Holding Mom

A few weeks ago I got this email from my older sister, who has been on the front lines for my parents ever since they moved to Lewiston over a decade ago to live in housing appropriate to my mom's increasing dementia:

"Just thought I should share this sobering update. I have noticed lately that Mom seems thinner and she is often sleeping when we stop by. I checked with the nurse and she said that Mom is not eating much. Most of the time they have to feed her to get her to eat anything, although she does have days where she does a little better. The nurse said this is what to expect since she is in the end stage of the disease, and added that she would be surprised if Mom made it to summer. Of course she also expected Dad to go a good year before he did, so it is just a guess on her part. Still, the nurse got my attention. I always kind of thought their deaths would come in close proximity. I am sure that somewhere inside Mom's poor tangled self, she misses her lifelong companion and is ready to go."

Dad died late last November, having made it past his 95th birthday. We didn't tell Mom. After he spent some time in the hospital for hip surgery and pneumonia, when he came back she regarded him with suspicion and no longer seemed to retain that last bit of connection that had outlived the departure of almost everything else she ever knew, including the names of her children and how to speak English. (I dubbed her speechlike vocalizations "Klingon," a nickname that stuck among all the Star Trek fans I grew up with.) She can't retain or fully comprehend anything we say to her, and if she could, why give her even that passing moment of pain before the new information vaporized?

After Dad died we moved her into a smaller single room at the care facility and she began to retreat into herself even more. When I got my sister's email I laid plans to get to Lewiston for a visit. 

Not exactly for Mom, since she doesn't know who I am, although she brightens when she sees me. They're sort of for me--a fulfillment of a sense of duty to the mother who did such a good job for so many years even though that woman packed up her bags and left a bit at a time, years ago. They're definitely for my older sister, who has borne the brunt and who can skip a visit if I make one.

Over the past few years I've felt lucky that I usually got a good visit. "Good" meant that Mom was awake, seemed happy to see me, and might even occasionally get a phrase or sentence out in the midst of the Klingon. 

The last time I was down for a visit to see Dad a few days before he died, with my older daughter and her husband accompanying us, at the lunch table Mom brought out quite clearly, "Aren't we having fun!" with a pleased expression. We heartily agreed that yes, yes we were.

My visit this Monday is one I'll cherish. She looked at me a bit uncertainly when I arrived and said to her, "Hi, Mom, it's your daughter here to visit!"

She asked quite clearly, "Who am I?"

"You're Gladys Greene, and I'm your daughter," I said, squeezing in alongside her on the big upholstered chair she sat in facing the TV, where a very young Clint Eastwood confronted the judge in Hang 'Em High.

"Buh--" she began, looking at me and raising her eyebrows questioningly.

"Yes, I'm Barb," I answered, thinking that she really did seem to be trying to get my name out and had the right linguistic association.

She smiled and began telling me something in Klingon. Thanks to Second Daughter pointing out years ago that one could interact with her quite smoothly by simply ignoring the meaninglessness of the words and responding solely to tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language, I'm pretty fluent in our interactions. I smile, nod, provide verbal filler like, "Oh really!" or "I see" when she pauses, and generally go with the flow. 

As my friend Maggie said years ago about visiting her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's, "You're going to a foreign country and observing the culture. It isn't your job to try to change them--you just use good manners, thank them, and then come back to your country when the visit is over."

Mom seemed worried about something. She went on at length in Klingon and then asked me something like, "How did you manage all those people?"

I said, "Oh, it went all right. It was fine." She didn't seem convinced. 

"When was this?" she asked.

"A couple of weeks ago--a while ago," I answered.

The phrase "a while ago" seemed to get stuck--she couldn't repeat it back and puzzled over it, and was still worried about whatever it was I'd done with all those people.

I leaned forward, put my arms around her, patted her back, and said, "It's all right. It will all be okay."

Immediately I felt her relax into my arms as her arms went around me in return. She gave a deep sigh, then another. I rocked her a bit, holding her and patting her back. She pulled back, looked at me, and said, "Thank you very, very much." I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her again.

Victoria, a South African aide I hadn't met before, stopped by our chair and asked if I wanted her to take our picture--I was so glad she did.

We stayed like that for 20 minutes or more, mostly silent. Every once in a while she gave a little start--perhaps that falling sensation that gets you when you're falling asleep was happening--and I'd pat her back again and tell her it was all right. She would relax again. I got tears in my eyes more than once as we sat together, holding each other.

I realized how little loving touch she receives any more and how important that is. She is assisted, moved, bathed, and more by very nice aides, but they have to handle her in a very clinical fashion. With Dad gone there isn't anyone there every day to give her hand a squeeze or make eye contact and smile with something passing between them.

When it was time to leave I eased my arms out from around her, told her I needed to go, and kissed her on the forehead, telling her I love her. She yearned toward me--I could see it in her expression--and I stroked the side of her face. She sat with eyes closed, absorbing my touch.

I didn't want to go. It makes me smile just thinking of how contented we were, holding each other. It was the best visit ever.

Related Reading

• Parenting Up, Parenting Down, Parenting Across
• 3 Things My Mother Taught Me
• Don't Buy That Case of Stuff on Sale. I'm Serious.
• Mom Frmrnyis
• For My Dad, on His 94th Birthday

A Pause to Remember

Today on Twitter someone mentioned running across a picture of a friend from college that made her stop to remember someone who is gone now. I thanked her for that reminder to stop and think about the people we've lost.

That brought me back to the post I wrote about my friend Christianne Sharman, among other posts I've written about people who have touched my life and who are gone now.

In the past year three of my uncles died along with my dad. They were old, they had lived long and successful lives, but it still hurt to lose them.

I can still hear their voices and I hear Christianne, who had a wonderful voice.

I want to stop every so often to remember. For those of us who did a lot of growing up before the Internet we don't have a thousand gigabytes of sound and picture available just a click away. I have no recordings whatsoever of my uncles' voices. I have to rely on my memory and that will fade with time.

I do have a DVD of my dad thanks to brother Jim, who interviewed Dad for a story about his career as a World War II bomber pilot, but I haven't watched it since he died last November. I need to do that.

In the meantime we have memory, which is all we've ever had, and it needs to be cherished. The cave paintings of Lascaux may still be there but the full richness of what they stood for lived within the beings who painted them. The story of Gilgamesh meant so much more to real people listening to real storytellers than it can mean left to us on clay tablets. The repetition in The Odyssey is there because that aided the memories of those who performed it. We tell the same stories time after time at family gatherings because there's something about the way we hear it together that carves those memories deeper and deeper.

So here's to Uncle Russ, who looked so much like my dad, his older brother, and to his son Jerry Joe, who would have been my age had he not been hit by a driver in a pick-up truck while riding his bicycle--something that finds a haunting resonance for me now in my work in bicycle advocacy.

Here's to Uncle Wayne, with the hearty laugh, the knock-knock jokes, the loud Hawaiian shirts, and the ranch in northern California that we visited for family reunions. I still have a wooden winery box made by his company that I got as a kid on a tour of one of the wineries he supplied with shipping containers; it holds some of my sewing supplies and I think of him every time I use it. I remember his eternal patience when we rode in the motor home with him and Aunt Lorraine all the way from Lewiston, Idaho, to Cloverdale, California, for a visit, playing Elton John's Greatest Hits and singing "Crocodile Rock" at the top of our lungs. That's 855 miles of patience, mind you.

Here's to Uncle Bud, who had my birthday--or I suppose I had his birthday since he was born long before I was!--an architecture who designed many schools in California. He featured prominently in a story my mom told about challenging him to a race to see who could eat an ice cream cone fastest, during the Depression when an ice cream was a very rare treat. He chowed down only to find that she was still enjoying her cone in leisurely fashion when he finished first in short-lived triumph, and Grandma Humphrey made Mom hand over the rest of her ice cream cone in a lesson about selfishness as the older sister who should have known better.

And here's to my dad, who died Nov. 27, 2012, after a long life well-lived.

Pay attention to the people you love so you can hear them when they're gone.

Parenting Up, Parenting Down, Parenting Across

This year has brought many changes and transitions. In chronological order over the course of roughly six months: Second Daughter graduated from high school; I accepted a new job that meant leaving a job I'd held for 14-1/2 years; we moved across the state into a 500-square-foot borrowed condo, away from the town where Eldest Daughter lives with her husband; I took Second Daughter across the country to college less than a month after starting the new job, then turned around and spent a week at national bike conferences, then did another one-day trip for work; as I settled into the new (and very demanding, challenging, fulfilling, rewarding) job I realized I can't keep running the start-up Bike Style business I launched last year and started thinking about how to wind it down or hand it off; we got through a major fundraising event for the Bicycle Alliance and I traveled some more to meet more bike advocates and then visit my younger sister; and as we made plans to head back to Spokane for the Thanksgiving weekend we learned that after a fall, a broken hip, surgery, pneumonia, and a lung infection, my 95-year-old dad appears to be approaching the end of his days.

As I read the emails among  his six children about the issues and decisions I can see our upbringing at work and credit both Dad and Mom with raising us to be both pragmatic and compassionate.

That makes me think about my parenting, the kinds of adults my daughters will be when they face similar decisions in the (hopefully far distant) future, and where I stand right now as the filling in the sandwich.

My younger daughter chose a college 3,000 miles away to pursue her dreams in musical theater. Once she'd chosen that focus I knew she'd have to be far away to get close to the bright lights of Broadway. I'm okay with that--and I'm not just saying that.

The Buddha taught that attachment causes suffering. I don't want the kind of attachment to my children that does that--the kind in which you want them to be, do, or say certain things. (Think of the dad who considers his glory days as the high-school quarterback the high point of his life and pushes his son to play football and you'll get what I'm talking about.)

I know a few very attached moms who are what I call "smothers." (I might add that my daughters also use this term. They don't want one.)

The smothers cling to the sweet, dependent baby-years memories and miss recognizing that their children are growing up into amazing young adults. Those days are fond memories but if we focus too much on those we miss the wonders of the present moment.

If we've done our jobs well, our children are prepared to enter the world without holding our hands any more to cross the street. They start to make adult decisions with adult consequences. If we shelter them from those consequences we leave them unprepared for the day when we're not around to rush to the rescue.

I've been a free-range mom with free-range kids for years, with the goal of equipping my daughters with savvy and skills to negotiate life without my help. I've never been one of those attack helicopter moms who executes a strafing run on anyone who interferes with her precious darling's happiness. The latest term I learned from a magazine article is the "snowplow mom"--she removes all obstacles from Little Darling's path.  So how prepared can Little Darling be for the real world?

Maybe I feel this more acutely right now because I'm facing that day with my own parents. I'm not the first to point out the similarities between the care we provide our children and the care we provide our aging parents. I'm thinking about how their parenting prepared me to raise my daughters, and prepared me to cope with the changes they themselves face now too.

I still have some "parenting down" work. These days it primarily involves an electronic funds transfer with a touch of mothering, along the lines of, "You should get a winter coat. Here's some money because that's more cost-effective than shipping a coat from Seattle to New York." (As my best friend Betsy says, "It's great when your child's problem is one you can solve with a checkbook.")

I do a little "parenting across". That's how I think of what I do now with Eldest Daughter, who has just finished her first year of marriage. Right now she has to deal with her husband's recent surgery; I can't do much from a distance to be helpful but I can let her know I'm there if she needs to talk and tell her how happy the two of them look with each other.

And then there's "parenting up." When I visited my dad the day before Thanksgiving he was frail and weak. I wanted to give him a hug and tell him everything would get better the way I used to for my daughters. But that isn't true. I can give him the hug, but not the false reassurances.

I don't have the daily responsibilities now; my older sister takes care of the ER visits, the paperwork, the decisions. (I had those back when they lived in Spokane but they've been in Lewiston for over a decade now.) The resemblance to parenting is clear, but without the bright future we envision for our children.

Dad is very deaf now so we write him notes, to which he responds with a smile or a word or two. Mom's vascular dementia makes her impossible to communicate with, although she did say clearly, "We're having fun!" in telling us a long story in what I refer to as her Klingon speech.

Thus I can't tell either of them what good parents they were. They didn't smother. They expected us to do our chores, study hard, get a job. They wanted us to fall in love. (Not everything worked out every time on that front, mind you, but the fact that all six of their children persevered and ultimately found a lasting love stands as a testament to the example set by their 68-year marriage.)

I can tell them I love them as they face the final passage. I can't do the hard work for them. But that's not what parents do.

Social Media Moves: 59 Things to Do in Social Media when You Change Jobs

Once upon a time when you moved from one city to another or one job to another you wrapped newspaper around the breakables, threw things into boxes, filed a forwarding notice with the US Postal Service, and away you went.

No longer!

I’ve been in a transitional zone the past couple of weeks knowing that I was looking at taking a new job and moving to a new city. That led me to do a few things in social media but I didn’t want to signal too much in case things didn’t work out.

I also had to think about how and when I would notify people in various spaces and tie much of that to the timing of a news release so as not to scoop my new organization, while still trying to avoid having people close to me get the news from strangers. This is not nearly as simple as a going-away party and a forwarding notice.

I got the job and have been busily working away on various fronts to transition. It occurred to me that my activities might serve as a checklist for others in similar circumstances. While not everyone will have the news-release timing element the to-do list is the same; you just won’t have to stage things in quite the same way.

The length of this checklist of social media activities for people changing jobs is just a tad daunting. If you're not in all these spaces--you don't tweet, you don't have a blog--the list does get shorter. But the list of spaces you have available in which to establish expertise and build a network to find that next great job is also shorter.

Job Search and Post-Application Activities

All Spaces

• Assume that everything you’re doing is part of what will be reviewed by your future employer and all your new colleagues. Behave accordingly. Delete past stupidity.

Twitter

• Follow people (in the city you’ll be moving to, if that's part of the deal) who are connected to the sectors you’ll be working in. I say "sectors" because, for example, I'll be running a nonprofit (one sector) in biking/active transportation (two more sectors). You might be going to work for an online (tech sector) retailer (another sector) of outdoor recreational equipment (another sector).
• Start a couple of relevant lists to help you organize the new input. Since Twitter caps the number of lists you can have and I had maxed that out I had to make some decisions about what to keep and what to cut or consolidate. You should also think about whether you want to keep those new lists private or make them public, depending on how many savvy stalkers you think you have.
• To think about: Do you or don’t you follow people who will be involved in the search process? If I were in a general job search I’d definitely follow people in organizations I hoped to work for. You can always look at profiles even if you don’t follow, or add them to a private list.
• To think about: Do you want to unfollow some accounts to improve your ability to focus on your new direction/location? Maybe those move to a list so you don’t lose track of them completely.

LinkedIn

• Clean up your profile overall. You don’t have one? Good luck with that job hunt; LinkedIn is a major tool for job seekers and recruiters.
• This is a good time to get an updated head shot. Don’t be ludicrously different in real life from the photo on your profile; your vanity (self-delusion) will be too evident the minute the interviewer meets you.
• Make sure you’re connected to everyone who recognizes you in your current role and title before moving on to the new one. For gosh sakes don’t use their generic message when you send the invitation! Personalize each one so people know why you’re connecting. In some instances you may not have talked to the person in quite a while so it’s time to refresh his/her memory. Whenever I meet someone new I put a note in the Outlook contact about when and where we met and something we discussed; I refer to that when I make a LinkedIn request if it’s someone I don’t work with on a regular basis.
• Ask people you’ll be using as references in the application process if they’d be willing to write public recommendations for you on LinkedIn. Be specific in the request: What skills or knowledge would be most helpful to have featured on your profile when the future employer looks at it? Even if you don’t get this job you may be looking for another, and meanwhile your profile is more complete.
• While you’re at it, write some recommendations for others. First get in touch and say you’d like to do that; ask what they’d most like to have highlighted. This is good karma and it also shows your ability to evaluate the work of others and that you’re a nice person generally. (If you’re not a nice person, skip all of this advice and just respond to PO box number ads in your local newspaper.)
• Check LinkedIn contacts against Outlook contacts and download vcards as needed to clean that up before exporting a back-up copy. LinkedIn lets you upload Outlook contacts to check for matches but that doesn’t help clean up Outlook, which is my master go-to list since not everyone is on LinkedIn. When I started doing this I found that quite a few people had changed jobs without telling me (a mistake you won’t make if you use this checklist).
• Join relevant groups in the new sector and city. Think about whether to put those groups’ badges on your profile—that may be a step that signals too much depending on your situation.
• Engage in selected conversations in those groups, remembering that all the activity shows on your profile and is thus visible to everyone you’re connected to already, possibly including your boss and colleagues. You want to start becoming a familiar name and face in the new circles without having a foot too far out the door if you don't want people to know you're looking.
• Check LinkedIn profiles for your potential future colleagues for group ideas. It might be a tad too stalkerish to join every single one they’re in. If you’re serious about this profession or industry you probably already have at least one good group in common.
• Answer some relevant questions in the Q&A section if you haven’t already been doing that. Warning note: If people vote your answer the best on a question, that topic appears on your profile as part of your expertise. Don’t answer random questions just because you have opinions unless you want that expertise on your profile.

Facebook

• Do some housekeeping on old posts that shouldn’t be public.
• Depending on your current situation you either tell everyone you’re looking, you don’t say a word, or somewhere in the middle depending on what kinds of lists you’ve set up there. Just make sure the update isn’t set to “Public” if you don’t want it to be!
• Become a fan of the business or organization page for your target. Share their links and updates as appropriate—again, thinking about what you signal and whether you want to do that.

Email Accounts

• Clean up contact lists in Outlook, Gmail, and anywhere else you have an account. When you make the move you’ll be sending a message out to everyone on the list and/or to hand-selected subsets. If you haven’t cleaned up your list in a while now is a good time to do it since you’d be going through it to do that selection anyway. Create groups (Gmail) or categories (Outlook) to batch people based both on where you’ve been and where you’re going.
• During that step think about your contacts in terms of how you want to notify them when the time comes. If you’ll need to send special messages to specific groups—for example, to all members of a board or committee you’ll be resigning from, as was my situation—do you already have an email group set up for each one? If you don’t you’re probably compiling that by hand every time or using reply-all on the last message from the group. Either way you may want a list that keeps those people grouped for future reference in case you need to tap that circle in your new role.
• If you're in a position where you are expected to leave your contact list behind for others, clean up any notes you wouldn't want others to see.

Blog

• Meet your new best friend, “Spellcheck.”
• Even if you’ve never used an editorial calendar or a plan, use one now. What posts will be visible to someone who comes and looks at the last few before the date you applied? And after?

Other Spaces

• Same general principles: Tidy up a bit, do something meaningful as your most recent activity, and reinforce the connections you were looking for in that space originally.

You Interviewed and You’re Waiting to Hear

All Spaces

• More discussion in relevant groups on LinkedIn, tweeting, and blogging, all with the tone and content that are in keeping with the job you’re going for.
• Keep your references posted on your progress, asking them to continue to keep it confidential.
• Don't blab on Facebook! You and the organizational have gone on a couple of dates and you don't know whether they're going to pop the question. Don't set yourself up for disappointment or embarrassment. Think of this as the "it's complicated" relationship stage--is that really something you need to share while you're going through it?

You Got the Job!

Congratulations—that’s awesome!

In my situation I had close to two weeks between when I accepted the position and when we’d be putting out a news release. I didn’t want any of my blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking friends to start spreading the word before it was made public by the organization or before I had a chance to tell my coworkers myself, so you know what I did?

Nothing.

As in, I said nothing on Twitter. On Facebook. On my blog. In email.

It killed me.

I told my best friend and swore her to secrecy; she was leaving for three weeks in Europe with only spotty wi-fi access or it might have killed her too.

I told my boss and the HR director, both of whom understood the need not to say anything publicly.

I told my references who had been getting updates from me at each phase of the interview process and thanked them yet again for their support.

I had to wait for the offer to be finalized before I could tell my staff and closest colleagues, asking them not to share the news with others until the date the release was due out.

In preparation for the news release I worked on the following:

Email Draft Copy and List Preparation

• May as well craft them now. They can all be queued up with a specific date/time for sending if you’re using Outlook. Since Gmail doesn’t have that function I got all the drafts ready with recipients in the BCC field. Think about the tone you’re striking and whether you can do some final good things for the organization you’re leaving as well as the one you’re going to.
• It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway because I just heard of someone breaking this rule—these are not bridge-burning emails. You never know when you’ll be back or who you’ll need to reconnect with in the future. Be professional and courteous. What if your mom read this?
• If you have all your new contact information lined up, create a new vcard for yourself and attach that to the emails to make it easy for people to update their contact list. Include the information as text, too, for those who can’t import that format.

My list of emails to prep:

• Colleagues I hadn’t told in person.
• General list of personal contacts.
• Separate one for each board and committee I’d be resigning from.
• Special one for a monthly gathering of friends to invite them to one last bash at my house.
• Special one for existing contacts in the industry sector I’ll be working in, inviting them to connect with my new organization.
• General list of all professional contacts.

Blogs

• For the one I’ve been writing for a while that has direct relevance to my new position and organization, I wrote a post about the opportunity it represents and the path that led me to the job. I set it to publish around noon the day the news release would come out to give me time to grab a link to the release and embed that.
• For my personal blog I wrote one on the opportunity for personal growth and change and linked to the other one. I set it to publish later in the day so the news published first on the more relevant blog.

It’s Official!

Email

• Hit send.
• Prepare to deal with replies! You’ll be deleting bad contacts, cleaning up others, and responding to good wishes and questions. In my case I sent the email out during a week that had the Fourth of July holiday mid-week so I got a zillion autoresponse emails for people taking the week off. In hindsight I wish I had waited but I was too excited to.
• If you’re staying at your old job for a while, consider adding a footer to your signature that tells people where you’re going and when your last day in the office is so they can plan around that.

LinkedIn

• Talk about the new position as a status update with links on your profile. If there's no news release, link to the new organization's site.
• Post in selected groups as appropriate.
• Depending on your start date, update the profile to show the new position.

Twitter

• Update your bio to reflect the new position.
• Announce a few different times of day with a link to the news release or your updated LinkedIn profile.
• Send @ messages to people in the new organization or location if you’ve established a relationship with them or feel comfortable saying, “Hey, I’m headed your way!” You’ll have some new friends all lined up when you get to town.
• Prepare to deal with @ messages. You might do several round-up “Thx for good wishes @name @name @name” tweets to deal with in batches rather than one at a time. Since some people seeing the thank-you tweet will not have read the news, include some reference to it or a link: "Thx for good wishes on [link]" or "Thx for good wishes on new job."

Facebook

• You could have fun with your cover photo or profile pic to tease the news. I changed my cover photo to the Seattle skyline the night before the public announcement without saying why because that’s where I was moving.
• Monitor both your own profile and the organization’s page; respond to good wishes.

Blogs

• Publish.
• Update your bio on the blog.
• Monitor and respond to comments.

Everywhere Else

• Send messages to specialty online communities you’ve engaged in.
• If I were uber-organized I would know where all those other bios are that I’ve created over time in various social spaces and be able to clean them up systematically. As it is I can think of a few, such as Quora. The rest I’ll find as I stumble around the Web. (oh, right, StumbleUpon)
• If you haven't Googled yourself in a while now's a good time. Is the word spreading? Do you find bios you need to clean up? (Run it as an incognito search for cleaner results.)
• Maybe this is your cue to start a list of all your social identities so when the next time comes for some clean-up you have your broom and dustpan all ready.

Now You’re Really Gone

Email

• If you didn’t have your new contact information available when you notified people, now you can send an email to your cleaned-up contact list with an updated vcard. If you’re having some kind of goodbye event the invitation to that should be part of this so you’re not emailing people too many times.
• Set up an autoresponder on your email at your previous organization with contact information for people there who can respond and with your new contact information. Work with your IT folks on how long that can stay active.
• You may want to do the same with an autoresponder or a signature line for your personal email account for a while to catch people who didn't see the original message. (If you do a big BCC list the message can get flagged as spam.)

Good luck, and happy socializing!