Planning visits at the Schmidts

Just a brief note. Marie is arriving today, to visit until Thursday. It will be nice to see her, and she has been a friend of Schmidt’s since college (just like me). Over the years she has been better at visiting than I have been. She agrees with me that Ma Schmidt is delightful.

My current plans are to go home Friday or Saturday, unless something changes dramatically before then. After I spend a week and a half (or so) dealing with things at home—paying the month’s bills, submitting my taxes—we’ll see if it makes sense for me to come back.     

Boredom, 2

I’m not the only one who suffers from boredom. Ma Schmidt is frequently bored as well.

The details of each day are different, but the broad outlines are the same. She wakes up in mid-morning. In the last few days, she has generally been able to get herself to the toilet by leaning on her walker. Then she comes out to the family room—still leaning on the walker—and settles on the sofa. She turns on the television, and there she sits for the day.

Schmidt and I bring her food to nibble, water to sip, coffee with half-and-half, Ensure. She samples it all, not eating or drinking a lot of any single thing. But we leave them where she can reach them throughout the day.

Meanwhile, she watches television. But her heart isn’t really in it. Several times a day she’ll ask me, “Do you want to watch something else? It’s fine if you do. We don’t have to watch this if you want to see something else.” I tell her that I don’t know what there is available to watch, because I don’t have a television at home. So whatever we’ve got on right now (at the moment it’s a wild animal documentary) is fine with me. Then she sighs and smiles and settles back down.

Would she be less bored watching something else? Maybe, but I’m not convinced. Her hearing is very poor, so she would certainly need closed-captions to understand what was going on. Her short-term memory is very poor, so I’m not convinced that she could follow anything more demanding anyway. The Schmidts live out in the middle of nowhere, so she doesn’t have friends dropping in to visit; she’s got one friend who calls regularly, but at this point Ma Schmidt can’t hear well enough to talk on the phone. (Her son takes those calls, to give the friend an update on Ma’s condition.)

All this means that there are no obvious quick-fixes. But the consequence is that—not only is she weak, easily confused, and taking in minimal food and liquids—but Ma Schmidt is chronically bored. She’ll turn to me and say, “This must be a great vacation for you, acting as a nursemaid for your friend’s mom. But don’t worry; I’ll die soon.” I always reply that I’m doing just fine, and she shouldn’t be silly. 

I wonder though: when she remarks that she’ll die soon, is she trying to reassure me? Or is she trying to reassure herself?

The documentary is saying something about meerkats. Ma Schmidt is dozing gently. We’ll see how it goes.

 

Boredom

I spent this morning hanging around the house while Schmidt did something else. (I forget what.) Ma Schmidt spent much of the morning in bed: still hanging in there, but not doing much besides watching television. She got herself to the toilet, however.

When I have nothing to do, I get sleepy.

I can drink coffee for a while, but it doesn’t change how tired I feel.

Or I eat.

I might read for a while, but then the desire for sleep becomes overpowering.

Usually I don’t drink during the day, which is the only reason I don’t list drink in this list.

Twitter could keep me occupied, because it gives me novelty (by refreshing the feed) without any meaningful effort on my part. But the only Internet connection here is in the barn, where the Schmidt studio and office are. While I’m idling in the house, keeping an eye (or at least an ear) on Ma Schmidt, the Internet isn’t really available.

It turns out I can rescue myself from brain-stasis by doing a little bit of writing, though it took me a while today before I tried that and found it would help. Then Schmidt came by the house, so I left for the shop and checked my email.

There are probably lessons here for when I get back home. Or at any rate there probably would be, if I could be troubled to learn them.

 

The air of decay

Not a lot of news on Ma Schmidt’s progress. In the morning she had enough energy to take herself to the toilet, and then to come out into the family room and settle in front of the television. She spent the rest of the day there, sipping coffee and nibbling snacks. Often she dozed. By 5:30 pm, she wanted to go back to bed. But Schmidt coaxed her into eating some ice cream, which she enjoyed.

Schmidt spent most of the afternoon running errands.

I hung around the house, keeping Ma Schmidt company, sometimes chit-chatting with her aimlessly. Other times I just sat with her watching television. Occasionally I felt myself dozing off as well, just from boredom. Once in a while I went outside to walk around the property and think.

It seems like the housekeeping lately has been handled by Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations. Of course I can understand that. There are only two of them on the farm these days, and Ma Schmidt has been sick. Schmidt himself lives in a second house on the same property. I have never been inside his house, so I don’t know how he keeps the interior; but his porch has caved in, and he hasn’t repaired it. Do I expect him to repair it single-handed, now that his father is dead and they have no hired hands? I don’t know what I expect. I couldn’t do it, if it were me. But Schmidt knows how to do all kinds of practical things I don’t know. Still, rebuilding a porch must be a lot of work.

I guess when I talk about the housekeeping, I am talking narrowly about the housekeeping in Ma Schmidt’s house. She’s the one who is dying of old age. So maybe the poor housekeeping is no surprise.

But the whole ranch has a general air of decay around it. There are outbuildings with farm equipment that hasn’t been touched since Pa Schmidt died back in 2008. (Or for all I know, maybe the farm equipment was abandoned back when he was diagnosed with cancer, years before that.) The barn contains their artistic studio (The Schmidts are professional artists.) and that equipment looks OK still, so far as I can tell. But the rest of the building seems to be slowly decaying. There are vehicles on the property that might run, or might not. Some (not all) still have license plates. Some (not all) still have inflated tires. I don’t know enough to understand what I am really seeing, but it feels depressing.

Ma Schmidt doesn’t have a will. Schmidt assumes the worst he will have to deal with in order to inherit the property is some onerous paperwork, because he has no siblings and there are no other plausible heirs. But he’s not really sure what that paperwork will look like.

More worrying, Schmidt himself has no will and no plans to write one. He says after he dies, it’s not his problem. So why bother? Privately, I worry that if the property is not handed off legally, it will be occupied illegally. I wonder what will happen to all the (decaying) farm equipment, and—probably a lot more valuable to the right buyer—all the artistic equipment. And all the art? The property is full of art. Will it go to someone who appreciates it, or will it get dumped in landfill?

None of this is my problem to solve. That doesn’t stop me from feeling uncomfortable. Maybe I should mind my own business.

   

Ma Schmidt may be dying

Last fall I wrote about visiting the Schmidts. I wrote about how little it seemed that I was engaging with Schmidt himself, and wondered if this was a sign of a slow, long-term rift silently widening between us.

Well maybe, but it’s nothing special. I’m back there now—at his request—because Ma Schmidt (his mother) appears to be dying.

Last fall she was ditzier than I remember her having been before (though she was always a little spacy), and her short-term memory was almost completely gone. That is, she could put food on the stove and remember it was there to finish cooking it. But she would ask me questions about where I live or whether I have any siblings, seemingly unaware that she had already asked me the exact same questions two minutes before. Back then she talked about being “older than dirt,” but she was still in good health and walking around.

Towards the beginning of this week, Schmidt emailed Marie and me that he was concerned about his mother. She had come down with a bug a while ago, and at this point she was mostly bed-bound. He also said that looking after her was really taking all his time and attention. I asked if he wanted an extra set of hands, since I don’t hold a job and have no-one depending on me. He demurred for a few hours or a day—I later learned that he was discussing it with Marie privately—and then accepted. With gratitude. 

It’s about a one-day drive from my apartment to their farm (somewhere between 500-600 miles), and yesterday I drove it. I arrived before sundown. Schmidt thanked me again, although I hadn’t actually done anything except show up. But I think the moral support may have counted for something.

She started today poorly. She couldn’t get herself from her bed to the bathroom, and so wet her pants. She wouldn’t accept my help but Schmidt then helped her to the toilet, helped her wipe herself, got her clean pants, and helped her back to bed. In the afternoon we drove her to the hospital, partly so they could evaluate her and Schmidt could get a doctor’s order for hospice or home health care. It took both of us several minutes to maneuver her into the car, and then to maneuver her out again at the far end. But after we were there for—what was it, maybe six hours?—the hospital said she was more or less fine, just underfed and dehydrated. They gave her a couple of IV’s of fluid and electrolytes, and sent her on her way. On the way back she was much perkier than usual, though she still couldn’t carry on a conversation more than a few minutes without repeating questions like, “Why do we have to go to the store on the way home?” (Answer: because Schmidt and I are both hungry, and don’t want to have to be bothered fixing dinner when we get back.)

So we got home and put her to bed. Schmidt took care of his many cats (and one geriatric dog). Then finally we sat down to our still-vaguely-warm rotisserie chicken from the store, plus a salad I’d made while he was doing all that other stuff. We chatted companionably enough and went off to our respective beds.