In my earliest memories, I am sick, struggling for breath on Mom’s lap as she strokes me gently and sings Brahms’ Lullaby in her clear soprano voice.
We lived in England then, the first of Dad’s military assignments I can remember. My memories of Utah are more vivid. In the dry mountain air, my asthma faded, and I started playing baseball in our back yard with brothers or friends or by myself (providing my own radio play-by-play).
Again, Mom plays key roles in many memories: Singing solos in the church choir in that clear soprano voice, though none of those songs was as precious to me as Brahms’ Lullaby; calling me sharply by all three names when I was in trouble (“Stephen Arnold Buttry! Come in here this minute!”); cooking Spam on a camp stove in Zion National Park, one of the prettiest places in my world.
On visits to Grandma’s house in Chicago, Mom would take us to Wrigley Field, home of her beloved Cubs. Baseball loyalty was an area where I asserted my independence. She grew up in Chicago, but I knew I had been born in New York (on an Air Force base in the Finger Lakes, far from the Bronx), so I declared my loyalty early to the New York Yankees. I have celebrated nine Yankee world championships. Mom stays loyal to the Cubs, though they have never won a World Series in her 83 years.
One Christmas, Mom (and Dad, but I knew it was really Mom’s gift) gave me a Scrabble Junior game. I don’t think I played it more than a couple times. Mom had already taught me to love reading and writing, and I wanted to play grown-up Scrabble. So I played with Mom and she always won.
Our next stop was Japan, where Dad, an Air Force chaplain, was stationed for the years I was in sixth and seventh grades. I needed braces on my teeth while we were there, but the tiny air station where we were assigned, Wakkanai, on Japan’s farthest northern tip, had no orthodontist. Mom and I traveled monthly to bases near Sapporo or Tokyo, where a Japanese orthodontist on contract to the U.S. military worked on my teeth. She would buy me a book – Hardy Boys mysteries or Peanuts cartoons – on each trip to read on the flight home.
Because we were going to be in Japan only two years, the orthodontist accelerated a process that would normally take three years, adjusting my braces each month to apply extreme pressure. A few times when I was particularly miserable that night in our hotel room, Mom asked if I’d like her to sing Brahms’ Lullaby. I’d never admit such a thing to my nearly-adolescent friends, but nothing comforted like Mom’s voice.
Though she taught me to love Scrabble and baseball, Mom could never teach me to sing. I sang in the junior choir at one chapel and in a church choir when I was in high school. Before or after my voice changed, my contributions could best be described as off-bass.
I probably beat Mom for the first time at Scrabble while we were in Japan. By the time we were living in Shenandoah, Iowa, where I graduated from high school, I would beat her as often as she beat me. The local radio station carried Kansas City Royals games and Mom listened as she worked in the kitchen, developing a second baseball loyalty.
As sons do, I moved away. I pursued a career in journalism, using those language skills I honed on Hardy Boys books and Scrabble games. While I was away on a camping trip the summer before my senior year, Mom saw an announcement in the local paper that the sports editor would be hiring a part-time sports writer. she called it to my attention, then (mostly) understood when my grades suffered as I turned all my passion and attention to my budding career.
Though Dad had retired from the Air Force, that nomadic life was a part of me. I’ve moved frequently, beckoned by opportunity and pushed by disappointment.
We lost Dad in 1978 to prostate cancer that spread to his bones and consumed him quickly. After nearly three decades of marriage, ending in months of caring for Dad as he wasted away, Mom was grief-stricken for several months, almost walking around in a cloud of memories and tears. The tables turned, as her children began worrying about her health and future.
Mom quickly found clarity and new passion. She had been studying to become a missionary when she fell in love with Dad. Now she felt God’s calling to resume those studies. For nearly all of my life, she had been a stay-at-home Mom, sometimes working as a substitute teacher and one year teaching full-time. She enrolled in seminary in her 50s and embarked on a career in the ministry. I was grown, married and launched on my own career by then, but still Mom was teaching me lessons of resiliency and purpose.
In her late 60s, Mom retired from the full-time ministry and moved to a retirement community in the Kansas City area, where she enjoyed watching the Royals regularly on TV and occasionally at the stadium. She continued a part-time ministry, filling in as interim pastor for several months in a half-dozen communities as churches were seeking new pastors.
A few years back, we noticed that Mom was repeating herself, more than mothers normally do because their kids often don’t hear (or ignore) the first time. She was asking questions we had answered not long before. I suggested we visit her doctor. That visit raised the possibility of Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that erodes the memory. As Mom’s memory faded and her confusion deepened, the doctor confirmed a few years later that she appeared to have Alzheimer’s.
She’s moved to an assisted-living apartment in her retirement community and after falling in February moved temporarily to a nursing home. I visited last month to move her back into her apartment, following several weeks of healing and physical and occupational therapy.
Mom isn’t yet into the heartbreaking depths of Alzheimer’s, where patients no longer recognize family members. Routine helps her remember where she is and what she’s doing, and the moves to the care center and back disrupted her routine and confused her, especially when she couldn’t remember the fall that caused the move.
Scrabble still provided some time of shared fun and mental stimulation. We must have played more than a dozen games over three days. We’ve passed those days where she beat me regularly. But in one hour of striking clarity, she got a 50-point bonus for using all her tiles to spell “thirsty” on her first play and never lost the lead. I was happier to lose than she was to win, snapping a picture and tweeting about her victory.
Mom repeats herself more than ever now, telling me again and again that if the Cubs and Royals make it to the World Series (doesn’t look like this is her year), she would be happy whoever wins. One of the things she repeated endlessly during this visit, each time with a mix of appreciation and embarrassment, was how the tables had turned, with us switching the parent-child roles we had played all my life.
The last night of my visit, Mom’s confusion about the move back to her apartment grew especially profound around bedtime. I had left the room to give Mimi a good-night phone call, and I came back to find Mom upset, unsure where she was and sure that the clothes in the closet were not hers. I worked to reassure her, reorient her and get her ready for bed. When she was calm enough to lie down, I stroked her gently as she drifted off to sleep.
I didn’t sing a lullaby, though. She had endured enough.
I like the 1950s photo. I’m sorry about your mom.
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Really enjoyed this, Steve. My grandmother recently moved into a nursing home, and it’s been hard watching her slowly decline. She lived with my family during my high school years, so we’re pretty close.
But one great part about her getting older — and living near her for the last year or so — is I’ve been inspired to ask her more questions about her life and record her answers so we’ll always have them. I’m fascinated by all genealogy, but what interests me most are the details of my grandmother’s life, what she was like before I met her. My next project is to get some of her stories on video (also an excuse to practice editing video!).
Hope you tuck away a copy of this blog post for your new grandchild.
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What a beautiful and touching tribute to your mom, Steve. Thank you so much for sharing. I always remember Aunt Harriet with great fondness. Memory loss is a cruel thing. She is blessed to have you fairly nearby. We are all blessed to have known her all these years.
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Touching. Thanks for sharing it.
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Steve:
Beautiful memories. Well done.
Uncle Bob
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Thanks, all. I do plan to keep this post online, Alexis, and to tell Julia about her great-grandmother. But do you think her generation will read hard copy?
Louise, I’ve moved back to Washington. Not being as close to Mom was one of the hard parts of moving (though it was a five-hour drive from Cedar Rapids, so I may see her as often from Washington).
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Steve,
Heck of a post and some great stories about your mom. My mom was diagnosed last summer when she began asking he same questions over and over. The Aricept and Exelon patch have preserved good memory, but it’s the start of a long, tough road. She and dad still live in their house (54 years and counting) but we know the day will come when she has to move, much like your mom has. One of my former bosses, Rich Bailey, watched his mom battle Alzheimer’s for several years before passing in 2006. He talked at the funeral about it being “The Long Goodbye.” How true.
Take care, MR
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Fortunately there is research going on (like stem cells) that may one day serve the cure this disease.
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Such a sweet story, Steve. A wonderful tribute to your mom and the impact she’s had on you and others over the years. Learned why you are a Yankees fan, to boot. My mom and I also play Scrabble every chance we get…and I am happy, too, when she outscores me.
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