Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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Following in My Mother's Footsteps

June 1, 2015

Mom tracksuit

A few years ago, when Mom was still able to fly across the country and visit me in California every January, I bought her a fancy tracksuit at Neiman Marcus for her birthday. It was black velour with little rhinestones on the side front pockets of the zip-up jacket, and she loved it. She not only wore it for lounging around the house, but she wore it on the treadmill for her early evening workouts while watching the news.

Yes, treadmill, the professional-grade machine that had a prominent place in her finished basement and was so big it dwarfed her. The woman was in her mid-90s but utterly disciplined about going on that machine every day and walking for an hour, and she’d been sticking to her exercise routine for years. It kept her trim. It kept her feeling productive. It gave her a sense of control, which became especially important when her memory began to deteriorate and she needed to rely more and more on Sandy, her full-time caregiver, who filled in the blanks when she couldn’t remember where she was going or why. She did her laps on the treadmill when she could no longer contribute to her monthly book group discussion and stopped going. She did her laps on the treadmill when she could no longer tell you who was president. She did her laps on the treadmill when she could no longer drive a car. The treadmill was her touchstone, a way to prove to herself and the rest of us that she was still in charge of her body and mind. She even got a new, more high-tech model not long ago, as if to say, “I’m still here. I’m still me.”

And then she stopped using the treadmill the way she stopped watching the news. At 98, she’s unsteady on her feet, shuffles more than walks, needs help getting up from the sofa.

But did she admit any of that when I broached the subject of my taking the treadmill to my new house in CT so I could walk in inclement weather? Absolutely not. Here’s how the conversation went.

Me: “Mom, how would you feel if I bought the treadmill from you, since you don’t use it anymore and I need to exercise indoors now that I moved here?”

Mom: “What do you mean? I still use the treadmill every day!”

Me: “Uh, no you don’t.”

Mom: “Of course I do! I go downstairs and walk for an hour!”

Me, getting the picture and not wanting to agitate her: “Right. Well then, never mind. You keep it. Absolutely.”

A few minutes later, Thelma, who was covering for Sandy that afternoon and whose kind and gentle manner calms Mom, came into the room, sat down with us and said very diplomatically to my mother, “Jane would really like to have your treadmill. Wouldn’t you like her to have it? You don’t need it anymore.”

Mom: “Of course. Why shouldn’t she have it. It’s not even a question.”

It was as if I hadn’t asked the first time and gotten such a negative reaction, as if this were an entirely new subject. Now I didn’t know how to proceed. The last – and I mean the very last – thing I wanted to do was strip my mother of any vestige of the life she’s enjoyed, the life that has enabled her to live so long and so well, not to mention take advantage of her memory lapses. If she felt the treadmill was still important to her, then that was that and I wouldn’t bring it up again. I’d keep looking for a used one on Craigslist. No biggie. But if she didn’t have a problem with me taking it, that would be great too. Which was her “real” answer? To hang onto her treadmill or relinquish it and, perhaps, her sense of independence?

I went home and resumed my Craigslist search – until Sandy called.

“Your mom wants you to have her treadmill,” she said. “We talked about it. She knows she can’t use it anymore.”

I asked “Are you sure?” over and over again. This was tricky terrain for me, as I said. I wanted to respect my mother’s wishes, but I’d been confused about what they were.

“I’m sure,” said Sandy. “Besides, I’m not letting her use it. It’s not safe for her now.”

Not safe for her now. Sandy’s words made the decision easier. She was the one living in the house with Mom. She was the one who helped her bathe and gave her her medications and held her hand when they crossed the street. She made me understand that taking the treadmill would be an act of care for Mom, not a theft of her identity, as well as an act of care for me, for my health, given my much-too-sedentary lifestyle. And wasn’t that what good caregiving was all about? A balancing act between taking care of loved ones and taking care of ourselves? Hadn’t I written a book on that very subject?

The treadmill is now in my basement. The first time I turned on the TV news, stepped onto the machine and began to walk, I teared up. I pictured Mom on that thing, watching the news, hardly breaking a sweat, and I felt sad that I’d lost the mom she used to be. And then I quickly rethought my visualization. Instead, I imagined her standing off to the side cheering me on. “The treadmill was a big part of my life and now I’m passing it on to you, dear,” I heard her say. And then, because my mother has a sense of humor, I also heard her say, “Just don’t be a slacker and stop using it.”

 

 

Filed Under: Mainly Jane, Wellness Tagged With: aging parents, Alzheimer's, caregiver book, caregiver survival guide, dementia, treadmill workout, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

No More Caregiving from 3,000 Miles Away

May 22, 2015

Mom and me birthday

I haven’t spent my May 2nd birthday with my mother in many years. I’ve been living in California and only visited her in Mt. Kisco, in New York’s northern Westchester County, in the summers. After Mom turned 98 on her birthday in January and her cognitive abilities deteriorated further, it became very clear that talking to her on the phone and getting reports from my New York-based sister Susan and from Sandy, Mom’s live-in caregiver and majordomo, that I wanted to be close by; that I needed to be close by. There were other good reasons to move back to CT but Mom was the primary one. Celebrating my birthday with her, as I did in the photo above. was a treat.

What I’ve discovered spending time with her is that she’s holding her own in many ways. She still has an amazing vocabulary, still has her sense of humor, still remembers plenty. But she doesn’t remember plenty too. Gone are the anecdotes about my childhood. Gone are the anecdotes about her two husbands, my father and stepfather. Gone are the anecdotes about her friends, most of whom she has outlived.

But just when the sadness of all this creeps into my head, I remind myself to find the silver linings in Mom’s dementia. My book, You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You, was all about finding the silver linings in caring for a loved one with a chronic or progressive illness. I not only wrote about the humorous side of being married to a man with Crohn’s disease, but I encouraged the other caregivers I interviewed (a mother whose son is autistic, a wife whose husband has MS, a son whose two parents had Alzheimer’s, etc.) to find humor in their situations too. Being able to find the positives in even the darkest times – and laughing about them – keeps us sane.

So….what are the silver linings with my mother?

For one thing, she’s no longer estranged from her older sister. As I wrote in The Huffington Post a while back, she forgot she was mad at my aunt after ten years of their not speaking to each other, picked up the phone one day and called her. The conversation was friendly and cheerful as if there’d never been an angry word between them. (My aunt, who’s 100 now, has the same level of dementia as Mom.) They’ve been good buddies ever since. How that’s for an upside of dementia.

For another, every time I come to the house to visit Mom now, it’s a pleasant surprise to her. “Nobody told me you were coming!” she exclaims as soon as I walk in the door, even though I’ve spoken to her only minutes before on the phone to let her know I’m on my way. “This is such a wonderful, wonderful surprise! I can’t get over it!” See? Another upside: my mother is always really, really happy to see me.

But the most personal upside by far has been the fact that my mother’s dementia has changed the way she feels about my writing career. Let me back up and explain.

During a recent phone call, she said, “What’s new, dear?”

“Just taking a break from writing to say hi,” I told her.

“Writing?” she said.

“I’m working on a new novel,” I said.

“You write novels?” She sounded flabbergasted. “Nobody told me that!”

I thought I’d misheard her. A former college professor of Greek and Latin, she values words and had never forgotten that I earned my living through words. It was as if she’d suddenly forgotten who I was.

“Why don’t you walk over to the bookshelves across from your bed,” I suggested trying not to show how shaken I was. “You’ll see a lot of books with my name on them.”

She put down the phone, went to look, and came back on the line. “Oh my goodness! I can’t believe my daughter writes novels! I’m so impressed, dear, and so proud. I bet they’re the best novels ever written.”

Well, now she had done a complete one-eighty. I write romantic comedies – novels that have hit bestseller lists, been translated all over the world, and sold to Hollywood. Most mothers would be thrilled to have a daughter who was a successful author, and Mom was thrilled. She called me her “little celebrity,” woke up early to watch me on the “Today” show, and planted herself in the front row at my bookstore signings where she bought multiple copies and had me autograph them. Naturally, I’d assumed she read the books too. I was wrong. She didn’t read them, certainly not all the way through. And the fact that she didn’t – I discovered this after I’d just given her the galley proofs of a forthcoming novel and minutes later found her combing my library for “something good to read” – was like a stab in the heart.

Mom and I had always shared a very close bond. She was my anchor after my father died when I was six. I followed in her footsteps in college and majored in Greek and Latin. I graduated Summa Cum Laude, as did she. I earned a Phi Beta Kappa key that she wore on her charm bracelet. We were smarty-pants women together, rolling our eyes when grammatically challenged people said, “Between you and I.” So imagine my hurt to learn that my novels weren’t up to her intellectual standards, that my work was the sort of facile, mass entertainment she dismissed. The knowledge of her disapproval created a breach in our otherwise loving relationship that was always lurking beneath the surface, unspoken.

And yet now, during our phone call, Mom had just validated the work I had spent my adult life laboring over. In her cognitively impaired state, she had uttered the magic words at last: “I bet they’re the best books ever written.”

So yes, caring for aging parents with dementia can be a struggle and there are times when you long for your parent the way he or she used to be, but when there are silver linings, we have to grab them with both hands. I grabbed my mother’s compliment about my books and will never let them go.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Humor, Mainly Jane, Wellness Tagged With: aging parents, caregiving, dementia, survival guide, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

Sibling Rivalry, Caregivers?

November 9, 2012

Help is on the way. One of the experts I interviewed for YOU’D BETTER NOT DIE OR I’LL KILL YOU is author and filmmaker Deborah Hutchison. Deborah had the genius idea a few years ago to put together a book of agreements to ease the tension that can arise in sticky situations like loaning/borrowing money from a friend or family member and setting guidelines for kids that move back home after college – all under the heading of “A Sane Approach to an Emotional Issue.” One of the agreements deals with Caring for Our Aging Parents, and it offers siblings a way to communicate with each other about how to divvy up responsibilities for elderly parents without resentment over who’s doing more and who’s not doing enough. Deborah has been the primary caregiver to her own mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, so she brings a personal perspective to a tough subject.

Here are clips from our interview.

 

Filed Under: Mainly Jane, Wellness Tagged With: A Sane Approach to an Emotional Issue, aging parents, caregivers, caregiving, Deborah Hutchison, Put It in Writing, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

When To Move Mom/Dad Into Assisted Living

November 8, 2012

Not a subject anyone wants to have, but once you get to a certain point in your life there’s a chance your mother or father will need more care than he or she is getting at home – or that you can provide in your home.

My mom is 95 and still lives at home with her caregiver, still goes to her book group, still sees friends for lunch or dinner. But for some, it’s better not to be isolated and instead live among men and women their own age.

As an adult child of an elderly parent, the question is always how to step in if Mom or Dad is stubborn/in denial/cognitively impaired? And how can we stop feeling guilty about stepping in?

Liz Schierer, the director of memory care at Maravilla, a seniors community in Santa Barbara, put up with all my questions during the interview we did for YOU’D BETTER NOT DIE OR I’LL KILL YOU. Now, she shares some of her wisdom on the “Cam.”

 

Filed Under: Mainly Jane, Wellness Tagged With: aging parents, caregivers, caregiving, elderly parents, Maravilla, Santa Barbara, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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