help in the shower... she won't consent
a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help
4 April 2025:
Ellen (my mother) refuses help in the shower. And, the Assisted Living Facility refuses to let her shower alone because she is at grave risk for falling. (Remember how she was found in her home.) It’s a stalemate. Ellen has terrible body odor. People have to sit beside her at meals and it must be terribly unpleasant. I don’t know how long the impasse will last. How much agency do you afford someone?
…
Many years ago we learned that a couple from Santa Cruz had bought the house down the block. Being the friendly sort we invited them for dinner, to offer advice about their new city, Portland, and perhaps gain new friends. The man had a boiled face, shiny-red skin, wrinkle free but more from bloat than youth. His wife was prim, with a stiff spine and a tawny helmet of hair that tipped up at her shoulders. I don’t remember their names so I will call them Joan and Bill. Our home, with its Mexican masks, drippy candles, the tilting pile of New Yorker magazines we never got around to reading, the colorful walls— green kitchen, oxblood dining room, yellow living room, must have seemed terribly bohemian, and Joan did snug up her cardigan. I’m not certain what I cooked, perhaps a mushroom risotto as I was big on risotto in those days, and a crisp salad with lemony vinaigrette.
We invited more neighbors and poured a lot of Rioja. Bill drank. Joan did not. The feeling around the table was lukewarm. We had no advice about finding a church. At one point I got up to snag another bottle or more bread or maybe the Basque cheesecake from the kitchen counter and Bill, seated in the middle of the table, leapt up, blocking my path. Swiftly he wrapped his meaty arms around my waist and lifted me off the ground, his now sweating face pressed into my decolletage. He spun me around. A shocked gasp and laughter spiked from the table. I reared back, pressing my palms hard against his shoulders, and just as swiftly, he set me down.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all night!” he said.
We didn’t show him to the door. I might have said something like, “Never do that again.” But the night carried on and the goodbye at our door was final.
Imagine my shock when I was again showing my mother the shower room and THERE WAS BILL!
He did not pick me up. In fact he didn’t even recognize me. He seemed bereft, moving his father in, struggling with all the decisions and the costs. I did not remind him. I did not lean over and say, ‘put me down,’ though I thought about it for a minute.
After the sighting I was so shaken, I told Mr. Rendo, the man who runs my mother’s home. “You won’t believe how strange… that man once…” and after I told the story, Mr. Rendo said, “He did that in front of your husband?”
How strange. Bill thought I was a doll, something he could exploit for his macho, possessive desire, not inquiring if I would like to be twirled. Mr. Rendo was concerned about my husband’s honor. Neither man thought of me. Who cares who witnessed Bill picking me up? There was no consent! And, what a marvelous coincidence! The whole thing gave a little bounce to my afternoon.
Yes, life hands us our asses with irresponsible elders, with men who overstep, but it also hands us uncanny coincidences.
…
Ellen won’t consent. She insists on privacy. Where in the world did that come from? This from a woman who stood naked in front of the wall heater when I had sleepover pals in elementary school. This from a woman who had noisy sex with her own sleepover pals on the other side of paper thin walls of our apartments.
I understand the desire for autonomy. I do. Yet this is unhealthy.