The Last Night That She Lived

Anna Ruth Templer Hollingsworth
May 30, 1923 - January 15, 2008


The Last Night That She Lived

by Emily Dickinson

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.

We noticed smallest things,—
Things overlooked before,
By this great light upon our minds
Italicized, as 'twere.

That other could exist
While she must finish quite,
A jealousy for her arose
So nearly infinite.

We waited while she passed;
It was a narrow time,
Too jostled were our souls to speak,
At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot;
Then lightly as a reed
Bent to the water, shivered scarce,
Consented, and was dead.

And we, we placed the hair,
And drew the head erect;
And then an awful leisure was,
Our faith to regulate.

Smiles are for youth

Heads in the Women's Ward



On pillow after pillow lies
The wild white hair and staring eyes;
Jaws stand open; necks are stretched
With every tendon sharply sketched;
A bearded mouth talks silently
To someone no one else can see.

Sixty years ago they smiled
At lover, husband, first-born child.

Smiles are for youth. For old age come
Death's terror and delirium. (1972)

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

the long goodbye

Every 2 weeks or so, Mom has a health crisis and I'm sure that she won't pull through. Somehow, she manages to make it, albeit weakened. At this point, she looks like a skeleton with a layer of skin, no muscle, no fat. She's gone through so many ups and downs. When she is feeling somewhat good, she smiles and speaks a fair amount. It's not a conversation really, but she is communicating. She has a glazed look in her eyes now. A rather large bed sore has developed on her back, despite changing her position many times a day. Her skin is so tissue thin and fragile, it is extremely difficult to prevent the bed sores in her weakened state.

Today there is a timely article in the New York Times titled: "When Alzheimer's Steals the Mind, How Aggressively to Treat the Body?". Fortunately, I've reached the decision to treat any pain Mom has and not to take extreme measures to extend her life. Not an easy decision and many people would not take that path. This article addresses the process of making such a decision.

"''Am I sinning?'' he recalled asking himself, wondering whether it was right to stand by while patients suffered with pain and discomfort from tubes and other treatments.

''I went to medical school to alleviate suffering and I am causing suffering,'' Dr. Nelson said. ''When I die and hopefully go to heaven, God will ask me, 'Did you try everything possible?' I want to say I did.''

Last November, he introduced a position paper to his state medical society, which it passed unanimously, saying that tube feeding was not good medicine for end-stage dementia patients. He also counsels families. When Alzheimer's patients can no longer eat, Dr. Nelson said, ''My advice is to let the patient die peacefully.''

But, he added, few families are receptive, and some become angry. More often than not, the feeding tube goes in.

Dr. Nelson is an exception, Dr. Meier said. More often, she said, doctors tell a family that the patient will starve to death without a feeding tube, and pressure them to have it put in. Her own view, she said, is that ''families should be counseled that loss of an ability to eat and drink is a sign that the patient has entered the terminal phase of the illness'' and the focus should be on palliative care."

When Alzheimer's Steals the Mind, How Aggressively to Treat the Body?



This is a drawing of a pretty bright red poinsettia that Mom has enjoyed looking at (I like to believe that she does). I used a fabulous ink cartridge brush made by Kuresake. I read about it a while ago on an animation blog and had to get one and can't live without it now. It's available on Amazon:


Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen

no guilt, no shame

Mom isn't doing too well tonight. Her neck, below her ear is quite swollen and the doctor isn't sure what is causing it. She's on antibiotics, but is so weak, I just don't know if she has the strength to fight off whatever is causing the swelling.

My cousin Zee has been sending such loving cards to Mom. Here is a recent one:

To the family and care givers of My Special Aunt Ann:
I know that Ann was loved and very special to many people, family and friends. Ann was loving and always there for anyone in need of help. Ann never wanted to burden her family in any way. She was so strong for everyone to see. Many looked up to her for all she was and did. She never expected anything in return for all she did to help others. I thank God for all that you are doing to make her last few years as good as possible. No guilt, no shame.
Love and kisses, Zee

the artistic impulse

A recent article in the New York Times explains that the impluse to create art could originate with the intimate interaction between a mother and child. Below is a section of the article. A link to the complete article is at the end of the post.

"Ellen Dissanayake, an independent scholar affiliated with the University of Washington, Seattle, offered her sweeping thesis of the evolution of art, nimbly blending familiar themes with the radically new. By her reckoning, the artistic impulse is a human birthright, a trait so ancient, universal and persistent that it is almost surely innate.

Ms. Dissanayake argues that the creative drive has all the earmarks of being an adaptation on its own. The making of art consumes enormous amounts of time and resources, she observed, an extravagance you wouldn’t expect of an evolutionary afterthought. Art also gives us pleasure, she said, and activities that feel good tend to be those that evolution deems too important to leave to chance.

The most radical element of Ms. Dissanayake’s evolutionary framework is her idea about how art got its start. She suggests that many of the basic phonemes of art, the stylistic conventions and tonal patterns, the mental clay, staples and pauses with which even the loftiest creative works are constructed, can be traced back to the most primal of collusions — the intimate interplay between mother and child.

To Ms. Dissanayake, the tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art. “These operations of ritualization, these affiliative signals between mother and infant, are aesthetic operations, too,” she said in an interview. “And aesthetic operations are what artists do. Knowingly or not, when you are choreographing a dance or composing a piece of music, you are formalizing, exaggerating, repeating, manipulating expectation and dynamically varying your theme.” You are using the tools that mothers everywhere have used for hundreds of thousands of generations."



The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start

thanks giving

Yes, I'm thankful Mom has caring people making sure she is as comfortable as possible, well fed and clean. I'm thankful my husband and I and children are here in Detroit and will be sharing dinner tonight with their 80+ relatives. All of this with the pinch of truth that Mom will be without family today as will be so many other elderly people.

There was an article in the newspaper the other day that said depression is a recent phenomena. The human species wouldn't have survived if as many people suffered from depression in our development as today. Connection with other people, family is a huge way to combat depression. Would this blog be necessary if I was surrounded by family as Mom had when she grew up? I think not.

humming along

Our dryer recently gave out on us, and we suffered without it for 4 days until a new one was delivered. Wet clothes were hanging off of backs of chairs, stair banisters, basically every free surface that would provide air circulation. With two kids, we go through what seems like a massive amount of laundry.

Once again, I thought of what a remarkable amount of work Mom did (with no thanks and very little appreciation) every single day. I suppose most women of her generation did the same. How did they do it without going crazy?

With 3 boys, a messy daughter and a husband who came home from digging ditches and working with greasy pipes, laundry was a huge chore for Mom. The remarkable part is that all of our clothes were also crisply ironed and mended, hung neatly in our closets the day after we tossed them on the floor. We never, ever used a towel more than once. Bed linens were clean and though the sheets were not ironed, the pillowcases were starched and ironed. She did all of this on top of keeping a clean and tidy house, home cooked meals that were delicious, and bookkeeping and general management of my dad's business! My only contribution was to vacuum and dust on Saturdays, hang out the sheets on the clothesline when I was out of school (oh yes, we always had sweet smelling, clothes line-dried sheets when weather permitted) and dry the dishes before we got a dishwasher. The boys did nothing, which was fine with her.

Really, I think I would have gone stark raving mad before collapsing from exhaustion. Mom would get fed up with us every once in a while, but mostly she went about her tedious chores, humming some big band song and occasionally adding a dance step or two as she worked.