing.?His spirits were lifted.?When we got to the house and got him in, my brother put him in a chair and gave him a deli sandwich.?He devoured it.?He calmed down as family came back to fill the house around him.?When my mother arrived, he knew he was home.

My father has improved quite a bit since then, although he is still quite affected by his various medical issues.?He still needs a lot of care, and my mother performs a lot of it, from feeding, meds, cleaning and cooking.?But we have a great caregiver, with whom my dad feels comfortable.?We’ve been working hard to get approval through IHSS Medicaid to allow her to continue working with my dad.?It has been an ordeal.?The regulations and procedures are complex and cumbersome enough to be a daunting obstacle to older folks who are working the equivalent of two demanding full-time jobs every day, seven days a week providing care to their ailing loved one who cannot often even comprehend what they are doing.

No care can compare to the care of a loving wife and mother.?My father was right.?He was the luckiest man in the world to have met and married my mom.?The two of them are heroes in the way they raised a family, cared for one another through ups and downs, and have persisted through these recent challenges.?My dad rode from Denver to Aspen in a day.?It was the kind of crazy, “I can’t believe it” stuff he would do.?He was dedicated and hardworking, and so much of what I am I must thank him for.?But my mother, well, it’s hard to explain or put it into words.?She is our family.?She has been on a heroic journey for many decades and her devotion, tenacity and kindness are unexcelled.

As I work through sore muscles, sciatic nerve pain, broken cleats, cold days, and training amidst a busy schedule of work and finalizing Medicaid plans, I sometime feel daunted by the task ahead.?But I care.?I’m doing this because I care.?My mother showed me what that means, and I thank her for being an example for me in life.

I wish my mom, my wife, and mothers all around a happy Mother’s Day.?No amount of pedaling can equal what you do, but pedal I will, as a salute to you too!