“Witness to the Waning” by Carla Sciaky

Not all of this stress is my mother’s fault.  Nor the dog’s.

Moving is hard on anybody — or at least that’s what everyone says.  Today I went by our old house, still staged from two months ago when it went on the market and was so promptly claimed by the blessed woman who loves it and wants to live in it. I went in search of a few items I need for the coming weeks, like the two books to help me prepare my program notes for an upcoming concert, the clothespins we use to keep a package of sweet potato chips from going stale, and the lunchbox for when I have to take my dinner to rehearsal tomorrow night.  

I found one of the two books.  And the lunchbox.  I forgot to look for the clothespins because I had inadvertently left my list sitting on the table here in the new house when I left for rehearsal early this morning.  And the other book?  I have no idea where it is, but it is not anywhere that I looked.

My dog and my mother are both — to put it bluntly and plainly — waning.  Bella, our family labradoodle, will soon turn sixteen in calendar years, assuming she lives that long.  I never really bought the dog-years equation, but either way, there is no denying it – she is OLD.  My mother turned ninety in the fall.  These days, I shuttle back and forth between the two dementia units.  

Bella wanders, panting, through the new house.  It is painful to watch her, given that once she finally picks a place to nap, a mysterious and laborious selection process, the letting down onto the floor is clearly difficult.  In her increasingly diminishing waking hours, we sometimes catch her staring into space — or, surprisingly, ironically, into the full-length mirror that Dan hung in our bedroom.  She can hardly see (or hear) anymore, and her sense of smell, which has actually never been her strong point anyway, is notably duller.  I have to hold the biscuit right at her nose for her to notice, and then her mouth often misses when she goes for it.  It’s comical and tragic at the same time.  Thankfully her good-naturedness prevails, not being one to give into embarrassment.    

Dan and I trade off taking her outside to do her thing in a fervent and ongoing hope that she will not do it in the kitchen overnight.  During her most recent excursion, the biscuit to guide her up the steps and back into the kitchen from the yard completely eluded her.  Dan had to maneuver her to get her mouth near the thing so her body would follow.  Stairs are such a mystery to her now.  Once back on the main floor, she cheerfully makes her way through the house, clu-CLUNK-step-step, repeating this strange new rhythm that made its abrupt debut in September, out of the blue. Clu-CLUNK-step-step, skip, clu-CLUNK-step-step.  Like hiccups, only it’s her front legs.

My mother’s decline has many weird similarities to Bella’s, though we do have some better measurements.  The eye doctor records her acuity as the same as ever, but she reports that her glasses don’t work right.  We knew her hearing was suffering, but now even with the hearing aids, she can’t process all that is being said.  Food lacks flavor for her, and she has lost interest in it for the most part.  Much like the dog biscuits, we tempt her with ice cream bars (though not on the stairs) but she usually doesn’t finish them.  She talks of people she knows or sees on TV but she can’t recall anyone’s name, so we have to guess who she means.  (Trump was “that man on the program that people want out.”)  Unable to hold on to characters or plot, she tells us there is something wrong with books nowadays, and then picks up another to see if it’s any better.  Sitting down and getting up is a little easier for her than for Bella, fortunately; plus, she can use a cane or walker, or someone’s arm.

There’s another thing, or rather a whole category of things, that I retrieved from the old house today.  When we moved out last month, I wasn’t thinking and left behind all of my concert clothes.  With performances coming up this weekend, it was time to transport my dress shoes and all the long skirts, dresses, and tops that conform with our orchestra’s color scheme:  black, with red and silver highlights.  Once back at the new house, that reclaimed portion of my wardrobe was draped into a voluminous heap on the couch, the only drop-off point I could conjure up.  Until the undetermined time that we remodel this place, there is not enough closet space in which to hang them.  I hear myself sigh as I write this.  The shoes are in a bag on the floor, next to the couch that is now a mountain.  I’m too tired to figure out what to do with any of this formalwear right now, let alone during the interval – perhaps months, or longer – that we will have to wait before the remodel begins.  And then there’s during the said remodel.  In the meantime, who needs a couch?  We have two chairs.

(I’m pretty sure that was another sigh just now.)

My mother is aware she recently had a significant birthday.  I heard her tell someone that she has been living for nine months!  Another time it came out as “I turned nine hundred!”  And then sometimes she gets the number “ninety” loud and clear.  She reports having seen my father on several occasions of late, and also her sister, both of whom no longer walk the earth. We don’t attribute those sightings to dementia, but instead take it as a sign that the veil between worlds is growing more permeable for her.  Today she had her first ride in the van that drives the elderly to their appointments.  She had been anxiously dreading the ordeal, which was looming as too much unknown for her.  As it turned out, another woman on the van used to work at the school where she was a teacher for twenty years!  And, as a bonus, the driver used to work with my brother.  So it became a merry ride.  Lately, she has been attracting, if not collecting, these small world moments, as well as a steady parade of visitors from the Old Days.

Bella’s indelicate dance announces itself again, punctuating my thoughts.  I think resignedly how smart we were to put off refinishing the floors for a while yet.

I am tired.  I am grateful to be in this new house, in this beautiful portion of an older suburb — all the more unusual because it functions as an actual neighborhood, tucked into a surprisingly rural pocket off a main street.  Unlike the growing anonymity and isolation of the people on our old block, here the neighbors come together for both informal and organized community activities, especially during the warmer months.  Those months do promise to arrive, though so far this week has been the same-old cold weather.  I am grateful, yes, but tired.  Tired from driving the mire of highways and town roads between here and my mother’s apartment, from deciding several times daily whether to check on how she is doing or go on the faith that the aide will think to call me if I am needed.  Tired of taking the dog out when it’s cold and windy, standing in the yard and waiting for her to do something, when we used to be able to say “Go potty, Bella,” and she would comply, eagerly, so attuned to us and our affections.  Tired of watching her so closely once back inside, every time she steps onto the new living room rug, wondering whether she will descend into the telltale elimination crouch, continue to keep pace with her singular dance, or painstakingly lower herself down for another comatose nap from which we eventually have to wake her and coax her up for another trip outside.  Tired of being startled out of my sleep at night by the click of her nails on the wooden floorboards of the kitchen, as she paces (around and around? back and forth? willy nilly?), the repetitive percussion making it sound as if our kitchen is expansive rather than the large-ish postage stamp that it is.  Tired of dreading the next part of our move, the final portion of a long multi-phase transition:  that tedious and brain-sucking process of sorting through all the stuff stored in the bowels of the old house, the result of living there for almost twenty years.  Months ago, we had solemnly vowed to each other that we would not make the mistake of moving every last bit into this new house.  How can you have a fresh start if you take it all with you?  But back then, we had had no way of knowing how things would feel now.

And I’m the most tired of — and from — the inner battleground, hearing my mother say repeatedly that she is ready for it to be over, and wishing, partly for her sake and partly for ours (my brother’s and mine), that it were.  And then feeling guilty that I could wish such a thing.  And simultaneously wishing it never to be over, because who wants their mom’s life to be over?  Even though I know she is so very done, wanting to no longer take up space, desperately hoping to no longer be a burden, to no longer wake up to another blurry and hard-to-navigate day.  And even though we all know this is coming — in the best of all worlds, because it’s right that your parents go before you, right? — it still grabs at you, into the very atoms of the very entrails of you.  Because no matter how it all went down, all those years up till now, there is only one person who holds that title and that place in your life.  

I do know she will never set foot in my new house.  Bella is covering that ground for her.

Postlude of April 2, 2021: My mother passed away a few weeks after the above writing, on March 3, 2020. She died peacefully in her sleep, just as she had wanted.  Two weeks later we all went into isolation due to Covid-19.  Bella actually hung on for six more months, well past her sixteenth birthday, which we celebrated with extra biscuits.  Dan and I had her put to rest on September 17, 2020.  It was a year of loss, of grief, and also of growth.  Because of the pandemic there were no organized neighborhood activities, so I met people by playing music for them from my driveway once a week.  Our house will begin its remodel process in the coming months.

About Carla Sciaky
She/Her/Hers

Carla Sciaky is certified as a DreamBuilder® Life Coach. She is currently working on two book projects and her essay “Love’s Masquerade” appears in Short Sweet & Sacred, by Erin Bloom Davenport, to be released April 2021. She has been featured in printed and internet media as well as on radio and television stations across the United States. Her musical career of five decades includes a critically acclaimed Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1980 and a recent induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, as well as countless solo recordings and awards for her songwriting. She sees clients and facilitates daily Zoom sessions through Doorway to Healing (www.doorwaytohealing.com), her well-being practice, which implements the use of several modalities to navigate the path of healing.