We moved her into a one-bedroom, third floor apartment that was around a five-

minute drive from us, in Westford, a neighboring town. We experienced a bit of déjà vu,

with more antique doll-related drama and hysteria that this time featured my husband

accidentally breaking a glass shelf in the antique doll hutch during the move that he

tried to replace as quickly as he could. Unlike her last apartment, my husband wasn’t

forcibly expelled from this one, but the glass plate nonetheless was recalled by my

mother multiple times as being irresponsibly and unforgivingly left broken and this led to

a few heated arguments months later between my husband and her. The good news

was that between a decent amount of downsizing of her stuff, a sizable walk-in closet

for her extensive wardrobe and pocketbook collection, brighter light, and more space in

general for her furniture, she seemed much happier with her new surroundings.

All was good and we were collectively breathing a sigh of relief and rejoicing

when our hopes and dreams were suddenly dashed by the emergence of yet another

“inconsiderate asshole” on the floor above who- according to my mother- sounded like

he/she was dropping bowling balls all hours of the day and night and it was so loud that

she couldn’t hear her television. And even more alarming was that there was- again

according to my mother- a “clueless schmuck” living on the floor below her supposedly

playing music at all hours of the day and night and it was keeping her awake at night.

When I visited her, she would interrupt our conversations, point upward toward the

ceiling and say to me “do you hear that?” Then she would scream, “Knock it off!” on the

top of her lungs. During those nights when my brother or I would sleep over, we would

often be awakened by her yelling from her bedroom, “Shut the hell up!”

I took my mother to see the front office manager a couple of times, where she

broke down in tears and complained about noises coming from upstairs, or perhaps

downstairs, and she wasn’t really sure, but it was really goddam disturbing wherever it

was coming from and she needed something to be done right away because this was

no way for a human being to live. In addition to the apartment manager circulating a

threatening notice to everyone within range of my mother’s apartment, I even called a

non-emergency police line to see what could be done to put an end to what was making

it hard for anyone in my mother’s world to get a good night’s sleep. Sadly, despite a

village effort to get all the assholes and schmucks to surrender their garbage pail lids

and buzz saws, the noises and my mother’s complaints continued. Desperate pleas for

her to consider cotton balls in her ears or white noise were vehemently rejected, and so

we prepared ourselves to accept our new reality: mama wasn’t happy and therefore,

nobody was happy.

But the truth was, my mother was as complex as the life she insisted on making

for herself, and for every shitty eye-rolling here we go again moment we had with her,

there were also the five or six-hour long Scrabble tournaments that she kept driving with

a grinning and breathy “One more!” And her exclamations when we went out to a

restaurant for dinner about how delicious the food was, and her appreciation of the

pleasant drives I would take her on while listening to her favorite Neil Diamond music,

and the thumbs up signal she gave with a big smile in photos of her enjoying her meals.

She was a good sport anytime I’d push her in her transport chair down a ramp or hill

and momentarily lose control, causing her to scream. There were the many

conversations we had, about her friends and who she was still gratefully in touch with

and those who had disappeared without a trace and had broken her heart. She talked

about missing my father, and she talked candidly about her complicated relationship

with her own father, who she realized she loved but didn’t really like. She often asked

me to fill her in on the latest that was happening with certain drama-queen friends, and

she never got tired of listening, and she did it, for the most part, without judgement.

My mother ended up going through a revolving door of doctors, starting with my

personal Boston-based oncologist, whose limited patience with her curmudgeonly ways

caused some friction. Because we were late for an appointment one day, he had made

us wait an extra 3-4 hours until his last scheduled appointment. He was sitting at a

computer in a room across the hall from us and undoubtedly heard my mother loudly

ask, “What the hell is taking him so fucking long?” and “By the time he sees us it’ll be

time for dinner.” When he finally came into our room, he unleashed a few demeaning

remarks about us being late, although I had personally believed that we had sufficiently

paid our dues by sitting so long in the waiting room, our asses had become physically

fused to our chairs. Later when we were heading to my car, she confessed that she

didn’t think he liked her very much. I just drove us quietly home with a knot in my

stomach.

The real death knell, though, for this doctor came after he refused to see my

mother unaccompanied by me, during Covid, despite that I tried to let the hospital know

she was terrified of seeing him without me. The fact that I was a fellow employee who

daily and randomly roamed the same halls as the oncologist, as a masked researcher

employed at the same hospital, apparently had no clout. My mother ended up being

escorted away from me by hospital personnel like we were family members being

separated at a Border Patrol facility. It took a “Karen” performance by me, like the kind

you see in YouTube videos, for the oncologist to finally bend the rules for the in-office

visit and let me join them.

I transitioned her to a different hospital that was closer to home, with another

oncologist, whose days with my mother were short-lived due to her Chicken Little over-

the-phone hysterics every time my mother had new CT scan results that caused my

knees to fold and my colleagues having to pick up the pieces of my shattered hope and

spirit. This was coupled with nebulous treatment plans, one which I privately researched

and discovered was completely inappropriate for the kind of cancer she had and which

the oncologist sheepishly admitted she doubted would work but thought it might still be

worth a try. Another treatment caused severe hyperglycemia that landed my mother in

the emergency room with blood glucose counts of 700 mg/dL. This led to my mother’s

brief stay in a rehabilitation center that she despised so much she was basically

unofficially expelled from it. The ousting came after a profanity-laden screaming match

my mother had with a roommate who she mistakenly accused of keeping her up every

night despite the true culprit not being her roommate but rather a man suffering from

dementia. It also came after she was reportedly wheeling herself up and down the halls

of the rehab and calling everyone there a “pig” and a “fucker.”

(stay tuned for part 4 of “Foxtrot: My Mother’s Last Dance”)