Taking Care of Our Moms

My Mom is 82 years old. This picture of her was taken when she was 16, about the time she met my father. You can, I think, understand the attraction.

She's had 8 children (I'm the oldest) and one miscarriage so her body's strength has been tested several times. My father died, after a series of debilitating health challenges, in 2002. About six months before he passed away, he and my Mom moved together into a nursing home in Mashpee, Massachusetts. My sister has, ever since, been the go-to person for my mother's care. Because I live four hours away, I function as her backup, the place where she can go for extra help, to talk, to commiserate.

We've been doing a lot of commiserating lately.

Mom is visibly fading, like a balloon slowly losing its air. It's where we're all headed so it must be accepted. But the thing is, the nursing home's quality of care has declined to the point where they are actively contributing to my mother's decline.

The place, on Route 28 in Mashpee (this is on Cape Cod) is on its third set of owners since Mom and Dad arrived. It was originally chosen because of its proximity to my sister's home and because its management and managers were running a quality facility. Not extravagent but caring.

Now it's owned by a firm called Sunbridge out of New Mexico. And it shares the same values as other corporations such as Wall Street and British Petroleum and Walmart. And those values can be summed up in four words: greed, greed, greed and greed.

I'm on the Cape now, visiting my mother for two days because I want to be able to talk with her while she can still talk back. I needed to see for myself whether this fading is self-induced (she's not eating at all and rapidly losing weight) or part of the natural process (that we've managed to make so unnatural) of dying.

I also wanted to investigate my mother's claims that the food in the place is inedible.

Conclusion: she'll probably be around with us for a while longer but the woman we rely on as the glue in our family is disappearing and no amount of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments will change that trajectory. She's on the last leg of her personal journey.

But her complaints about the food in the nursing home are spot on. And I've got the pictures to prove it.