Mama Was A Hooker…
From time to time I have this debate with myself, and I usually lose. Is it preferable to lose your
mind or your body? Mom has an amazingly clear mind for an 87 year-old who has been in a nursing home for about three years. I’m thankful we have them as alternatives, but those places dull the mind, kill the appetite, and smell like a concoction of piss and Lysol.
Her days are all the same, spent in her power-lift recliner watching TV. Her knees and hips are shot, making her a prisoner of the space she occupies. Not even the large print books we have taken to her are comfortably readable with her failing eyesight. And her poor gnarled hands, ravaged by arthritis, can no longer perform the miracles of earlier years. The photo here is not of Mom’s hands (she is far too proud to allow a revealing photo of her once busy hands), but could be as these are so similar to hers.
My earliest memories include those hands, always busy. If she was not cooking or cleaning or sewing (She made everything we wore in those days, even Daddy’s dress suits and ties.), she was working at one or more crafts. Her projects at any given time followed, more or less, the trend of national popularity. At various times she immersed herself in counted cross-stitch, candle making, crochet, decoupage (Daddy used to warn us to keep moving or she would decoupage us.), needlepoint, foiling, making knick-knacks and designs by gluing rocks and beads and shells together, basket weaving, and latch-hooking rugs.
I don’t know if people still latch-hook. Many have probably never heard of it. It is a tedious process starting with a design on a backing, which can be canvas, burlap, or a jute mesh. Today there are even molded plastic grid panels. What I remember of Mama’s work involved a design marked out on burlap. A latch-hook tool was use to hook and
pull the right color of yarn (all wool back then) through the backing and latch or knot it into place. A small area rug such as the one shown here involved many hours of work, hooking and pulling and latching hundreds or thousands of pieces of yarn. Slowly the raw outline was filled in with the chosen colors in a paint-by-numbers fashion until the design evolved into full bloom. Mama loved roses, so much of her work involved those lovely flowers and/or rose colors.
Mama can no longer do those wonderfully creative activities that added her personal touch of love and warmth to our home. She can no longer latch-hook. But in her day, Mama was a helluva hooker…
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I fell for it… hook, line and sinker.
You do your mama proud, you sure do!
I loved this piece Winston. I know of the crafts you speak of… I remember amazing crocheted pieces my grandmother made with gnarled arthritic hands…even way back then. Beautiful lacy creations. I still have a magnificent tablecloth that she made. I hope there are still some of your mother’s treasures circulating in your family….they are irreplaceable. Bless your sweet Mama and her once busy hands….
Beautiful piece.
My mom crocheted and I still use the afghans she made when I take a nap as well as have the tablecloths and doilies (latter in the closet but I do admire their beauty). I have one of those hooked rugs that my husband’s aunt made.
This was a loving tribute to your mom.
Wonderful last line! And very beautiful tribute.
It’s a hard question. I sometimes think that the effect of a mind going is worse for the close family than it is for the one who’s lost it. But the process of being aware that you’re losing it, oh, no. Maybe better to keep your mind. And lose your dignity. Oh, old age, phooey.
It is tough. My mom is 78 and currently resides in an assisted living facility. In October she broke her hip, and following the surgery, she had to spend several weeks in a nursing home while she recovered. (Staying in my home, as much as I might like it, would not be possible at this time, as I am currently the breadwinner of the family and my husband is ill). While she was there, she “forgot” a lot of the things she used to do on her own, because she didn’t do them for weeks. She forgot how and when to take her pills, because the nursing home just told her. She forgot how to dress herself, because the nursing home did it for her. She forgot how to do her laundry, same thing. It took three or four months back in her apartment for her to re-learn everything that she used to do easily. So I agree with you as far as the good and the bad of the nursing home(s). I am grateful that she has the assisted living facility, because she feels like she has her “own” place, but she still has the help she needs.
Her primary problem is dementia, so my mom is one whose mind is going. She (even after the hip surgery) does not use a walker or anything like that. But she can’t read or write, and she can only hold a conversation if you use small words and very few abstract ideas. For me it has been hard watching this decline. One of the hardest things was when she could no longer tie her shoes, so I bought her those velcro fastened shoes and she didn’t understand them. It’s heartbreaking when I think that this same person, who patiently taught me hwo to tie my shoes, could no longer even handle velcro without help. But I think I would prefer it this way than to watch her mind go through the pain of a body that no longer works. With the dementia, she has forgotten most of the “bad” in her life. She remembers the “happy” and while she is distressed over what she can’t remember, we can still go “shopping” or out to eat, so she still feels like a member of society. So I guess out of the two evils (mind loss or body loss), I have to currently think that mind loss, while not something I would wish on my worst enemy, is somewhat preferable to having an intact mind with a non-working body. I can’t imagine how my mom would do, if she wanted to crochet (she never did so this is a hypothetical), if she pictures an afghan in her mind, figured out what she needed, etc., and her hands couldn’t. How heartbreaking either way. Every time I see my mom (almost every day) I am reminded of the saying “old age is not for sissies.”
It’s true.
Winston, great post. I ponder the mind vs. body thing as well because both played out in my parents. Daddy’s body failed him, but his mind didn’t. He spent the last few years of his life angry and in pain, not at all the real Daddy. He lashed out at mother - made her life hell, in fact. He was so frustrated that the diabetes and arthritis was taking over and that there wasn’t a damn think he could do about it. He died in 1999.
Mother, on the other hand, was healthy as a horse. A year before she died, I took her to the doctor for a check-up and he reported she had the lungs and heart of a 40-year-old (she was 87 at the time). She looked years younger. But by that time, she’d checked out mentally. She hated that she was the “last” - outliving Daddy and her sisters. Her dementia set in, as it had with my grandmother. So. She was healthy, but in a mental haze the last couple years of her life.
Which is worse? I don’t know. I used to think Daddy’s way was better, but more and more I’m thinking Mother’s dementia wins out. Ah, me.
BTW, wish my ma had been a hooker. Wonderful!
@MaryB: Either way, if protracted, can be horrible. I’ve seen them both and would have a hard time choosing. My Daddy did it right, if a bit too soon. Just days short of his 75th BD he had a heart attack during the night while sleeping and that was it. No lingering. No pain. No burden. That’s the way I want to go…
Yup - I’d rather wake up dead, too. My Aunt Mildred was lucky enough to do that. Whatta way to go!
Louise could do it all. The strawberry preserves she made and stored in the freezer were the most vivid clear red I have ever seen. They were absolutely delicious! She also made a strawberry dessert that was so memorable that I can see it’s lovely pink color and taste summer if only for a moment! I still have Louise’s patterns for sock monkey’s and clowns. Yes, she was a crafty hooker.
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