Comfort

As I sat by Mama's bedside Sunday evening, I noticed a tear rolling down her left cheek. Was it really a tear? Was she crying? Had she heard me crying just moments before?
Oh how I wished I could comfort her, could put my arms around her and give her a big hug, and we could sob in each other arms to release the tension of three weeks in a palliative care unit. But I hesitate to even hold her hand now because when I do, her breathing pattern changes, and the look on her face indicates she's in pain.
I wiped away the single tear and sobbed some more. I'd give anything if I could comfort Mama right now. If I could lessen her pain. If I could make it all better.
How many times has she comforted me? Of course she was there when I was a baby and needed my mama's touch to go to sleep or to make a fever all better. But she was also there to hold me when someone made fun of the way I ran. She said the right things when my kindergarten friend moved away. She listened to me cry when I got frustrated over homework, and she held me tight when my cat Bootsie died.
Throughout my adulthood, she was there as well. She offered comfort with soothing words after a long night with a crying baby. She gave a tight hug when I was sad.
Comfort comes in many forms, and sometimes it was a pot of rice for me or one of my children who had been sick. Other times, it was a lemon cake to cheer me up or a Saturday night dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes.
All comforting. All from Mama.
Over the last dozen or so years, Mama has needed a lot of comfort. Alzheimer's is not an easy diagnosis to accept, and its many attributes are anything but comforting. Many times I reassured Mama that we would take care of her. Many times I told her we'd do all we could to make her feel better, to make things easier for her. Many times I just held her and we cried.
When Daddy died in March, Mama needed much comfort. She needed someone to sit beside her and just hold her hand, just like Daddy used to. So we sat on her couch and held her hand. Family members, neighbors, caregivers. The simple touch of joined hands brought her some comfort through her grief.
But now, I can't even do that. I don't want to hurt her, and to be honest, I don't like the feel of her swollen hand, the strange clamminess of her skin, the totally lack of movement in her fingers. It's not my Mama's hand anymore.
How sad that in the moment Mama and I need comfort the most, we cannot give it to each other. How terribly sad.

Pioneer Woman will help you cook

"Pioneer Woman" Ree Drummond's award-winning Web site is a favorite of mine. I enjoy reading about what's cooking in her kitchen and going on in her cattle-ranching family.

Now I'm smitten with Drummond's new glossy, hardback cookbook, "The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl." I'm not the only one who likes the book; it's been on the New York Times bestseller list for a number of weeks.

Drummond's Web site, www.thepioneerwoman.com, is popular for many reasons, including the spectacular photographs she shares on her site. It's the step-by-step photographs of her recipes that draw so many people to her site. She gives cooking instructions in an easy-to-follow, conversational tone and shows you the recipe steps in photos.

"The Pioneer Woman Cooks" includes a number of favorite recipes from Drummond's site as well as many photos. I've made three recipes from the book already.

My family really enjoyed Comfort Meatballs. The beefy, filling entree is very much like meatloaf and is delicious served with egg noodles and a green salad. Drummond serves hers with mashed potatoes, also in the book. Drummond's photos illustrate the process of forming the meatballs, browning them and covering them in a wonderful, tangy sauce. (I think I made a little extra sauce when I made the recipe several weeks back!)

Drummond's tip to refrigerate the meatballs for 30 to 45 minutes before dredging and cooking really paid off. The meatballs held together beautifully while they browned.

We also really enjoyed Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich. Marlboro Man is Drummond's blog name for her husband. His favorite sandwich is made from cube steak cut into strips. The meat is seasoned with several ingredients including salt, pepper, onion and Worcestershire sauce and served on deli rolls. The sandwich is very satisfying and was a good bargain because I got the beef on sale.

There are a number of recipes in the book that I intend to try, including an easy pizza crust; Cowboy Calzone, which uses the pizza crust recipe; cinnamon rolls; Perfect Pie Crust, which sounds like a recipe I might could actually make work; and Patsy's Blackberry Cobbler.

In addition to the recipes, Drummond includes many photographs and anecdotes about her husband and children and their life on the family's Oklahoma ranch.

I used the Wilson County Library's copy of the book for this story, but I'm putting the book on my birthday list!


Comfort Meatballs

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 3/4 cup quick oats
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons very finely minced onion
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• Plenty of ground black pepper
• 4 tablespoons canola oil
• 1/2 cup flour

Sauce

• 1 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons distilled white vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 4 to 6 tablespoons minced onion
• Dash of Tabasco (I didn’t use this)

In a bowl, combine the ground beef and oats. Pour in the milk, then add the diced onion and salt. Add the black pepper, then stir to combine.
Roll the mixture into tablespoon-size balls and refrigerate them for 30 to 45 minutes to firm.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat the canola oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
Dredge the chilled meatballs in the flour. Brown the meatballs in batches until light brown. As they brown, place them in a rectangular baking dish.
Stir together the sauce ingredients and drizzle the sauce evenly on the meatballs.
Bake for about 45 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

“The Pioneer Woman Cooks”

Saying goodbye

For more than a week now, I’ve been living with the sights, the sounds, the smells of near death, or end of life as it’s called on the palliative care floor at Wilson Medical Center.
I’ve been through this once before, watching and waiting for someone’s life to come to an end. This time, it’s Mama.
The palliative care unit provides a quiet refuge for patients like my mother who are too sick to eat. Too sick to walk. Too sick to talk or even make eye contact.
There’s a different story in every room. Families chat in the hallway, in the cafeteria, in the elevator. We know the lady next door has a big family who visits often. That another farther down has already been on the unit three weeks. We know the family across the hall lost their mother Monday morning after several days of close watch by her family.
Families on the unit have so much in common. We have the same blank look on our face as we get off the elevator on the fifth floor, the same sadness in our heart.
And we all know the same vocabulary: ativan, morphine, diladin. We know the unit our loved one is in provides “comfort care at the end of life.” We know bedbound patients should be turned every two hours and IV needles changed every three days. We know “the patient’s getting no nutrition” means she’s not eating or getting any supplement. That she’s going to die.
We know what it feels like to look into your wife’s eyes or father’s eyes and to see real pain. How hard it is to see your patient agitated and angry. How numbing it is to see fear and alarm in your mother’s eyes when a nurse turns her to a different position. How hard it is to see her emaciated body when a nurse gently bathes here.
We know how hard it is to say goodbye every time you walk out of the room.
I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of remembering while sitting quietly at Mama’s side or curled up in bed bedside her. I’ve thought mostly about the good times. About vacations to Virginia Beach, Mama’s buttered toast for breakfast, new clothes spread across my bed when I got home from school one day, family meals with my sister and her family around the kitchen table. I’ve remembered how Mama took loving care of my children while I went to work and how much they love her. How hard it is for them and my nieces to say goodbye. These grandchildren have young, tender hearts and adored their gentle grandmother from infancy. They are growing up too fast watching this process.
In the last week, I’ve heard happy stories about my mama from cousins who love their aunt dearly, and I’ve watched them cry as they looked at her small, frail body curled in a fetal position. “I want to touch her,” a cousin told me yesterday as she stroked her forehead.
I’ve sat with my aunt as she looked at her beloved sister and have fought back tears. She has loved Mama the longest.
As family visits, I realize she’s not just our mama and grandmama, but she’s someone’s sister. Someone’s neighbor of 50 years. She’s the sister-in-law someone made cheese straws with. The aunt who made delicious fried chicken and lemon cake. And they all love her.
My sister and I are suffering greatly. We cannot comprehend that this very long journey with Alzheimer’s is finally coming to an end, that our mother is dying. We don’t want the pain from a new pelvic fracture to torment her any longer or the misery that comes with not being able to communicate to frustrate her again. We know it’s time to let go. We know she’s made it to the “end stage” of her disease.
But we don’t want to lose our mama. We want to continue to hold her hand, to run our fingers through her curls, to kiss her on the cheek and tell her we love her. Although we lost her in many ways years ago, we still cling to the physical: the touch, the smell, the sight of her very blue eyes.
And we cling to the memories of a life well lived.