Watching My Mother Suddenly Slip Away

In the first episode of “All There Is,” Anderson Cooper’s new podcast exploring loss and grief, we find him at his late mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s apartment. She passed away at age 95 in 2019, and he tells us it’s time for him to take on the difficult task of removing what remains of her life. He’s 55. His pain is palpable.

I turned 60 last summer, but no matter our age, we are always our mothers’ children. I realize this when I rush from Long Island to a New Jersey hospital after my brother calls to tell me our mother has been admitted. One minute she had been outside her independent living facility on the phone; the next she’d collapsed in the lobby.

Rolling shards of skin are hanging from my face as I hurry in to see her in the “observation” wing. She’s disoriented, unable to answer simple questions: What year is it? Who is the president of the United States? Does she recognize me? After all, I’m wearing a COVID mask and there’s skin freakishly flapping on my forehead, chin and neck … the aftermath of my first-ever chemical peel. A birthday splurge in a silly attempt to stop time. Like my 89-year-old mommy, I’m now an aging senior. How did this happen?

Nurses come and go, taking vitals, checking equipment. Eventually a doctor announces they’re going to run tests. Unfortunately, it’s a Friday, the worst time to be sick at a hospital. They’re understaffed. Tests take days, results take even longer.

My mother lives two hours away from me but near my brother and his wife, her main support system. I bring clothes for just a couple of days because on my drive over I’ve mentally diagnosed her: She has another UTI, a common occurrence in seniors, and one that can cause all kinds of issues if it goes undiagnosed and/or untreated. The hospital will take care of it with intravenous medicine, and in two days she’ll be back home, where I will have a pot of homemade chicken soup waiting for her. That’s why I have a grocery bag in my car containing a raw chicken, onions, carrots, celery and noodles.

But while a UTI can be easily diagnosed, these doctors are puzzled, unable to determine what’s wrong. And this October day in New Jersey feels like mid-August, so by the time I get back into my sweltering car for a mental break, three things are clear: My mother will not be going home shortly; neither will I; the chicken is rotted.

The hospital allows only one visitor at a time, so my brother, sister-in-law and I formulate a plan. They’ll go home, I’ll stay as long as I am able, then I’ll sleep at their shore house. Like the film “Groundhog Day,” this schedule is repeated for days. One of them goes to the hospital in the morning; I relieve them by lunchtime, staying until my mother is served the last meal of the day, which she never eats. She isn’t eating anything. She’s sleeping. When awake, she’s disengaged.

My face is still shedding when I drive to Kohl's to buy more clothes. My brother, sister-in-law and I eat dinner together every night — a menage of fearful adults clinging to each other for hope, reviewing the day’s health reports, how long she was awake, whether she responded to anyone and what shade of crimson her urine was. One night when I drag myself into the house, my brother wordlessly stretches out his arms and holds me. I sob. Another night we touch on what happens if she can’t go home, if she’ll need rehab, a full-time aide, or worse — assisted living, a nightmare scenario for a proud, independent woman like our mother. I don’t want to think about it.

An old-school immigrant, my mother has never been a fan of doctors. She’d lost weight this past year, but we had attributed it to her facility’s dining hall meals. She’d been tired but we thought it was due to COVID-related isolation depression. She’d said she wasn’t feeling well on occasion but seemed fine otherwise. So when there’s finally a diagnosis, we’re in shock: kidney failure and worse — metastasized urethral cancer. It’s too late to do anything but move her into a nursing home with hospice — and wait. I’ve watched my mom growing older, of course, but she’s never been feeble or helpless. Pre-pandemic she’d dress every morning, put on her dangling earrings and plan her days. Lunch with a friend or two. Bus to the casinos. Bingo. When home she’d be knitting, reading, working on crossword puzzles or watching current events with her favorite journalist (Cooper). Now she’s catatonic.

I’ve read about nursing homes. Even the best ones are really the worst. Still, I’m not prepared for the heartbreaking rows of seniors in wheelchairs lining the hallways of my mother’s new residence, as they wait for — meals? Visitors? Death?

I’ve seen movies where hospice patients lie in lovely, sunny rooms, beautiful flowers and family mementos surrounding them as they pass in someone’s loving arms. My mother’s dreary room is outfitted with a handicap bathroom and a window overlooking a cement courtyard. We can all come and go, regardless of visiting hours — a hospice perk. But she can barely open her eyes, so visitors — a niece and some nephews, my husband, old family friends — are mostly unnoticed. She doesn’t see the flowers we brought. She doesn’t eat or drink. One of my daughters insists on driving over, despite my protest. “Are you sure you want to see her like this?”

During this frightening phase, I relocate to my mother’s apartment, which is nearby. My kids think this is morbid, but I find it comforting to be around her treasures: framed photographs, her creepy clown collection we all ridicule, houseplants now wilted, knitted blankets. These familiar items have followed her from Queens to Long Island, then Florida and finally to this tiny New Jersey apartment. Midweek I open her closet and, because I’ve seen it in the movies so it might be the thing one does, I embrace her clothes, inhale her scent and weep uncontrollably. Then I fold everything into large garbage bags and haul them to the lobby, where a kind receptionist has offered to take them to her church. I run into two of her senior friends, who express concern but really have no words of comfort for me.

Next is the kitchen, where I find cabinets full of bags and plastic takeout containers, old dishes and glass coffee cups from my childhood. Her refrigerator door is covered in decorative magnets. And she’s scotch-taped greeting cards and notes from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to the walls. I tell myself I’m going through her belongings so my brother and sister-in-law don’t have to do it. Really, I’m forcing myself to accept the inevitable, although a part of me wonders what if the doctors have made a terrible mistake and she recovers, then comes home to find everything gone. Would she purse her lips and stare into space in silent rage as she was wont to do? Or would she find it hilarious, retelling it as a family story for years to come? My mom was complicated.

The following day the receptionist from my mother’s complex comes to see her at hospice. “I call her my abuelita,” she tells me, barely able to get the words out. In the hallway, we, two complete strangers who love my mother, hold onto each other, sobbing.

The days pass. They’re all the same except my mother is now on oxygen. And morphine. I have a “Terms of Endearment” moment, screaming for someone to increase the dosage now, as she is clearly in pain. Later, a nurse asks if she can hug me. I break down again. I haven’t cried this much in years. I don’t remember ever crying this much, actually.

On his podcast Anderson Cooper says as his mother was dying in her bed they had the best time together, watching old movies, laughing, expressing words of endearment to each other. How lucky! Even so, he bursts into tears.

My mother is still alive when I decide to head back to Long Island. I know I’m being selfish by foisting the rest of the waiting onto my family, but I can no longer bear to watch her slowly leave us. By now, my facial flaking has come to an end and just for this moment, my attempt to control time has worked: My skin is wrinkle-free, silky soft and smooth, just like a baby’s. I wail like one, as I drive myself back home.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com