Nana's 90th Birthday Party!

Nana's birthday was September 15th and this year she turned 90!  On Saturday September 14th we had a celebration for Nana. Nana is definitely not a party girl. Sharon and I were planning to have a big meal and cake and lots of people in the St. John's Church basement.  Even before Nana got sick in June, she nixed that idea as being "too much hoopla." For Nana, hoopla is a bad thing.  When I suggested we do an Open House event in the Community Room at Houston Ridge Apartments, she was OK with that.  Even when she was in Muncy Skilled Nursing Unit for so many weeks, we talked about this party.  Turning 90 is a big milestone and we promised her the party was still on.  When we found out the end of August that Nana was coming home on September 3rd, Sharon and Lori and I went into action.

With no time for formal invitations, Lori announced the event on Facebook, while Sharon and I and the rest of the family spread the word to invite everyone - family and friends and her fellow apartment residents.  Sharon decided we needed a light lunch and took on the work of BBQ and beans and a meat tray.  Alicia, Jeff's friend, made some delicious meatballs.  Wayne and Bill donated food and drink and Jan made her famous chocolate chip cookies.  The centerpiece was the cake.  Sharon had the idea to put Nana's picture on the cake.  I'll admit I was skeptical, but I cropped a good pic of Nana from Mother's Day and shot it to Sharon in an email.  Along with the blue frosting flowers that signified Nana's favorite Texas BlueBonnets, Nana's smiling picture was the centerpiece on the cake.  The only downside was no one wanted to eat the picture!

When it was time to cut the cake, Lori's husband Nate reminded us to sing "Happy Birthday" before we wielded the knife.  The two candles of a 9 and 0 were just for show - Nana didn't want to blow out candles.  The cake was delicious with a choice of white or chocolate. It was hard for me to choose, but when I asked Sid, Lori's 2 year old what flavor of cake he wanted, he didn't hesitate.  "I want blue," he said.  No indecision on his part.

 Nana's Cake

When we planned the party, we presented it as an Open House so people could stop in and stay a while and leave if they needed to go.  What happened was that almost everyone stayed for several hours.  We had about 45 people in a room that holds 30, but no one seemed to mind.  It was a fun hub of friends and Nana's four children and her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  At first, Nana seemed somewhat overwhelmed and I thought she might grab her walker and head for her apartment before the first half hour elapsed.  But after a while, I could tell she was enjoying the company and soaking up the love for her that swirled in the room.

 Nana and her four children - Wayne, Diane Bill, and Sharon

Nana was grateful for all the gifts she received for her birthday.  Her neighbor Chuck gave her a beautiful Indian blanket that adorns her chair.  Her hairdresser Bonnie gave her a free wash and set.  Gift cards and cash and other useful items abounded for her.  After the party, we took on the task to thank everyone as best we could.  Handwriting is difficult for Nana with the arthritis in her hands so we didn't want to burden her.  If you're reading this and didn't receive a thank you, please know that everyone and everything about Nana's special day was appreciated.  If you sent a card, wished her a Happy Birthday, stopped to see her even if you couldn't attend the party, or were just with us in spirit as we celebrated, thank you.

Nana with Diane and Sharon and her 90th Birthday Cake

Home from the Home

It’s been a while since a Nana News post because Nana has had several challenging months.  In June, she was doctoring for an increasingly severe case of cellulitis on her foot and leg.  More and more antibiotics didn’t do the trick.  Finally, I drove up on Sunday July 14th to take her to a doctor’s appointment to Dr. Wiegand on Monday, July 15.  When I arrived on Sunday, I could tell she was in a lot of pain and walking was very difficult, but when I suggested going to The Fence for a fish sandwich, she agreed.  She did well with eating her fish and I helped her walk.

 

Early Monday morning she woke up crying in pain.  After consulting with Sharon, I gave her a stronger pain tablet in hopes we could hold out for the doctor appointment.  She slept a little but had no appetite for breakfast and ate only one small piece of toast.  Our appointment was for three o’clock, but I wanted to leave early to see if I could get her to eat her baked potato, hamburg and Jr. Frosty at Wendy’s.  To complicate the situation, it was a horribly hot day.

 

Every step into Wendy’s was excruciating I could tell, but Nana made it to a table.  I got the food, but she only ate a little of the baked potato.  A walk to the bathroom was also a huge effort.  When we headed for the exit door, I could tell Nana was getting weaker and weaker.  From behind us, a kindly lady with gray hair pulled into a bun offered us help.  I was so grateful!  “I take care of my 90 year old mother so I know what you’re going through” she said.  “If you can hold her other side, that would be so helpful," I replied.

With one of us on each side, Nana could still barely walk.  We reached the curb in front of my Prius and all of sudden she said, “I can’t do it.”  Then she collapsed onto the side walk – just sat right down!  We tried to pull her up and she tried to hold onto the front of the car but the heat was so intense it was like touching fire.  After a struggle, we got her up.  By then, the kind lady’s young grandson appeared to help with the door.  We were almost there when she collapsed again.  Getting her up this time took even more effort on our part as Nana was spent and could barely help.  Finally she was in the car and I thanked my helpers profusely.  What a blessing to have the kindness of strangers!

Sweat was pouring off of me and my hands shook on the steering wheel as we headed for the doctor’s office.  I was trying to hold myself together while keeping her calm.  “I’m getting help to get you from the car to the office.” Ever the trooper, Nana said, “Oh, I can make it.” I had my doubts.

We toddled slowly into the office and Nana plopped onto a chair.  Cyn the nurse helped me walk her back the hall. She weighed her and then as I walked her a few steps down the hall, she again said, “I can’t do it.”  She slumped to the floor at my feet.  Teresa, the Physician’s Assistant and I got her to a chair.  Dr. Wiegand picked up the phone and called an ambulance.

After seven hours in the Emergency Room, Nana was admitted to the hospital.  The next morning, the hospital doctor didn’t have good news.  Nana’s kidney function was so low he felt she could be close to needing dialysis.  Her lungs had fluid due to one part of her heart not working correctly.  This was all in addition to the raging infection from the cellulitis and the pain that accompanied that infection.  No wonder poor Nana collapsed three times.

That was Tuesday and it was probably one of the lowest points of this whole experience.  The high-powered pain killers made Nana nauseous; the cellulitis leg had a wound that was open and oozing and she was coughing constantly from the fluid in her lungs.  The doctor was asking, "Does she have a living will?"  I was scared.

On Wednesday, Sharon came home from vacation and Nana was doing a little better so I left in the afternoon to go home to Virginia to get ready to close on our recently purchased house.  I so wished I could’ve been both places at the same time.

By the following Tuesday, Nana still needed IV antibiotics but the hospital sent her to Muncy Valley Skilled Nursing to finish that and to hopefully rehab.  When she went to Muncy, she was still a very sick Nana.  Her blood work there the first few days showed her kidney function very low again, she still needed Lasik for the fluid; she was so weak she could barely sit in the wheelchair and they kept talking about her Parkinson’s.  Nana was never diagnosed with Parkinson’s but now all her extremities were shaking like she’d had it for years. 

 

I rushed back to be there on Thursday and saw a very weak and upset Nana.  The next few days held lots of challenges as she couldn’t wear her teeth because she’d lost so much weight that they wouldn’t stay in her mouth.  She didn’t want to eat and she cried to go home.  She developed something in her eye that no drops seem to help.  My heart broke for her.  I knew the staff was trying to help her, but progress was slow. 

I left on Sunday, July 28^th knowing that the staff was doing all they could and that she was under the competent care of Sharon and the rest of the family.  I returned Thursday August 8^th and she was having another dip in her progress.  The day I drove up, she had fallen out of bed.  Thank goodness, no broken bones, but she had twisted her glasses so she couldn’t wear them.  My first task when I arrived was taking them to the Eye Center in Muncy just before they closed.  The understanding technician molded them back into shape and used me to adjust them the best we could.  

By this time, the Lasik was discontinued and now they were pumping fluids into Nana to rehydrate her plus still doing the IV for antibiotics.  She was doing Occupational and Physical therapy to work on getting her strong again.
 

I stayed for eight days and in that time, I saw improvement that I didn’t think was possible after seeing her that first time in Muncy.  The first day, I was feeding her and begging her to eat more.  By the time I left, she was eating on her own and eating more each day and eating different things than she’d ever tried at home.  After about four days, she finally got off the IV fluids and the IV antibiotics.  Sharon had discovered that Nana liked to go outside so we did that every day we could.  By the time I left, she was allowed to use the walker to go to the bathroom and even to the dining hall.

I left on Thursday, August 15^th and Nana continued to improve in her eating and therapy.  With the TLC from Sharon, all her wonderful visitors, including Pastor Mike who came often, and the Muncy staff, she made even further progress.  

I came up and took her home on Tuesday, September 3^rd – six weeks after she’d arrived at Muncy Skilled Nursing.

Nana’s been home a little over a week now and is moving around her apartment quite well, even without her walker.  She’s somewhat house bound until she finishes the therapy from Home Health Service, but she’s anxious to get back into her routine and can again be “her own boss” as she describes it.  She’s working at doing things on her own again, like dressing, eating, and taking her pills.

The Muncy Home was not home for Nana.  However, even she would admit that most of the staff  was kind and compassionate.  She especially liked Harry, the Nurse Extender and Lindsey, her occupational therapist.  No one there wanted her to feel like a prisoner.  They wanted her to go home, but to be safe and healthy when she got back home.

As we celebrate Nana’s 90^th birthday at her party on September 14^th and her actual  birthday on September 15^th, the greatest gift is having Nana well and back in her own home. 

Robert Larue Murray

Driving in the rural Elimsport area where Nana was born and grew up triggers memories for her.  During a recent drive, she showed me where the old black house, her birthplace, had stood.  The house has been gone for a long time, but Nana’s memories remain.  A few miles away, we drove past Maple Hill Church.  This quaint country church, surrounded by a rusting iron fence, has been there as long as I can remember.  Beside the church is a cemetery with moss-covered markers etched with names eroded by decades of brutal Pennsylvania weather.

Nana and I have driven past this church and cemetery hundreds of times when visiting my brother Bill.  As we drove by the church cemetery this time, Nana said, “That’s where Grace’s baby boy is buried.”  I practically swerved the car off the road.  “I didn’t know Aunt Grace had a baby boy that died.  Did that happen before Jack was born?”  Grace, one of Nana’s older sisters, had one child that I knew about – my cousin Jack. 

“Oh this happened long before she married Tom and before Jack was born.  She had the baby while we still lived in the old black house.”  I did some mental calculations.  Grace was eleven years older than Nana.  Nana moved from the old black house when she was only five or six years old.  That meant Aunt Grace must have been only fifteen or sixteen when she had the baby. 

I had lots of questions for Nana, “Who was the father?  How did Mother and Dad Tilburg react to the pregnancy and the baby?”  Nana had few answers.  She did know the father was a local boy.  They named the baby Robert Larue Murray.  Robert was chosen for Grace and Nana's brother John’s middle name and Larue Murray was the name of the baby’s father.  At only five years old, Nana’s clearest memory was Grace bathing the baby on the kitchen table.  There were no fancy baby bathtubs back then, just an old basin and wash cloth and towel.  Nana kept saying, “He was the prettiest baby.”  I pictured the baby with Aunt Grace’s coal black hair and smiling eyes. 

Nana said the baby died suddenly at only a few months old.  No one knew why he died.  The  family was so poor they couldn’t afford a cemetery plot or marker for the grave.  They buried the baby on the gravesite of Robert Tilburg, a relative of Dad Tilburg. 

Grace died almost 20 years ago.  I asked Nana if she ever heard her talk about the baby.  She said, "No,Grace never talked about it and neither did anyone else in the family."

With no marker on the tiny grave, there’s no record of the baby’s birth and death - nothing to show for the short life of Robert Larue Murray but Nana's childhood memory.

 

 

Tom and Grace Crain and son Jack

Nana's Childhood Homes

Nana was born September 15, 1923 in an old black house on the corner across from Kennedy Cross Roads near Elimsport PA.  The fourth child of Benjamin and Pearl Tilburg's five children, she was the third girl in the family.  Elizabeth was born in 1910, Grace in 1912, John in 1920 and Ben in 1930. 



Old Picture of the Black House with Mother and Dad Tilburg and Elizabeth and Grace. 

Taken before Nana was born.

 

Nana lived in the black  house until one of the most traumatic events of her childhood.  According to Nana, one day her dad got very drunk on moonshine, grabbed her mother and put her head on a chopping block. He was ready to chop off her head with an ax when a neighbor saw him and stopped him before he could strike her. Nana was about five at the time. 

By this time, Elizabeth and Grace were living in an apartment in Williamsport where they worked at the rubber factory. Mother Tilburg took Nana and John and left Dad Tilburg and the black house to go live with Nana's Uncle Bert and Aunt Katherine. It was summer and Nana loved being on the farm. She looks so happy in this photo.

Nana and Uncle Bert, about 1929

 

When winter came, it was too cold to stay in the rooms provided by Uncle Bert and Aunt Katherine.  Nana and John and Mother Tilburg moved to Williamsport to share the apartment with Elizabeth and Grace.  That year Nana was supposed to go to first grade.  She told me she was so shy and upset to leave her mother that she cried every day.  Finally, Mother Tilburg decided to wait a year to have her start school. 

Nana remembers her dad coming to visit them in the apartment.  He brought her and John toys and was trying to convince Mother Tilburg to come back to him.  Nana remembers her mother and dad disappeared into the bedroom and stayed for a long while.  A few months later, her mother was pregnant.  Mother Tilburg, John and Nana moved back with Dad Tilburg into a rented house near Elimsport on the property of Tenner Moore.  Ben was born there in 1930. 

The family lived there until Nana was in her teens when Pap Tilburg built them a house several miles from Elimsport on a winding road leading to the mountain.  She moved into the house when she was seventeen and lived there until she married Stanley Rhone when she was nineteen. 

Nana at the back of the house built by Dad Tilburg

 

Mother's Day 2013

I celebrated Mother’s Day with Nana a week early because I’m going to be on a cruise on Mother’s Day.  Every Mother’s Day is special, but this year I’m reminded how blessed I am to still be able to celebrate with my mom. 

When I arrived on Friday, Nana was ready to hop in the car for a trip to Wendy’s for her menu of a senior coffee with three creams, a plain junior hamburger, half a baked potato and a chocolate junior Frosty.  Nana loves those Frosties! We still had time after Wendy’s to drive to Lewisburg to get new lenses in Nana’s glasses. We got there just before they closed and by 5pm Nana could see much clearer.

Saturday’s plan was lunch at The Fence Drive-in, located along the Susquehanna River just outside Lewisburg.  Nana and all us kids have been going to The Fence since I was school-age.  In my opinion, they have the best fish sandwiches ever made.  Even with Nana’s limited food preferences, the fish sandwich is a hit. She orders her fish sandwich with tartar sauce on the side, her coffee and this time she added applesauce.   She’s really getting wild and crazy!  Sharon joined us and, thanks to our sweet waitress, we got a picture with Nana and “her girls.”

Nana with "her girls", Sharon and Diane at The Fence

Sunday we drove to Nana's church home, St. John’s United Methodist Church.  Nana was excited to give Pastor Mike a copy of her latest story that she’d written.  He and his wife enjoy reading Nana’s stories.  Like Sharon and I, they both encourage her to write more.  Nana especially enjoyed that it was communion Sunday.  Pastor Mike often has to do a home visit for her to have communion so she loved that she could be there in person.

Nana and Pastor Mike

After church, I drove Nana to the Elimsport Cemetary.  The day was perfect - the sky as blue as a post card and bright sun kissed the markers of those who have gone to rest in this peaceful place.   As I held tight to her arm, she wandered through the headstones of her sisters Elizabeth and Grace and their husbands, her brother John who died a year ago and her mother and father, Pearl and Benjamin Tilburg. She enjoys visiting the graves and we always make sure her headstone is clean and shiny as it nestles under a scraggly pine tree between her two sisters. 

After the cemetery, we again returned to Wendy’s for lunch.  After she slurped the last drop of her Frosty, we took a drive through the surrounding countryside, admiring the vibrant spring blossoms and appreciating the precious time together.   It was a wonderful Mother’s Day 2013 and I’m looking forward to celebrating again next year.

Nana at Wendy's

Twenty Years at Sherwood Drive

April 1st, Nana celebrated twenty years in her apartment at 65 Sherwood Drive, Montgomery PA.  The apartments are owned and managed by Warrior Run Development in Turbotville, PA.  In 1992, when Nana's house on Melvina Street became too much for her, and for all of us kids, to take care of, she put her name on a waiting list to move to the rent-controlled Senior apartments just outside Montgomery on Rt. 405.

Waiting is not one of Nana's strong talents (mine either so I guess that's where I get that trait), so those months waiting for an apartment to become available was stressful.  When we got the call early in 1993, we were excited - until we realized we had to sell the house, and clean out all the stuff in her large 2 bedroom house so she could fit into a one bedroom apartment.  Thanks to Dick Penfield at Fish Real Estate, her house sold quickly.  It was a snowy winter and the house was sold before the snow melted the snow bank where Dick had stuck the For Sale sign.  The clean out was a long process and I remember many hours of cleaning out cupboards and boxes in the attic, deciding where to put everything that accumulated since she'd moved there in the 70's.
 
The Yoder's, who manage Warrior Run Development,  were kind enough to let us have the keys the weekend before and by April 1st Nana was settled into her new home.  Although the waiting was hard, the result was worth it.  Her apartment is on second floor with a balcony that faces a cornfield below and and a panoramic view of the mountains, unobstructed by buildings or highways.  In the spring and summer, the mountains are lush with green and in the fall, the distant trees are awash with bright reds, oranges and yellows.  It's a view that many would pay high rent to have and Nana gets to experience it every day with a low rent that fits her tiny budget.

It's not entirely perfect.  Nana can't have her own washer and dryer and still twenty years later hates the idea of the coin-operated laundry facilities.  In the years since 2010 when she experienced three back surgeries, I do most of Nana's laundry when I visit once a month.  She fixes a tiny change purse with an abundance of quarters.  She tells me that I need to take extras because one time when she took exact change with her laundry, one of the quarters rolled under the washer and she had to go back to her apartment for another.  She's made sure that never happens to me. 

I'm grateful for how accommodating the management of the apartments are to their tenants.  When Nana had back surgery and couldn't navigate the steps anymore, I called the office and they arranged for a chair lift to be installed at no charge.  It was ready to use by the time I brought her home from the hospital.  That chair lift has allowed Nana to stay in her beloved second floor apartment and be independent.

One of the best benefits of her apartment is the free maintenance.  When something is broken or leaking, Nana does a work order and Pat the maintenance man comes to fix it.  He's a local guy who went to the same high school I did - Warrior Run High School.  I hope he never retires because Nana enjoys not only his mechanical skills but his kind manner and sense of humor. 

For twenty years, Sherwood Drive is where Nana has lived, but it's not just a place to live, it really is what Nana calls home.

Nana on her balcony in May 2011

Back to Back

Nana's back has always been a problem for her.  She had a hard physical life for many years.  Her weak back could be from carrying heavy wet clothes, run through an ancient wringer washer, up rickety cellar steps to hang on the clothesline outside.  Even after she moved up to an automatic washer, a dryer was a luxury she never got to experience until decades later.

It could also be from carrying water.  The Bower place, a falling down rambling farmhouse, never had running water.  When we moved to the Staggert place in 1957, the whole family was excited to have hot and cold water at the kitchen sink.  The joy was short-lived.  Soon after we moved in, our spring - the only source of water - went dry and Nana had to haul water in tall dented metal milk cans from a mountain spring miles away.  Soon after the spring was freely flowing, the kitchen drain clogged and we had to haul water outside to dump it.  More back work for Nana.

Nana's back took the biggest hit from working over twenty years in a textile factory.  The current term for the factory where she worked would be "sweatshop."  She used a machine called a ball spinning machine to spin wispy multi-colored thread onto small wooden balls.  A hand crank was the only source of power and Nana had to produce grosses of these shimmering balls. Nana saved some of the balls she made and I have a few of them on display in my office to remind me to stop whining whenever I think I'm having a hard day.

In 2010, Nana had three back surgeries called kyphoplasty.  A cement-like material is surgically inserted between compressed vertebrae to stop the pain of the fracture.  In Nana's case, these compressed fractures come from osteoporosis.  Nana always says the doctor has to call for a cement truck delivery before surgery. 

When she was experiencing severe back pain a few weeks ago, the doctor thought we were going to be doing surgery #4. Unfortunately, after two MRI's, the results indicated that nothing can surgically be done to relieve her pain.

In addition to the osteoporosis, Nana has a condition called scoliosis or curvature of the spine.  This complicates her back pain, not to mention her walking and now even her digestion as the condition gets steadily worse.  Nana has accepted this condition.  She's even re-named it.  She calls it "squirrelly-osis."   Thank goodness for Nana's sense of humor and her determination to live her life the way she wants in spite of all her back problems.