Your Name Is Edith: A Mother and Daughter
Love Story

Copyright © 2008 by Laurelee Roark

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Although this is a true story about real people, some names have been changed out ofdeference to their wishes for privacy. Also, since the events described in this book took place over several years, often comprised of short visits, some of the experiences have been blended together.

This is not intended as an autobiography. My apologies ahead of time for any omissions or oversights of important people in my life.

ISBN: 978-0-595-44316-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-68981-1 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-595-88645-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Mom Is Crazy

From the Frying Pan into the Fire

I Don’t Know What I’m

The Day in Heaven

Get This Shit Outta Here

Is That a Donut in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Look Ma, No Teeth

Ma’am, Can You Tell Me Where My Room Is?

Do You Like Sex?

They Call Her the Wanderer

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Shit Happens

A Day in the Life

We Are All Forty-Two

Losing My Religion

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Yet Another Corner

Moving On Up

Five Important Things

Mom Goes to Heaven and We Still Don’t Have a President

Let’s Get to Work

Darling, You Look Fabulous

Fifty Ways to Leave Your Mother

Singing Her Life with My Words

Resources

A Tenacity Press Book

Tenacity Press, founded by Hal Zina Bennett and Susan J. Sparrow in 1992, follows the tenets of a literary cooperative. We join an honored tradition of small publishers who, through the centuries, have championed the works of fine authors. For more information about Tenacity Press: www.TenacityPressBooks.org

For my mother, Edith Cecilia Oliver, and for my granddaughter, Evelyn May Ragsdale, two people who mean the world to me.

Foreword

When Mitch Albom’s book Tuesdays with Morrie was first released, M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and best-selling author, commented that it lovingly captures the simplicity beyond life’s complexities. Those same words accurately describe Your Name Is Edith. What we’ve learned since the success of Albom’s work is that millions of readers are intrigued by the mysteries that can be unveiled in the last moments of a loved one’s life.

Laurelee Roark and her siblings would discover that there is a window in the midst of our grief when we become exquisitely aware of what’s truly essential in life—simple acts of caring and love. And in the glow of this realization, life’s complexities melt away. It is a lesson that has forever brightened the lives of the members of this family, and Ms. Roark generously shares that lesson in this book.

When I initially read the first drafts of Your Name Is Edith, I had recently read Tuesdays with Morrie. I was struck by the rich, intellectual insights that readers of Albom’s book could apply in their everyday lives. In a similar vein, when I read Your Name Is Edith, I found it rich with lessons of the heart that can guide readers to forgiveness and love, thus bringing greater peace of mind to their everyday lives.

This is so much more than a book about Alzheimer’s or a family’s efforts to serve a loved one—their mother Edith—in her final days. There’s magic in this book that transcends what seem to be impossible challenges, revealing precious insights that make everyday burdens fall away.

The author’s message of caring, forgiveness, and love rises like the Phoenix from the fire of Edith’s illness as mother and children alike find in their hearts the love that had once been hidden. This is the story of a once very troubled family that healed through illness, and finally, death. We learn very quickly that if Alzheimer’s took away Edith’s mind, it gave her back her heart and allowed her and her children to rediscover the loving bonds that made them a family.

Through this moving story, readers will find a path to rediscover the bonds of love in their own lives and move beyond wounds and grievances to a new place of comfort. Compassionate, irreverent, funny, happy, sad, inspirational, and instructive, this book offers a new perspective that guides us beyond the challenges of the moment, to feel the truth of our emotions and follow our hearts.

~ Hal Zina Bennett, author of Write From the Heart

Acknowledgments

It takes a village to write a book. My village includes a group of gifted writers I have been blessed to be involved with for the past five years. We call ourselves The Lakeside Writers Guild. This book was born and raised during the weekly meetings held in my living room on the beautiful shores of Clear Lake, in northern California. I could never have made it without each and every ear, heart, and voice of my true peers: Hal, Linda, Fran, Susanne, Melissa, Richard, and Jane.

I want to give special thanks to my wonderful editor, teacher, and friend, Hal Zina Bennett, who has midwifed every book I have ever written. Any success I have at this craft I must attribute to his help.

My husband and home editor, Jim O’Dell, is another champion of all my writings, but especially this one. I knew a chapter was a good one if it caused him to either laugh out loud or cry his eyes out.

My sister Melanie held the crisis together in Texas, always treating our mother with love, compassion, and dignity. This made it bearable for me to spend a few days visiting Mom, then go back to my life in California. I give Melanie full credit for keeping me somewhat sane and for giving everything she had to bring comfort to our mother in her final years.

The seed of this book was planted by my brother Keith St. Clare. The day after Mother’s funeral, he leaned across the table to me and said, You should write a book about the Five Important Things. (See chapter 19.)

This is that book.

Introduction

During the final stages of my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, my relationship with her changed completely. We went from having a broken down, love-hate existence to sharing something loving, powerful, and glorious. It was as if she’d lost her mind but found her heart. She was able to tap into the love she had hidden away deep inside herself. Like all transforming experiences, this was accomplished one day at a time. As I reflect on that transformation now, I find I have one bit of advice. Don’t give up before that change happens. Grab onto it, and don’t let go.

I realize now that neither my siblings nor I knew what we were doing at the time. We were simply trying to cope with a very difficult disease. In retrospect, I realize that what we did was just right. We left the doors to our own humanness and our mother’s humanness open. Somehow, in the spaces we created, love was given an opportunity to flourish. At times, that which grew resembled weeds growing in the cracks of a sidewalk. But we nurtured even these, and in time, a garden bloomed before our eyes.

What we did together as a family was not superhuman, though at times it felt like it was. All we did was embrace our own truths, thoughts, and feelings.

Once a month for six years I flew from California to Texas to spend three or four days with my mother who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This book is about her, her illness, and her death. I was there, and everything about it was horrible, sad, real, devastating, messy, and confusing. But more surprisingly, it was also, at times, hilarious and wonderful and fun.

When we were going through it, I was unable to find a book that spoke to me about how others had dealt with the illness and death of a parent due to Alzheimer’s disease. I had especially sought material in which the mother-daughter relationship had been badly damaged for many years prior to the onslaught of the disease, and how that wound had subsequently been healed. I never found that book, so when it was over I felt a great passion to write about what we’d lived through so that others might benefit from our experiences.

Although I consulted many helpful people, organizations, books, articles, and pamphlets, I never came upon information that addressed the issues I was dealing with in an honest, open, and conscious manner. I wanted someone or something to tell me that I was okay and to validate what I was feeling. Alzheimer’s disease is so terrible that there are hardly words to describe it, and it’s that way not only for the person suffering from the disease but also for everyone involved. The disease leaves those involved speechless, breathless, tormented, powerless, and without a break of any kind for days, weeks, months, and even years. However, if you allow it to, coping with the situation will crack your heart wide open. You will likely fall in love with the sufferer as well as with yourself for being there.

My hope is that when the days and nights spent dealing with someone with Alzheimer’s disease get to be too much to bear, you will have this book to pick up and laugh with, cry with and be with. Maybe then, even if only for a moment, you will not feel as alone as I did. Perhaps you will realize, on one level or another, that someone besides you has faced the journey and made it to the other side. Being with someone with a terminal illness all the way through to their subsequent death, can be one of the scariest, yet most profoundly rewarding experiences of life.

As a result of my visits with my mother in the locked wards of the nursing homes, a miracle happened. My mother, a woman who had spent most of her final years somewhat unconscious, and at many times could not even remember her own name, helped me to remember a great truth about who we are underneath it all.

1

Mom Is Crazy

Mom’s gone crazy.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the digital clock: 12:30 AM at my home in California. I thought, Am I dreaming?

My sister Melanie’s voice, on the phone from Texas, cut through my foggy brain. Laurelee, are you there? Did you hear what I said? Mom’s gone crazy.

What do you mean, Mom’s crazy? Are you crazy?

No, Melanie said. They put her in the hospital. She went nuts.

So what? She’s always been nuts, I said as a million questions tumbled around in my mind: What hospital? Why was she hospitalized? Who put her in the hospital?

What happened? I asked.

"The local sheriff found her wandering around in the middle of town tonight. She was in her housedress. No shoes. No ID card. No nothing. He said she asked him to take her home because she was lost and she needed a ride to Buckingham Street. Buckingham Street, can you believe it? She hasn’t lived there in thirty