Week #14 of My Liquid Diet: Day of the Dead
When my mom's rehab led to an unexpected result.
Counting down:
Beginning weight (July 14): 230 lbs.
Weight at start of Week #2: 222
Weight at start of Week #3: 218.4
Weight at start of Week #4: 215.3
Weight at start of Week #5: 215.1
Weight at start of Week #6: 211.2
Weight at start of Week #7: 208.1
Weight at start of Week #8: 204.3
Weight at Start of Week #9: 201.9
Weight at Start of Week #10: 199
Weight at Start of Week #11: 196.8
Weight at Start of Week #12: 194.4
Weight at Start of Week #13: 193.5
Weight at Start of Week #14: 190.2
Weight at Start of Week #15 (current week): 185.6
Total weight loss so far: 44.4 lbs.
Sixteen weeks to go.
It seems almost surreal to recall this right now, while I’m in the midst of a spartan, 960-calorie-a-day diet regimen, but almost exactly two years ago, on the Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos), I was in a lovely little Chicago eatery called Tweet, digging into a gooey, decadent plate of eggs Benedict, with a side of hash browns that I’d smothered in ketchup. I believe there had been a garnish involving an orange slice (which I’d made short work of) and a sprig of parsley (I mean, why?). In contrast to the mere 16 daily ounces of caffeine that I’m currently allowed, I was power-slurping from a bottomless mug of excellent strong black coffee. I’d already polished off most of the mini-plate of pastries that my waitress, Lorena, had greeted me with just as I was taking my seat at the little table. Penelope Fitzgerald’s enchanting novel Offshore was open on my iPhone’s screen.
But I wasn’t reading. I was reeling, trying to come to terms with what my mother, Bunny, had been enduring that morning.
Around the corner, at the Selfhelp Home, Mom had been struggling through her rehab. A couple of weeks earlier, she’d fallen out of bed in her assisted-living apartment. Staff members found her on the floor that morning, disoriented. They called me right away, and put her on the phone.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” she said. “I fell. I’m not sure why they’re making such a fuss.” Her speech, I thought, sounded a bit slurred.
A few days later her doctor called me. Shortly after her fall, Mom had been taken to the hospital, where tests had shown her to be suffering from congestive heart failure. In addition, he said, her dementia was worsening.
Dementia?, I thought. Worsening? When did it start?
But later, after I’d flown in from the Bay Area to be with her during her week-long rehab, I thought back to our phone calls during the long COVID lockdown, and … yes, I should have realized she was going through a cognitive decline. When I called her in those days, she’d usually pick up with a chirpy, “Filene’s Basement!” (An old running gag between us.) And she’d ask how I was doing, and about my wife, Sara, and our son. But soon after that she’d say something like, “Well, thanks for calling!” with a forced cheerfulness that communicated her real meaning: Enough! She was, with some aplomb, trying to cover up the fact that it was getting harder and harder for her to be herself for more than a few minutes — the level of concentration required to fend off the entropy of Alzheimer’s took everything out of her.
That morning, in the rehab gym, as a vigorous young tag team of physical and occupational therapists tried to get her walking on her own again, alternately cajoling and tugging at her, she’d become so frustrated at one point that she let out a plaintive, high-pitched scream of protest. In that outcry’s immediate aftermath, I felt torn — between, on the one hand, wanting her to succeed at her rehab and, on the other, a visceral desire to see her released from such great discomfort and distress.
This was a complicated moment — only the most recent one in a lifetime of complicated moments between us. From my childhood on, I’d longed to feel more mothered by my mother. She was always rather cool with me — as opposed to my father, who was incredibly nurturing, a big hugger. As I ping-ponged back and forth between my divorced parents, it was like changing countries — each parental nation had its own customs and rules. In the Kingdom of Dad, I was encouraged to draw on the walls and make noise. In Mom-Land, I was to be quiet in my room while she worked away on the manuscript she was forever trying to get published somewhere. She’d say, “Children are meant to be seen and not heard.” But I wanted to be heard by her. I wanted to be held by her. In later years, I’d realize how much my mom still longed for the affection and approval of her own mother, who had died, on Thanksgiving Day, when I was nine years old.
In that complicated moment at rehab, I made a decision: Enough! I told the P.T. and O.T. that I thought my mother needed to go back to her room and rest. I helped them ease her back into her wheelchair. Then I gave her a hug and a kiss and went out for some eggs Benedict.
As Lorena refilled my coffee, we got into a conversation. I told her what was going on at Selfhelp, and I learned that she was a musician, currently playing with a renowned traditional-music group called the Sones de México Ensemble. Later, when she brought me my bill, Lorena also handed me a little piece of paper on which she’d written the location of a free concert they were doing later that afternoon, to celebrate the Day of the Dead.
“I hope you can make it,” she said. “Might be a nice break for you.”
At a time when I was feeling down and lonely and kind of desperate about my mom’s prospects, this out-of-the-blue invitation felt like a magical door-opening into a bit of grace.
A few hours later, I took the Pink Line to Chicago’s historic Pilsen neighborhood — where, as it turns out, Sones de México had been born, in 1994. The grounds of St. Procopius Catholic Church were alive with the Day of the Dead: children (and not a few adults) sported face paint and costumes, fun games were being played, and many types of food were abundant. I was still full from brunch, but I waited on line to get a sweet hot beverage that was served in a handmade earthen mug. It was about an hour before the band’s set, so I stationed myself in front of where one of musicians was starting to set up some instruments. I sipped the delicious liquid through a narrow straw, the heat from the mug warming my hands on this chilly autumn day. When Lorena arrived, I wondered if she’d remember me — but when she saw me, she smiled and said, “Josh! You made it!”
By showtime a large crowd had gathered. There were five or six musicians, including Lorena: each of them played a dizzying variety of instruments, which they often swapped with one another as they took us on a musical tour of various regions of Mexico. I’d noticed that before the concert Lorena had put a small square wooden platform on the ground, and a couple of songs into the set I found out why: As the others played their instruments, she got up on that platform and danced, in what she later told me was the zapateado style, using her hard-heeled shoes as percussion instruments. Her dancing, which seemed at times to incorporate elements of mime, was mesmerizing. In one song, she was hunched way over like an old person with a too-short cane — an impossible-looking position to achieve for a second, much less maintain for a whole song. It felt like a depiction of a woman about to lose her ability to walk.
My favorite song that the band performed that day involved what sounded like … yodeling! Later that evening I went online and listened to a bunch of Sones de México songs until I found it. Yep, the guy was yodeling. The tune is called “La Presumida,” and listening to it now, two years later, continues to make me ridiculously happy. Here it is, performed by the Sones de México Ensemble (I’m afraid you’ll have to provide your own beverage):
The other day I got to wondering what that song is about. So I sent an email to a friend of mine, a Mexican geriatrician named Stefanie, who has in the past graciously provided Spanish subtitles for my “Citizen Brain” videos. (We met at UCSF, where we were both fellows at the Global Brain Health Institute.) Stefanie replied:
hahahahaha
You made my morning. This is a genre that is hard to sing and this is really good!
Sones typically describe everyday experiences or important things that happened.
In this song they “criticize”/describe a very conceited woman. In the song they say that those women hardly say yes to anybody because they think nobody deserves them.
One day that woman arrived in la Huasteca, which is a region of San Luis Potosí in the north of Mexico, which seems to be where the persons singing the song were. They thanked God that the woman passed by quickly and that they did not deal with how presumptuous she was.
Thanks for sharing, you made my morning happier.
Stefie
P.S.: Presumida is the word we use for conceited; that is why the song is called that.
So there you have it!
After I got back from that Sones de México concert on the Day of the Dead, I think I let go of something: I stopped needing my mom to get better; I just wanted her to be comfortable and happy. And she, in turn, seemed to stop needing others to get better.
Like the woman who passed through la Huasteca, my mom had, in her years at Selfhelp, seemed quite full of herself to many of the residents and staff members. When I used to join her in the dining room, she would act rather aloof from her table-mates. Combined with her increasing deafness (she refused to wear hearing aids), her sharp tongue could lead to some uncomfortable moments — such as the time she loudly said to me, in what was meant to be a confidential aside, that a cook, who was just then passing nearby, “COULD STAND TO LOSE 50 OR 60 POUNDS.” Once she remarked to me, of the people sharing her table, “THEY’RE NOT EXACTLY GREAT CONVERSATIONALISTS!” I had just been having a delightful conversation with one of them. Eventually, Mom was the only one who ate at her table.
But after she was moved upstairs from rehab to the skilled-nursing floor, in her periods of clarity she expressed great appreciation for the excellent, compassionate care that she was receiving — and would continue to receive, for the rest of her life. And the staff on the floor adored her!
“She’s always so gracious!” an aide once told me.
Wow, my mom! Bunny, that tough cookie! Gracious!
In terms of getting her to walk again, Mom’s rehab had been unsuccessful. But as I look back on those freighted weeks, and that pivotal Day of the Dead, our relationship was rehabilitated. Around that time, it dawned on me that my mother had been freed from her lifelong debilitating resentment of her own mother, and thus freed to love me and to be loved by me, and others, without reservation or complication. Does it sound crazy for me to say that, in a way, her Alzheimer’s liberated us both?
I LOVE that song. Thanks so much for sharing that and the poignant story of your mom's "liberation."
Thank you for sharing these beautiful reminiscences and mazel tov on your weight loss!