Treasures of the Heart

I was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the beginning of 2004.  I had talked to Grandma occasionally to see how she was.  It was plain that she was overwhelmed taking care of her sister Betty.  I believed that God wanted me to move to Gardiner to take care of her and help her with her sister's affairs.  When I next called her I asked if she would let me live with her to help take care of her.  She was hesitant and told me that she wanted to pray about the situation first.  We later talked on the phone and she told me that yes, she did want me to come live with her.

That was the beginning of my plans to come back to Montana.  I was just getting squared away from a debt that I incurred when I was unemployed for four months in 2003.  Aside from serving her, I had also realized that living in Baton Rouge, I had no security when things went wrong.  If something were to happen in Gardiner, I would be able to, at least partially, rely on family if there were ever any serious problems.  In Montana I had an uncle, my parents, and my grandmother.  I understood that there would be sacrifice involved in taking care of her, but I don't think I expected it to be for eight years.  I finally made the move in April of 2004 and immediately found work at the Yellowstone Super 8 in Gardiner.

Especially at the beginning, I wanted to see what was really going on.  At the time, Grandma and Betty were going to the Town Cafe three meals a day for seven days a week.  They weren't exactly fast eaters, so they literally stayed at the Cafe for about six hours of the day.  Since I was working on the night shift anyway, I typically had breakfast with them after work before going home and sleeping for the day.  I was spending about $10 a meal there, but Grandma and Betty would get a Meals on Wheels discount for lunch five days a week.  That amounted to a $3 meal every day.  So Grandma probably spent about $770 every month at that restaurant.  A little excessive, right?

That summer I would take care of the yard in the middle of the night on my nights off.  I'd mow the lawn in the cool evening.

Grandma's house was cluttered but she felt like she knew where everything was (which most things she forgot about over time).  She kept it reasonably clean otherwise, and she was in good health for her age.

In 2006, Betty hit Grandma when she woke up confused.  Having Alzheimer's Disease, she didn't know what she was doing.  Grandma was getting more consternated figuring out how to have Betty comply with her wishes.  Being sisters, Betty was often independent of her sister.  Once I even had to restrain Betty because she was so obstinate and violent as we were trying to go to the Town Cafe.  It was such a weird feeling to do that.  Grandma wanted to keep Betty close to her, but it was difficult for her to let her sister go.

One day, Grandma tried to convince Betty to go to the Town Cafe with her, and because Betty was so frustrated that she couldn't remember anything, she hit herself in the head with a piece of metal.  It was a metal rain gauge that my Grandpa made years ago for her.  She hit herself so hard that she knocked herself unconscious.

It was at that point that I forced the issue with Grandma: we were no longer able to take care of Betty and she needed to be cared for by a nursing facility.  Grandma finally agreed and that very week we took Betty to the nursing home that is now Livingston Health and Rehabilitation Center in Livingston.

After getting used to her new environment, Betty stopped being violent.  I think having her sister tell her what to do was Betty's biggest obstacle.  Once that was removed, Betty became a social butterfly at the nursing home, and was pleasant again.  She even flirted with many of the older gentlemen there!

In 2007 I began to clean out Betty's house next door.  Betty's house got about 80% cleaned out after about 2 months of effort with 5 people's help.  I'm telling you, these two ladies were pack rats!  We even had to purchase a semi trailer just to hold all of Betty's furniture and things.

As Grandma saw that I was throwing away truck loads of Betty's things which were often ruined by cats that were allowed to spray in the house, her hoarding became worse.  She sorted our own garbage cans at the house, and didn't understand why I threw away so much.  One place that she was particularly sensitive was the refrigerator where she kept leftovers way past how long they would actually be good.  It was a rough patch in our relationship.

One time, while I was cleaning out Betty's huge garage, I was on the phone talking to my good friend Aaron.  While we were on the phone Grandma asked to speak to me about the feed bags I was taking to the dump.

For many years, Betty fed the mule deer that frequented our yards.  Though it's not strictly legal, no one did anything about it, despite that what Betty did was common knowledge in Gardiner and Livingston.  She bought feed from Livingston and kept all the bags after she fed the deer.  By the time I started cleaning out her garage, there was a neat stack of feed bags almost six feet high!  No one in my family is obsessive-compulsive, right?

I had put these bags into my car, and Grandma asked me, "Why are you throwing these bags away?  It's money in the bank!"

I was a bit angry because I had been dealing with this for awhile, and I replied, "It's not money in the bank--it's trash in my car!"

Aaron burst out laughing.  I was definitely glad she couldn't hear him.  I still threw all those bags away, but Grandma resented what I had done.

While I was trying to clean out Betty's house, Grandma got pneumonia.  I didn't really know that she was as badly sick as she actually was.  It took one of the people I hired to tell me to take her to the hospital.  The irony was that this house cleaner was a lush and needed help of her own!  When I took Grandma to the hospital, the doctor told me that there was evidence that she also had a silent heart attack.  Women don't have the same signs of heart attack that men have, and it's often difficult to tell.  Since she was already sick, those signs might have been more difficult to see.

It took Grandma a couple weeks to recover from pneumonia, and she had to stay at the same facility where Betty stayed.  She didn't feel like she belonged there, and was unhappy staying at the nursing home, even temporarily.

She would get aspirating pneumonia again several times while I stayed with her.  She tended to get it about once a year.  I was getting pretty darn good at seeing the symptoms and when I saw them, immediately took her to the hospital for antibiotics.  I think the first time she had pneumonia, I simply thought she was sick with the flu, which she was for awhile.  I didn't make the same mistake twice.

By 2007 I realized that I needed to get out of the house at least once a week to keep my sanity.  Grandma's hoarding affected me, and it was difficult to deal with her sometimes.

I decided that our house was becoming to dangerous for her to live in because it was so cluttered.  I had to clean out the hallway even though she argued with me because of it.

She was still able to drive at the age of 79, but her ability was diminishing.  I still ate with her at the Town Cafe, but not as often as I used to when I first arrived.  In order to keep her from driving by herself, I started to take her to the Town Cafe every day.  Her 80th birthday was in 2008, and at this point I didn't believe that she should drive anymore.  She was getting into minor accidents, and would get sleepy if she drove too long.  I tried to convince the examiner not to let her renew her license, but he did it anyway.  He needed to give her a driving exam, but wouldn't since she knew what she was supposed to do in a car.

I was so relieved when my aunt Jean came to live with us in 2008.  She was able to clean the house while Grandma kept a watchful eye on me.  I also think that Jean was much more diplomatic about Grandma's hoarding than I was, which also helped a lot.  Having her perspective calmed me down quite a bit.  Jean was able to keep the house clean and take care of Grandma when I couldn't.  Plus, having Jean there gave Grandma someone else to talk to.  She got lonely easily, and it was good for her to be able to have her daughter there too.

Grandma's health was fading by the end of 2009.  You never really get over pneumonia at that age; you get a little weaker every time.  She wasn't as able to walk like she used to, and often needed assistance.  She was starting to have dementia.  The dementia would get worse when she was sick, and that was a visible sign for us.  It didn't help matters when she got shingles in 2010, right after she recovered from pneumonia.  What a miserable disease!  The doctor even prescribed an opium patch for the pain since it was so severe.  About a couple weeks before she completely recovered from it, she had a bad fall.  Although she knocked herself unconscious, there wasn't much more that we noticed.

Grandma wasn't eating as well as she used to.  We'd have to make sure that she ate her meals because she would get distracted.  That was the case Easter Sunday.  She received a meal from Gardiner Baptist Church that day.  I went to work and made sure everything was on the table for her before I left.  When I got back home at 10:00 pm, I saw that she still hadn't eaten.  I was a little angry and immediately got started cooking some more food for her and gave her an Ensure to start drinking since she hadn't eaten all day.

That's when she had her stroke.  I instantly recognized all the symptoms and got her medical help.  I think the fall she had previously was the main reason for this hemorrhagic stroke in the center of her brain.  At the hospital, the doctor only gave us a 25% chance of her surviving.  As it turned out, she lived.  We gave her a good chance to recover, but she remained an invalid for the rest of her life.

Her condition never really changed for the duration of her stay at the nursing home where Betty lived.  At this point in her life, she didn't really understand where she was.  It was for the best because back in 2006, she didn't like staying at the nursing home.  She had a new form of dementia caused by this stroke.  All of the people that she loved were alive in her mind, including her husband.

The work situation for Jean started to crumble and so she eventually gained a new career.  She didn't like it that much, but at least she was making money.  Finally Jean went back to her old career in Washington late last year.

Early last year, Betty finally passed away.  Alzheimer's Disease never lets a person go easily.  I think it was fortunate that Grandma couldn't retain Betty's death.  We and the nursing home didn't even hurt her with the knowledge, though she held her sister's hand as she went.

Myself, my work situation changed dramatically in the past year too.  Now I only work part-time at Super 8 as needed.

Grandma hadn't had pneumonia since she went to the nursing home.  This last time she had it, I knew she wasn't going to be able to recover.  I think I was the last relative to see her awake.  I would have stayed with her in her last hours, but that wasn't God's plan.

I think the most dramatic lessons I've learned from living with Grandma is about a person's independence and belonging.  As we get older, we feel that we deserve to remain independent of everyone else and think we can still do everything just fine.  The truth is that those abilities escape us eventually.  Even when we see that we don't have those abilities anymore, we still want to keep them close to us.  It's not easy to allow other people to serve us when we think we're more than capable.

At the same time, we feel that we are not so independent of other people and things.  I think Grandma's hoarding was directly related to her husband's death many years ago.  When she lost something so dear to her heart, she decided that she didn't want to lose anything else.  She tried with all her might to grasp everything she and her family possessed, but eventually those things became meaningless.  It's not easy to let people and possessions go when it hurts so much to do it.

In order to be heavenly-minded, I think as a Christian, it's important to not hold anything in this world too dear to my heart that I can't let it go.  While on Earth, everything fades, dies, rots, and eventually becomes meaningless.  Jesus was, is, and will be; he remains constant even in my weakness.

I believe that Jesus lived in her heart, so I'm not trying to say that everything she did was worthless.  What is important is that while we live here on Earth, we invest in Heavenly treasures that don't go away with the passage of time.

During these years, I've learned many lessons.

I've learned that Medicaid is the worst piece of legislative [insert expletive here] I've ever fought with.  I even wonder if a person is better off without the government's intervention after my experiences with it.  Our own government regularly makes new ridiculous laws that retroactively make it more difficult for an honest person to use Medicaid assistance in their old age.  How can anyone properly prepare for that?  That's the nicest thing I have to say about Medicaid.

I think people don't realize how argumentative relatives get when their loved one is getting ready to pass away.  It's like watching vultures circle a carcass in the desert.  Anyone who thinks that when they die their children will peacefully divide their belongings is deceiving themselves.  A person needs to designate specific belongings to specific people in their will to ensure that their wishes are met.

I have a huge beef with the nursing home industry in the United States, but more specifically in Montana.  Do you realize that nursing homes in Montana are only required to have 1 Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) for every 14.33 patients in a nursing home during the day?  Did you know that at night, that ratio goes down to 1 CNA for every 43 patients?  Just so that you understand, it's impossible to change that many diapers, get everyone fed, make their beds, and treat them like a human being under those conditions.  It's tough for a CNA to manage 15 people at night, let alone the day.  At the time that Grandma passed away, she was paying, out of pocket, about $74,000 a year to the nursing home.  In Montana, that pays for 3 CNAs' salaries for a year.  The nursing homes have found a way to get rich on making old people poor and ignore them just the same.

Looking back at the past eight (almost nine) years, I believe I've grown from this experience.  I have a good appreciation for the elderly who are often neglected and forgotten.  It's not easy to live in a time when most or all your friends have already died and you remain, and I sympathize with it.  They may have the same story to tell a million times, but I still want to hear it again.  I've learned more about my family and ancestors than I would have otherwise.  I think I more appreciate living in the moment, not worrying so much about what will happen in the future, but still being mindful to prepare for the day.

[edited for minor details 2/26/2013]