The Long Good-Bye

"The Long Good-Bye" refers to dementia. Alzheimer's. Used to be called senility. There are so many different forms of it, and the path is arduous. It's said that we (every one of us), knows someone close to them that has, will have, or has died from dementia. 

My mom went that way. As with most of them, the actual end comes about through starvation and/or dehydration, as they lose the ability to eat or drink. 

Just heard a commercial on TV this morning that said there's someone right now with dementia that won't die from it, i.e. a cure is in the offing.

The last two weeks here in Minnesota, this hit the news: a husband with early dementia and his disabled wife, who HE cared for, went for a drive and died. Click link to read the story.

Ron and Mary Tarnowski

 A U.S. Border Patrol helicopter found the couple’s Chevy Tahoe on an overgrown, abandoned driveway in a swampy area off the road just two miles away from the family’s hunting property. They were near Brookston, a town about 30 miles from their Duluth home.

Mary’s Tarnowski’s body was discovered inside the Tahoe, and her husband’s body was found outside of the vehicle, about 50 feet from the road.

Authorities believe Ron Tarnowski may have driven onto the trail accidentally before getting his car stuck in the mud, said Lt. Mike Ceynowa, public information officer for the Duluth Police Department. He said police think Tarnowski left the vehicle in order to seek help.

Autopsy results are still pending, but Karl Tarnowski said there are signs that his mother died of a combination of dehydration and heat while sitting in the car on a day with temperatures in the upper 80s. There is also evidence that Ron Tarnowski had fallen down while trudging through the mud, his son said.

So tragic for this family. They had YEARS left with those two, dementia takes a long time. And I'm told most of that time can be good, although it wasn't with my mom. She had the worst kind, with anger, hallucinations, personality degradation.

And my mom could easily have gotten into trouble this way had we not been successful in taking away her car. We were warned to be careful here, as the phrase "senior abuse" is a possible accusation. My mom had passed the point in her disease path where she could cooperate with getting diagnosed and a care plan put in pace. It's got a name, Anosognosia, here's a link that describes it: Link. We eventually convinced her that her beloved grandson's car was terminal and she let him "borrow" hers. Within a few weeks, she forgot about it.

It's a tough call in the early stage of dementia. I do not fault the Tarnowski family one iota, and hope they don't read this as I know I'd feel worse than I already did. If I hadn't gotten support from the Alzheimer's Association, I wouldn't have been able to do it either. The person seems fine, capable most of the time. And it's so heartbreaking to contemplate loss of independence and mobility. Easy to put off.

Do it anyway. For their sake alone. Here's a link that says how to go about it: Dementia and Driving

And join this site: Caregiver's Forum

Those people saved me. They've seen it all, been through it, learned by trial and error, and helped immeasurably. They are angels.

Worst Year Ever

(Apologizing up front for the trumpisms. Can't help myself)

We came to Mexico 10 years ago for a six week stay. Still here, but the bloom is off the rose this year. It's still warm and beautiful, the food and drink are still fabulous, and we love our little house near the ocean.

But this year sucked bigly. We lost 4 of our friends.

Kim Edwards

Al Warthan

Jack Moon

Phil Hahn

Ron and I were the youngest of an aging, retired population of gringos out here in Dos Palmas, and now we're among the oldest. These friends are sorely missed, and we're all shell-shocked over our losses.

Some more friends left us. Pat moved to France, Richard went back to prison, and Tony's not coming back here.

Pat

Richard

Tony

These three, BTY, are not equally missed by everyone, but still provided that "never a dull moment" quality to the hood.

But we did get some new ones! Cathie's down the hill, Diana's up here, and Alan's next door. YUUUUGELY fun people! Believe me! Gonna make Dos Palmas great again!

Cathie

Diana

Alan

Besides losing friends, other woeful events of 2016/2017 include the election (OMFG), Ron smashing his face, and our lemon of a Nissan. Plus I gained nearly 20 pounds...

There have been a few good things: the new Mazda CX-9, our new/old summer home in Minnesota, and our under-construction guest house atop the garage.

Mazda CX-9

Mobile Home

Guest House

Floor plan

So generally it's feeling all a bit less here, and we'll be spending longer summers in Minnesota, shorter winters here. Not that they HAVE longer summers in Minnesota, but since we no longer need to deal with cold/snow/ice/propane in an RV, we can go by the end of March and come back when it becomes intolerably Minnesota. Say Thanksgiving-ish. As long as we remain able to drive 2500 miles, we want warm winters. Plus, there are still good friends here.

Karen, Bette, Gary, Jill, Maggy

Harold, Maurice, John, Jim, Danielle, Norm, Joan

Sal, Tom, Helen, Suzanne, Les, Allie

Eileen, Ron, Luis, Marisela

Jaap, Anneke, and Ed

“Si la jeunesse savait, si l’age pouvait.”

If youth knew, if age could.

Better in French (it rhymes)! Essentially, Carpe Diem while you can. Might not be able to later.


I turned 64 a couple days ago, pretty quietly but MOST satisfactorily. Had drinks and snacks with 11 women friends, then made lobster tails and shrimp for dinner while watching the Survivor finale. It doesn't get much better than that!

Been reflecting tons on this Old Woman thing. Never thought I'd make it this long. While I know every day should feel like a gift, it does take an hour plus mornings for my body to buy into that hype.


I'm becoming more aware that there are SOME perks to being old. Time, for one. When young, life seemed so busy and rushed, not enough hours. So much to do, and a feeling of disquiet when I finally fell in bed at night. Never enough rest.


Well, I sure rest now. Can and do nap anytime I want. Turn down commitments with alacrity. Have become quite professional at saying No. Most days are a blank page when I get up, and most stay that way. I do NOT want to leave this world thinking "If only I'd worked harder, longer."


Along with age, simplicity's arrived. Minimal effort required when I do decide to go somewhere. And that's almost always food-related. Having acquired a haircut that looks the same when I get out of bed as it does after I "fix it", and comfy yoga pants with voluminous long tops, it takes very little time to add a bra, pop on a fresh Teva pad (leaky bladder) and grab my phone and car keys. Simplicity.


Pajamas. Last thought every night: Wonder if tomorrow can be a pajama day? I shoot for 4 PJ days a week. Today is not one, because we go eat at Panchos every Friday. My laundry basket is mostly pajamas.


I've become a bit starved for cerebral stimulation, learning new things. Not things to DO, horrors. Things to know, curiosity satisfied. Sometimes I log 8 hours or more daily just googling stuff. Yesterday I learned you really can't make an unbaked cheesecake without Cool Whip, AND the Salvation Army has made some positive efforts to dispel their anti-gay rhetoric. I also spend an hour daily flagging backyard breeder ads on Craigslist, probably futile I know. They repost within an hour. Just hoping if they decided they couldn't post free ads to sell these babies, they might actually spay their pets and find some other scam to make their crack money.

Having not blogged since May (!), a quick dirty recap:


Bought and furnished a decrepit mobile home in Minnesota near the kids to spend summers.

Old mobile home

Craigslist and some yard sale finds to furnish it:

Craft room with hide-a-bed for grandkids

Watched all 7 seasons of The West Wing FOUR TIMES. And Sopranos once. (Had unlimited bandwidth in Minnesota).


Learned to make Cornish Pasties, a meat and veggie-filled pie in a crust.


Worked hard over the summer assembling my Halloween costume for the party here in Kino, which I won once. I was Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons from Game of Thrones. Sadly, most people here don't get HBO and haven't seen it, so nobody knew who I was parodying.



My assemblage and crafting hobby has slowed down, mostly because I can't unload them as easily any more because everyone already has one. Here are my newest ones.

Dragonfly: ceiling fan blades and bedpost.




Steer Skull


Old faucet handle flower


That last one seemed to resonate with lots of people on Pinterest, kinda went viral. I think I DO need to get back into the crafting thing, might keep me out of my computer chair more.

We had planned to drive up to Minnesota for the holidays, but shit happened, as it tends to with us. My husband has this thing where he gets dizzy and falls down. This time he landed on the point of his chin. Broke his jaw in several places, smashed his dentures to smithereens, broke 4 ribs, and blew out his eardrum. Had to have his jaw wired shut for 3 weeks, and dentures are still a few months away. The VA has never been able to work up the fainting thing, but since they transferred him to Banner University Hospital for this, we're now in THEIR system on the VA's dime, and they're re-admitting him this Monday for a 5 day complete evaluation. He'll be wired brain, heart, video, audio the whole time to try to witness what's going down when he goes down. He has one of these "spells" almost daily, no way will it not happen there in 5 days.

So looking forward to him getting fixed, our Christmas Eve party here where we steal each other's gifts, new dentures for Ron (although I think he's actually gained a few pounds drinking high-protein smoothies), and headed north to our summer place as soon as their ice and snow goes away.

Validation!

Mother's Day (admittedly merely a HallMark Cards holiday) is finally a happy day for me. I have a son I love intensely, and grandchildren who light me from inside, and they Skype'd me on Mother's Day.



Jon Mark, with Dylan and Miss Nora

But it's been a flawed holiday, in part, because of my inability to come to terms with my own mother's abuse of me.

Just saw this article from 2013 re: children of abuse and what (if anything) they owe the abusive parent later when they need help. It's long, but by the time I got through it AND the over 200 comments, my face was tear-streaked and I was feeling an overwhelming, shuddering relief that there ARE people like me, that get it. 

Article: The Debt (click)

Here are some excerpts from the article and comments, followed by my own:

"How about a problem parent that is nice as pie to non-family, so everyone in the community thinks they're wonderful, and that there must be something wrong with you - and you can't, and don't, tell them the truth?"

"My mother is the same; to everyone else, she appears to be loving and caring, helpful and supportive, but what no one seems to recognize is that what she is actually doing is constantly belittling and undermining me behind my back. 'Poor daughter, she has so many problems, it's really sad,' and there's no way to defend yourself against that. The bottom line is that appearance is everything to people like her, and if you get ground up under the wheels, well, bummer for you. The only way to handle it is to stay away as much as possible and live your life to make yourself safe and happy."

Up til the day my mother died, that was my chosen method of preserving my sanity.

A few of my friends and my own family knew my mother was emotionally abusive to me, but publicly she was a paragon of goodness. I finally found the strength (at 30 years old!) to physically remove myself and my own family. Moved 2000 miles away.

"...keep yourself in a shark cage with no opportunity to let that person take a bite out of you..."

We moved back 15 years later when my dad started having health problems, but I was strong enough by then to not be affected much by mom. Lost dad (AND only sibling) a few years later, and mom's dementia surfaced right away.

"Those who refuse to make peace with a failing parent may also find themselves judged harshly."

"Telling children of abusive or neglicful parents to find closure and forgive and let these people back in your life is like telling an alcoholic one drink won't kill you."

I lost most of my brother's family over my refusal to move in to care for my mother after dementia took over. It wasn't her asking (dementia precludes self-awareness), it was family, who could not abide having a court-appointed guardian when there was a perfectly capable daughter around to do it. They never did believe she was abusive to me, so of course there was no excuse whatsoever. My niece chose to be her guardian, did a fine job, and I lost them.

"I have often felt alone in the choices I've made. Not many can understand them."
"There should be a level of Hell reserved for parents who betray their own innocent and dependent children; ignoring these worthless creatures in their old age or infirmity is the best means of self-help imaginable."

"I am well aware that she had a crappy childhood, but I
don't give her a free pass because of that."
"I am at peace with the choices I made"

Until today, I wasn't. All I knew was I couldn't forgive and could never forget, and was consumed with guilt over that.   Emotional see-saw has always been my norm when thinking about her, but after reading this article I feel OK now. 

(And as always, thanks for being there for me J'net!)

Pure Happiness

I've discovered the secret to pure happiness. Puppies.

It's so amazing to me that I can be sleep-deprived, ill, just bored or even frazzled with commitments, and all I need are puppies. 100% turn-around, instant joy. I suspect I'd be the same with kittens, it just happens to be puppies.

Our neighborhood handyman Richard has two puppies that I've been given the gift of baby-sitting while he does chores in the area. Only for an hour or two at a time, but it makes my whole day. My dog Sofia, too, she LOVES them!

He carries them inside his hoodie, arrives on his ATV. Sofia comes to attention when she hears that bike. Oh boy, puppies!

When he comes inside, I just melt. Who would have thought I'd ever be so thrilled to see this guy?

The black one is Brutus, the rott-like one is Rocky. They run, roll, tumble, bite, fight, chew, and cuddle/lick. Sofia drags her toys out and they all three engage in tug-o-war. Can't turn your back on them for a second, though, or they'll chew cords or try to play with Luther. After 30 minutes or so, they crash like they were drugged.

Most of the dogs here were feral and as puppies are sickly and timid. These were privately owned/bred, and are boisterous and rollicking. Fat. Richard was told one parent is a purebred Rottweiler. I'm not so sure, looks just like Sofia when she was a baby.

Rocky

Baby Sofia

In any event, my serenity level soars when I have these guys. Quite amazing to me, really, as I've not had a really great year and was used to feeling so down and depressed. After babysitting these two, I'm buoyed up the whole rest of the day, lighter.

All you need are puppies.

If Looks Could Kill

This topic has been simmering inside for a long time now, and today it boiled over. The "straw" was an article on my Facebook feed re: how women shouldn't wear bras because recent studies show they cause loss of tone. My first thought was "I only wear one in public to minimize body-shaming." I believe an awful lot of us whip those bras off the moment we're home. My second thought was "How pitiful is that, and how dare anyone judge me for where my breasts point?"

Crap like this makes regular appearances on the web:
Celebrities who've aged badly

Fat-shaming, skinny-shaming, wrinkles-shaming, beer-belly-shaming. We're bombarded with it.

Human obsession with appearance is out of control. I have close friends and family members who have been told their whole lives how beautiful they are, like sisters where one is The Pretty One and the others something else. The inherent danger here, of course, is if you're told something enough times, you come to believe it about yourself, and it becomes a large part of your identity. You start to believe that's where your value lies, that's all you are. My own (admittedly beautiful) granddaughter may be in danger of this, at only 7 years old. No sign of it yet, but I regularly am told how gorgeous she is, as is she.

I was 9 when a relative began abusing me sexually, 16 when it stopped. Not until my early 30s was I able to begin to erase the hard-wired message in my brain that my looks were my primary asset. To this day, I get a white-hot stab of anger when a man compliments me on some physical aspect of my appearance. Naturally,  at 62 that's happening quite rarely, LOL! Years of abusing my health have begun to pay off in that respect! I finally learned to just say "Thanks" and let it go, unless I know the person well enough to explain how I feel about physical compliments.

Appearance is NOTHING in the grand scheme. Skin-deep and transitory. It absolutely WILL go away in time, and you better hope there's self-worth underneath it.

Starting with children, how much better for them to hear "What a fantastic reader you are! You must have worked really hard to be that good!" than "Oh, you're going to be breaking hearts all over with those eyes!"

Compliment their effort, generosity, kindness, sportsmanship, devotion. Qualities that matter. 

I know some of you don't get it. What's wrong with telling a pretty child she's pretty? Nothing, unless she hears only that, and her self-worth depends on hearing it. Then there are 7 year-olds obsessed with dieting and thinness, 15 year-olds wanting botox and plastic surgery. Sexual acting out, seeking validation. Absolute belief that they must be sexy or alluring at all times. Trust me. I have at least 4 close adult friends or family members that post at least one provocative selfie of themselves WEEKLY.

And a segue here: false praise can backfire as well. If all a child hears is how smart they are, what happens in college when it turns out everyone else is just as smart, or smarter? Or the child who's told he's the best hitter in baseball ever. Self-esteem earned through achievement is the goal, not a trophy for showing up. A more specific compliment might be "Great job on your math quiz, your hard work really shows!" rather than "You are SO smart!". To set a high goal, to work hard to achieve it and to succeed: that's where self-worth comes from.

Return to Paradise

I'm back home in Mexico, alone. Ron and Sofia are staying in Minnesota another month or maybe two for hunting with the grandsons. I drove my little Nissan 2150 miles BY MYSELF with the cat. Stayed in Motel 6's. Except for a backache (Nissan: not quite a luxury ride), had no issues. But a few issues here...

They've had some weather here. Six big storms, I'm told. The property was waist-high in weeds. The fridge wouldn't work, turned out the fan had gotten stuck due to humidity. The propane was empty. The driveway has a big arroyo (ditch) from runoff. All except the driveway remedied by tossing pesos willy-nilly to various skilled workmen and women. The driveway will get fixed next week, and I've conscripted substitute husbands from the neighbor pool to handle various husband-type chores.

Before

After

Before

After

Water pipe broken in the road (also from runoff exposing pipes then a construction truck driving over it.) No water since yesterday, should be repaired and cistern filled later today. GOTTA remember to keep a bucket of water handy for toilet flushing.

The road to town has some major cleanup to be done, huge washouts through the "tunnel" area and 1/2 of the northbound lane fell off in one spot. The roads in our neighborhood are still sodden, so aren't the problem they'll be when they dry: deep fluffy sand.

The neighbor across from me has an issue from runoff:

Tunke's

Oops

The car looks extricable, but the little trailer may need jacks and shoring. But they now have a banked driveway!

Everyone's property has the waist-high weeds, and I recommend Marisela and her boys if you want it cleared before your arrival.

The NoSeeUms arrived yesterday, bring DEET.

I'm composing a long list for Ron, stuff he needs to bring home from the trailer. Couldn't fit much in my car. (I have TWO towels here!) The trailer's going to live at Brian's in Minnesota, so I'll have no guest quarters this winter. Will find you accommodations if you want to visit us! Will either have a new trailer or a new casita built atop the garage by next winter.

Here's my favorite Welcome to Paradise photo: Look what my Agave did!

Flower spike

It's going to be one of those 30 foot tall blooming things! Looks like a giant asparagus spear now.

Low tide tomorrow early, haven't even been to the beach yet. Big road issues past LeRoy's, driveable but not with the Nissan's 3 inch ground clearance. ATV works fine.

K, going to town for groceries. Actually, smokes, gin, and tonic. As usual.