County, Family Collide Over What’s Best for Aunt Rosie

Marjorie Luce was sitting fretfully outside an Orange County Superior Courtroom, saying over and over that family ties should count for something--that she and her husband Gordon ought to be allowed to take her aunt out of a mental hospital and into their home. The county, she says, doesn’t understand her history with her aunt, how much time they’ve spent together over the years and how living with her would add quality to Aunt Rosie’s life.

It would be so much better, Marjorie Luce says, than the sterile environment of the hospital.

The County of Orange sees it somewhat differently.

The county, which has legal conservatorship over 83-year-old Rosemary Trahern, wants to keep her at the Lakewood Park Health Center in Downey, where she can get 24-hour skilled nursing.

Both sides, we must assume, want the same thing: whatever is best for Aunt Rosie.

But what is best for Aunt Rosie?

Luce, a 59-year-old math instructor at Fullerton College and the mother of three grown children, is asking Judge Jean M. Rheinheimer to take Aunt Rosie’s conservatorship away from the county’s public guardian office and give it to her so she can care for her aunt. Luce assured the court that she and her husband of 40 years will hire private care for the times when they can’t personally attend to Aunt Rosie.

“To them (the county), she’s an object. At the hospital, she’s an object,” Luce said outside the courtroom Tuesday. “She’s not a warm, loving, beautiful human being who has her own special background and reasons for the things that have happened to her.”

When Aunt Rosie used to spend time with them, Luce said, she would listen to music and dance around the room and make conversation with them. At the hospital, Luce insists, her condition has worsened, both physically and in spirit.

The county argued before the judge this week that Rosemary Trahern is best served at the Downey facility, where she can get ‘round-the-clock care from a professional staff trained to deal with her diagnosed schizophrenia and to help with her personal needs.

A county social worker testified that Aunt Rosie is one of the clients she sees at least once a month. Her job is to make sure that things are going all right with her. The social worker says Aunt Rosie is one of 86 people she sees on that basis.

That’s the kind of thing Luce is talking about. She’s talking about family connections. She testified about the dogs and cats at her home and the newest project in the yard--the chipmunks. It sounded a bit comical, unless you realize that although she means it literally, she could almost be talking metaphorically.

She’s talking about a quality of life for Aunt Rosie that she can’t get at the nursing facility. Indeed, county social worker Linda Tomkinson testified that when she first visited Aunt Rosie at the facility last December, she appeared “lethargic and not motivated.”

That’s not the Aunt Rosie the Luces described.

“She has always been a blithe spirit,” Gordon Luce said. “Like a little girl with a lullaby, skipping around somewhere. And we’d always enjoy her.”

Aunt Rosie, the sister of Marjorie Luce’s late mother, has lived with the Luces before. But a few years ago, she became increasingly mentally ill and was placed in county custodial care. Luce says her own mother was dying and her father had a stroke about that time, making it difficult for her and her husband to care for her aunt.

Now, she wants her back.

“I love her,” Luce said. “I love her from way down deep inside.”

Whether that kind of sentiment sways the judge, who knows?

But sitting there in court, trying to read the judge’s expression, I found myself musing.

What is the value of family on a relative’s well-being, even one with a significant degree of mental illness? Would the constancy of having her relatives around improve Aunt Rosie’s days on earth?

Or, would we as a society be doing Aunt Rosie the ultimate indignity by taking her out of a skilled nursing facility and trusting her niece to care for her?

I don’t fault the county for arguing against turning Aunt Rosie over to the Luces. The hospital environment is safe and one that doctors have recommended.

The public guardian can sleep easily at night, knowing that he can’t be second-guessed for assigning Aunt Rosie to the hospital. She may live to be 100 there.

But there’s that nebulous quality-of-life factor again.

What’s it worth to Aunt Rosie? How do you factor it in?

But you’re the judge; you have to make a ruling:

If Luce swears under oath that she’ll hire the professional care needed (which she did Tuesday), is there a reason not to give her a chance to take care of her aunt? Is there a reason not to let Rosemary Trahern have one more shot at the outside world?

Let’s put it metaphorically: Is there a reason not to see if Aunt Rosie wants to be able to go out in the yard and play with the chipmunks?