Caring for Our Parents : In Poignant Moments of Transition, a Mother’s Children Worry, ‘Is This the Right Thing to Do?’

“My brother, Joseph, and I began to discuss it: Are we really seeing this, or is it our imagination?” Paul McKernan remembers. “My mother was continuing to maintain her sense of humor and her memory of the distant past, but a short-term aspect of her memory wasn’t functioning. It was becoming almost like a fade-out in a movie.”

Bertha Mary McKernan lived with her husband, Edward, for 34 years in a Montebello duplex. In 1976 he died; she was then 76.

They had four sons, Paul, now 47, of Long Beach; Joseph, 56, of East Whittier; Luke, 60, of San Diego County; and Edward, 65, of La Mirada.

Paul McKernan, a language arts junior high school teacher and the family spokesman, said he, Joseph and Edward have been closely involved with the poignant transitions in the elderly life of the woman who brought them into this world.

“After my father died, my mother continued to live by herself in the duplex,” Paul McKernan said. “But after about four years, we started to notice that common everyday functions were becoming more difficult for her to perform--things such as writing checks, evaluating her mail.”

Little by little, painful for the family to realize, her time span on short-term matters was decreasing. For example, the moments when she would ask a son where he worked.

McKernan: “We knew it was real when money wasn’t working for her. If somebody came and said she owed them money, she would pay without checking. Joe and I went to her and asked for power-of-attorney to handle her affairs.”

Next came the unintentional loss of weight. “She was forgetting to eat,” McKernan said. “She wouldn’t know whether or not she had eaten a meal. We arranged for Meals on Wheels, and for a while that helped.”

The sons then noticed a new phase.

McKernan: “The house wasn’t being well-kept. She was forgetting to change her clothes. She became afraid to go outside, afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way home.”

In 1981, a young female nursing student was hired to stop by for several hours every day, to make sure the home was straightened out, the clothes laundered, and so forth. This arrangement, however, lasted less than a year.

Needed More Help

“It became more and more obvious that Mom needed more help,” McKernan said. “She now had arthritis in a hip, and we were all thinking about the stairs in her home. If she fell, she might not be able to get up.”

It became time for the meeting that so many American families are increasingly finding themselves having, putting themselves through the wringer. It is the usually emotional get-together for the purpose of making a decision about a heretofore-independent parent:

McKernan: “Full-time nursing care was the kind of financial stress that Mom had never wanted to put on the family. Her lifetime statement was: ‘I never want to be a burden on you boys.’ ”

The three sons who live in the Los Angeles area discussed the options--”to have a full-time nurse in the home, to have the mother live with one of the families, or to find a minimum-care facility that was sensitive and wouldn’t treat her like an old person with no rights.”

The third choice emerged as the most logical. “Minimum care is where they supply a room, bedding change, a cafeteria that serves hot food, offers classes, provides the opportunity for communication with others,” McKernan said. “Joe found a place near Norwalk, about a mile from his home.”

The mother had been involved in the discussion of the move. McKernan: “Her reaction basically was that she knew something was changing, something wasn’t working the way it used to. She said: ‘I trust you boys.’ ”

The sons took to her room some religious pictures, photos of friends, some of her clothing, things she would need on a daily basis, things that simply meant something to her. The remainder from her home--not that much, this isn’t a wealthy family--are stored in their homes.

‘Is This Right?’

“While we had a feeling of real support,” McKernan said, “there was a remnant in all of us that still wondered: ‘Is this the right thing to do?’

“This is the best we can do, we concluded.”

The sons drove their mother to her new residence, to a room she would share with someone with whom she could talk. During the first week they visited every day, and made sure later that not many days went by during which she didn’t get a visit from at least one of them.

During the roughly four years she lived there, another transition was taking place in her long life.

McKernan: “She was still bright and still able to have fun. But she was becoming confused. She didn’t know how to get back to her room from the cafeteria.

“At times we would take her in the car to dinner, but it was almost like she was in a dream world. And we realized that maybe it wasn’t a favor, that she was uncomfortable about it.

“I found that it now was better to spend short periods of time with her rather than long ones.”

The next decision was easier. It was made by the staff at the facility. They suggested that things were at the point where Bertha Mary McKernan needed additional assistance.

“We again re-evaluated all the options,” the youngest son said. It was decided that full-care was the best way to go. The family found and checked out such a nursing home, again in Norwalk.

“This time, we didn’t discuss the move with Mom,” McKernan recalled. “Her memory was down to about four minutes. The move might only have made her fret.”

She is 88 now, and for about 2 1/2 years her world stretches from her room to the cafeteria, to which she navigates in a wheelchair.

“Even that world becomes confusing to her at times, she even gets lost in that world,” McKernan said, not without emotion. “She requests not to leave this place. If she is taken outside for walks, she becomes confused.”

A Daily Routine

Her daily routine is almost ritual. She goes to the same table in the cafeteria every time. She sleeps a lot.

“Sometimes,” her youngest son said, “she’ll sit with her back to the TV and just listen. She allows her mind to be on automatic.

“When we visit her, she isn’t always sure who we are, but she knows we are family.”

McKernan said that when he first became aware that things would have to happen, he came to the conclusion that there could be two ways of regarding the emerging situation:

--”That it was something horrible and abnormal.

--”That it was a normal part of the life process, something I should be tapping into and learning from.

“The decision I reached was to make this a joyful experience for everybody.”

The son has this philosophy: “I think we have to learn to love and accept the process of aging as much as we love and accept the process of birth.”

He had more to say: “The people I’ve seen who are having difficulty with this situation are those who allow themselves to dwell in guilt needlessly. I want people to see that they don’t have to torture themselves by thinking that this process is bad or that they are guilty.

“I still love my mother very much, and she still responds to affection. She treats a handhold as if it were a wedding.”

The best part: “It is a very emotional investment, but after all, our mother gave us life.”

Finally, remember that there are younger generations of the McKernan family involved in this.

“What we sons are experiencing and learning now, we want to pass on to our children,” said the youngest child of Bertha Mary McKernan. “So that our own children will have a model from which to draw. I want that model to be a positive one.”