What are you saving for?

Some people save for the future, for a rainy day, for a vacation but my mom seamed to want to save everything. She saved her good clothes for a cruise. She saved pictures to share and she saved history and memories and things that might someday be valuable as though they were all things that were valuable.

It is funny though because my mother and grandmother both used good things as though they were everyday things. The living room furniture we sit on is very old wicker furniture. Original cushions and paint, if you know anything about wicker furniture you would think this stuff should be in a museum and we sit on it, sleep on it and have Christmas every year on it. Grandma never drank out of a plastic cup. She was always drinking her water or soda out of a fancy glass. She said, if you have it you might as well use it. She would however wear her good clothes everyday, just because they were nice.

But back to the saving part of my mom. She always had the spirit to save things that she thought might one day have a value. Like a bank account in her house. She saved the books we read as kids, she probably has every golden book written before 1974 and cookbooks. She saved the Fischer Price toys we played with as kids. Recently I even found the Barbie dream house folded up at the top of the closet. Really mom.

Her and Grandma liked to go to garage sales and thrift stores and they each had their things they liked to find. Grandma always liked angels and frogs and mom always liked birds and St. Francis and we joke about the shrine on the butcher's block in the living room. What you don't have a butcher's block in your living room? Well your dad probably doesn't have a cannon either. What can I say? My parents were always different.

But now mom and grandma are both gone and what my mother said we would go through and clean out is now down to myself and my siblings. My brother has cleaned up and cleaned out the kitchen but the cabinets go to the ceiling and he said, you know there is stuff in all of them. Yep. Glass doesn't get the money it used to. People don't care if they drink out of fancy glasses or ones from Target. Sorry Target but there is something to be said for crystal. Not that the stuff mom had was anything fantastic just better than the everyday glasses we drank out of. And people don't know the difference between a champagne flute and a sherry glass anymore and don't care. So they would not have a set of 8 of each plus rocks glasses and tall glasses and wine glasses and you see how many glasses one can have.

So I have told my sisters that I wanted to do some of this on my own at first. Why? I don't really know. I just know to see things thrown out that my mom held on to right now is just too much for me.
I had cleaned out stuff from her bedroom back in the summer trying to get her to use her own bed to sleep in instead of sleeping on that ancient old wicker couch but even with her room cleaned out some she did not want to sleep in there. She felt that if something happened to her back there no one would come looking for her.

Yesterday I pulled out a few boxes of things that were already boxed to get rid of and filled a couple boxes with things that have no sentimental attachment and will try to sell them at a church garage sale today. But when finished loading the car I sat and looked around and started to see my mom in the things that she saved. I know I don't have to do this now and it is probably too soon but if I don't do it someone else will want to do it for me and then I will get upset and then I will be like mom. I feel it. If someone touches the wrong thing now, I would put up a wall that my mom would. She would be ridiculous and let us get rid of nothing. But I learned as I got older if you showed her a few things that she to had no attachment to that she would start and next thing you knew she could get a room cleaned up and box up things she was ready to get rid of. It just had to be her idea.

I have found myself the last few weeks wearing good things I would never wear because, well I felt like wearing them. I know no future is guaranteed to us so I might as well wear the things I like and eat off the good dishes and drink from the fancy glasses because what am I saving them for. The future doesn't care about the past. It is a hard pill to swallow that some of the things I want to save no one else will. And I know my house can't hold all the things I want to save so that part is going to take some time and the fact that I have no children to instill the value of these items just because my mom saw a value in them.

I think it all comes back to my memory. I remember my mom telling me that the butcher's block came from the Fish Restaurant that used to be at the bottom of the hill in Maas Brother's parking lot before you went across the causeway and how it sat in our garage for years until my mom said it finally did not smell like fish anymore and she sanded and varnished it and how it will take 4 grown men to lift the top but the legs are light as a feather. Or how that wicker furniture came out of a house down the street from an estate sale. Original paint and cushions. Mom was very proud of that purchase. She cherished the pictures my grandma painted. The one in the living room on brown wrapping paper that is a chalk drawing of a fishing boat or the train or flowes she painted. She would paint ties that my great grandfather wore that had the L&N trains that he worked on. We don't have one of those but we do have a picture of him wearing one. Grandma signed the things she painted simply Jane. Don't forget the nativity scene that mom painted when we were kids. So simple but not so valuable? Well to me they are.

As they say you can't take it with you. Otherwise she would have had us pack it up for her. Just kidding. She thought by saving these items that one day, some day she would cash in or share her wealth which may not have any monetary value but Sentimental Value that is what a lot of these things have and held for her and now me.

Miss you mom.

85 Days

So... I am at a cross roads an impasse a fork in the road. Where do I go what do I say? None of these questions are easily answered today.



Today I want to tell you about 85 days that ended with 2 hours of perfection.

Jeanne K. Basore

For the last 85 days my mother has needed constant care. Not by a staff of nurses or a hospital or even a nursing home. She asked to be taken home and for her children to care for her. Her children are not care givers or nurses or in the medical field. We are dispatchers and office workers and retail employees and dental assistants and city employees. We luckily have friends that are in nursing school and respiratory therapist and lpn's and cna's. On November 15 my mom had a stroke and was taken to the hospital where I met her. She could not speak well but I was able to figure out what she was saying. Mom could only say a few words right after the stroke she seemed to say two best. "NO and "Bullshit" they became two of her favorite words over the next few days and weeks. She was admitted into ICU but before hand they wanted to put in a catheter. Well that was never going to happen. I am pretty sure she said, Hell No. So ICU it was but only for a day. She was too much for that so she was moved to the Neurological floor being she had a stroke. She had been given two swallow tests and failed both what does that mean well that they don't feel it is safe for you to eat. Then on November 17 at 7AM we were told  by a hospital doctor that my mother was unlikely to make it through the day.  The doctor said that we could try to feed her anything she wanted basically because they had no hope. So she ate. Small slow bites and not very much. She sipped at coke and by that afternoon my mother got up out of her bed and walked into the hallway with the physical therapist because she saw a friend standing there she had not seen in years. The nurses jaw hit the floor. My mom then said as only she would, I walked this far can I have a cigarette now?

Over the next few days we saw great strides and great setbacks but by Thursday they said we needed a plan. What are we planning was our question is she going to get better or is she going home to die? We were not sure of either. The doctors at this point said by what she is able to eat she will not make it until Thanksgiving. Well that is just next Thursday. We knew she was going to need round the clock care and a hospital bed so we started with those things.

And so our nursing experience started. My mother was nothing if she was not stubborn so as soon as she saw the ramp my sister's husband built for her she was mad. She would have gotten up and kicked it over into the pool and walked up the steps with assistance if she could have. But at some point we knew we needed to do whatever we could to help. Hospital bed would have ended up in the pool on top of the ramp as well if mom could have lifted it. Now with 5 of us you would think that would not be bad to try to have coverage but we all have jobs and even though all our jobs were flexible and our bosses kind. It is the week of a holiday and we can take some time and spend it with mom. The overnights were by far the hardest but every hour of the day had it's challenges.

The first few weeks she had more visitors, neighbors, old friends, previous co-workers, the mailman, employees from Publix and CVS came by to visit. The biggest surprise was our dad. They had not spoken in years but he came and sat with her and visited. They watched the old home movies and made their peace which is what was important for both of them.

 After we got through Thanksgiving and into December my mother announced one day that it was no longer a death watch. She was eating frozen orange juice and pineapple juice and Slurpee's. My brother came up with some of the best idea's. I was amazed and she would try things when he put them in front of her. She liked cold gazpacho soup I made when it was pureed. As the weeks turned into months we had to have more help. We were wearing ourselves too thin. So we brought in reinforcements.

My sister had a friend that had already been helping mom on her days off and she started to spend more time and we had another friend that had done private duty before that was free in the morning. We still were running short in the afternoon but we finally found a new friend that I knew as soon as I spoke to her that mother was going to love her. And my sister's friend the respiratory therapist that was coming to check on her and giving us whatever tips he had. The funny thing was that all these people loved and cared for mom in their own way as though she was their own mother.

People have asked didn't you have Hospice help. No. Mom didn't want strangers taking care of her. She didn't want strangers in the house. I have told people from the beginning that this was the hardest thing I have ever done and I felt like we should have a t-shirt or a medal declaring that we have done it. A friend of mine told me yesterday when I said that to her,"you will receive that medal when you see your mom again." I felt much better.

Mom loved all of these people. The respiratory therapist spoke to mom about football and music. She told him of players like Fran Tarkenton and George Blanda and singers like Frank Sinatra and Kris Kristofferson. So the next time he was over he brought a cd he had made for her of some of her favorites. He would come after working in Ocala to sit with mom overnight. Which was when her breathing was the worst.  He would come and watch football with her. One of the girls loved old movies and would watch them with mom as soon as she said John Wayne mom was sold. Another just sat and chatted with her and helped with bathing. Everything they did was to make her life better and to give her the dignity she deserved and the 5 of us the peace that we could leave and she was in good hands. They each taught us how to move her or transfer her and how to adjust her to make her as comfortable as we could.

They each had the patients of saints to do what mom asked and took care of her as though it was their own mom. Thank you Donnell, Carrie, Jarma, Kayla, Jerrica for helping and just being there.

Mom had physical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy. She would request the same people and was not happy if it was not Brian, Pam and Paul. One even told her she was his favorite and he wasn't suppose to say he had a favorite. When she was not well enough to do exercises they would sit and visit with her. Check her vitals and again any tips they had they would share.

Christmas at Mom's 2007

So Christmas came and we did as always, we all showed up at moms and visited and exchanged gifts. I had made some food not as much as mom would have but none the less there was more than enough. New Years Eve I spent overnight with mom. We watched the ball drop and watched old movies. We have all sat through the hours of home movies with her that one of my sisters got copied to dvd this year with her. The kids even came up with an idea for a game. How many things can you write down that you see in the movies that you can still find in her house. We will have to play someday.


So frozen orange juice became ice chips and soup became pureed fruit cups. The acid would upset her stomach from all the juice. Never did she say she was hungry. Never in pain. Uncomfortable and even miserable at times but she was tough as nails. She would asked for a sip of coke by holding up her thumb and forefinger like you would show a pinch. As time past it was harder and harder to understand the words she said so we turned to a clipboard and reams of paper and mom's own version of sign language which we all learned. A thumb up meant lift me up higher in the bed. Just like that she created and we learned a new language. We are still torn on what will happen to all that paper but when we had a hard time understanding her we would say,"write it down mom." Trying to make communicating less frustrating for everyone.

Our 85 days is nearly up but you don't know until you know that sort of thing remember the doctors only gave her hours then weeks then they finally stopped predicting the future.

On Thursday January 28th mom said she was tired of fighting and on Friday January 29th we were all over at the house. She was not responsive to anything Tori had been there over night and Al that day, I spent the afternoon and Billie and Beth came in the evening along with their kids. We were all there. Timmy and Alex had been by. When her youngest granddaughter Ashley walked in and said "why is wheel of fortune not on. Grandma wants to watch her shows." So we watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and the kids told grandma what they did at school that day and played along with the game shows. Emily had a great story of almost getting sick while singing because her group became a duet which almost became a solo as others dropped out or forgot the words. It was a great story for grandma to hear. Paul got an award for Student of the Month that day. We were all talking and laughing the only way mom would have wanted it. After the game shows we turned off the tv and the kids wanted to sing to her before they left so we had about an hour and a half of Karaoke with Grandma as they called it. The kids sang Silent Night, Automatic and the House that Built Me both by Miranda Lambert. Both Automatic and The House that Built Me were two of mom's favorites so they were sung at the beginning and the end of the their performance. My sister said, "one last song kids." When the kids were finished Beth, Billie and I changed mom and got her ready for the night. But before we took our hands off of her I looked up and said, "I think she has stopped breathing?"  Beth, Billie and I still all had our hands on her and we waited. Held our breath. Was she gone. She was. I feel that when the kids finished singing and walked out the door... Mom was gone as well. She passed away just that fast. She could not have written down instructions for a better evening. 

The next few hours and days were difficult but I thought we are Basore's and we will get through this. And we have started a new journey down a new path. I had hoped not to take for a while longer but everything changes and as the song says, "you leave home and move on and do the best you can."

That is what we are doing now. The best we can. Thanks to our Mom.