Tag Archive | centenarians

Mom Finally Landed in Hospital

Nov27

November 27, 2025

Imagine being 100 and finally needing to be admitted to hospital for the first time in 35 years. Mom’s definitely one tough bird. I visited her today and she was able to use the walker and with help from a nurse made her way into the bathroom and back to her bed. The doc thinks she’ll be discharged on Monday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is.

Of course then the real trauma begins as after ten days in hospital she’ll be even weaker than she was so will need more care. She refuses to go into a home so I guess I can block off the next few months of my life. Kidding. Margaret and I are definitely going to Mexico and Belize in February.

I was heartbroken not to be a finalist in the memoir category for the Canadian Book Club awards. It’s amazing to think I would even enter something like that! But then those of us with poor self-awareness are everywhere. I’m thinking of the very heavy young woman in short shorts and a turtleneck sweater in Walmart the other day.

I’ve stopped fighting with the bots at Amazon. They removed me from my ideal category, Western Canadian Provinces Biographies and Memoirs, then when I inquired said oopsies, we’ll reinstate you, please wait up to 48 hours. I’ve been fighting with them for ten days now, no sign of it.  The latest bit of gaslighting said “Your book’s detail page will display the top three category rankings only.” Yet only two categories are displayed so I guess bots are blind.

I tried out a new recipe on Sylvie the other day as I’d invited her over for Happy Hour. I made mini beef Wellington bites, and they’re super easy to make and I think with more practice will be a very nice appetizer. Then the other day for fun I tried making mango curd, and with all the leftover egg whites made meringue shells and so made mango pavlovas. Calvin and Visini loved them.

I’m waiting for Steve MacNaull’s article to appear in Kelowna Now. I’ll use that as bait and drop it plus my book and a fruitcake off to the CBC station and see if they want to talk about my book. I’ve been posting photos from the old fruitcake days on Instagram and my Nuttier than a Fruitcake Facebook page and so people are inquiring as to where and how to attain the fruitcakes, to which I reply buy Okay I’ll Bite, the recipe is in there.

It really was adorable when a nurse phoned me when mom was admitted so that I could answer a bunch of questions as mom was in a delirium so couldn’t. She asked if mom used drugs or drank and I said she drinks wine every day. The nurse laughed nervously and said, “you mean like a glass with dinner?” And I said, “oh no, at least half a litre a day. Probably more. She drinks that to go along with the three Ritter Sport chocolate bars.”

The nurse then said,” Do you think she’s in withdrawal?” I said, “oh god no it takes an awful lot more liquor than that every day for our family to go into withdrawal.” I still remember being a few weeks pregnant with Nick and feeling sick as I had a cold and my dad’s advice was to take a shot of vodka. Mom screamed saying “She’s pregnant.” To which my dad looked at both of us with a look that clearly said “So?”

But today I didn’t smuggle any wine into mom’s room, though I did take some chocolate. As she’s enjoying the food at the hospital, she might not even want that which is clearly a new sign.

A Very Bad Hen

Sep19

I had three black Araucana hens, two of which died, one by a predator, one from unknown causes. The one remaining hen, who I named Condoleezza, lays the beautiful blue eggs for which the breed is renowned. However in April she went broody for about four months recently snapping out of it and now again this stupid damn hen is at it again. She sits on useless eggs that’ll never hatch and of course then doesn’t bother to lay her own.

I’d just been proudly handing out blue eggs to people like Trevor and Elsa, but now we’ll have to wait months for more of them. I know, I could get another Araucana or two, but then if they also like sitting on the nest all day it wouldn’t be worth the gamble. I’ll just eat the other hens’ more normal coloured eggs and put up with this idiot of a chicken.

I need to renew my passport as Margaret and I are off to our beloved Yucatan in February, and I said to Calvin I decided to just get the paper copy and do it the old-fashioned way. He said he had to do it that way himself, given despite having a Bachelor of Computer Science, he couldn’t bust the Government of Canada website to do it online. So if he can’t do it, no one can.

And speaking of technology that could cripple a Boomer, I’m now waiting for Trevor to format my memoir, Nuttier than a Fruitcake, in preparation for its launch on the Amazon book site. Then we still have to meet to fool around with pricing, and I’ll have to write some preamble or other, and hopefully with God’s good grace, we can have an ISBN by September 30.

Why September 30 you ask? Because the Canadian Book Club awards require a submission by that date, and they have memoir as one of their categories. Vain and impossible, I know, but I’m doin’ it anyway. I’m going to enter my book and see what happens. Stranger things have occurred, right?

Mom remains a handful and mainly because she still believes she’s the queen. I was there a couple of days ago, and Luke and Jan came for dinner as usual. No one but mom wanted dessert, and at that point Luke stood up and said his back hurt and he wanted to go home. Jan was surprised he was leaving but then left with him.

As mom was chowing down on the prune cake with whip I’d made, she decided to get pissy, and just as Jan was going down the stairs she called her back. I waved Jan on. Then I came in and said what did you want to tell Jan? Mom said I want to tell her never to leave the table when someone is still eating. I said well from now on, unfortunately, things like that will occur and you won’t be able to control them.

Mom’s still scared shitless of dying, too, so that kind of hard control of everything makes life very difficult. She worries about so many useless things that at 100.5 years of age, one would have hoped she would have come to terms with them. She’s no Buddhist, I can tell you that for sure.

Meanwhile I revel in simple joys, such as learning how to make a nice yeast dough for the aforementioned prune cake. I’ve been frightened of yeast in the past but just decided to take the bull by the horns and give it a try, and then what happened was a lovely, fluffy bottom crust. As I said if you don’t try you’ll never win. Fingers crossed for my book.

The contest won’t announce anything until November, so I’ll have to try to be Zen.

Road Trip

Sep5

Luke and I went on a trip to Maple Ridge last weekend to celebrate Sunny and Mike’s 25th wedding anniversary. We’ve been there twice before together, once in ’20 for Freddie’s memorial, and again in ’22 for Twig’s. This time it was for a far happier occasion, however as with the other two times, car issues arose.

The first time Luke insisted on driving his old Honda civic, and somewhere near the summit of the Coquihalla it overheated. We had to pull over, he opened the hood and steam poured out. I was sure we’d miss the event, but because he already knew it was a piece of shit car, he had brought bottles of water for just such an emergency. After a bit of a wait, we were back on our way.

On the second trip we went in my Jetta because I didn’t want a repeat of the first one. All went well until we left Sunny’s place to drive to Julie’s where we were spending the light when the red oil light came on. We were both shocked by that as I do the regular oil changes every six months. The next day however we went straight to a gas station and while it was low, it was somehow overreacting, and all was well for the drive home.

This time Luke picked me up in his 1997 Crown Victoria. As we drove down the driveway and turned onto Hall Road, I said “it sure squeaks.” But the car ran fine, and as we neared Merritt Luke said we were low on gas but should be able to make it to Hope. I said maybe you should just go into Merritt and get gas, but he said no, that’ll waste 20 minutes we can make it.

This is what I really don’t want to hear when driving along. “Uh oh, I think that gauge was wrong, we only have 2 litres of gas left, I hope we make it.” Jesus, I hate that. So I just decided to think positive, pray a bit as well for good measure, and somehow after the car dinged the third and final warning that we were about to run out of gas, we turned off for Hope and into a gas station. Phew!

The party was a lot of fun as I know so many of those people, and I was able to visit with my grand nieces and nephew a bit. They were busy bartending and visiting with their friends. Amber is 11 and can make a very good Caesar. The event was catered and there were tons of food leftover which they planned to divvy up and freeze.

The next day the drive home was very painful for Luke as he was hungover. I felt fine, so I asked him if I should drive but he said no, he could do it. Imagine our shock when we arrived at my house to see Joan lying flat on her stomach in front of the steps. We asked what happened, and she said she’d fallen the night before, and had crawled this far and couldn’t get any further.

We got her up onto a chair and plied her with water. As Luke still had to get to Osoyoos, and given his state, he said he had to leave and drove off. I tried to help Joan into her car and couldn’t so called Old Faithful, aka John Patterson, and he drove right over and helped us. You know what they say, a friend in need, is a friend indeed.

I then went to Osoyoos where mom appears able to walk minus her walker, but only when in a trance. One night she walked down two steps to her old bedroom, slept in that bed for a while, then returned to the upper part of the house. I said to her see? you think you can’t walk, but it turns out you can. Isn’t that spooky? It means she’s still able to stalk people, coming upon them without warning.

The Care and Feeding of Mom

Aug22

It’s difficult taking care of someone who’s 100 and a half, and who’s basically crazy as a result of it. The other day mom phoned at 5:30 PM and said “Get me a doctor, I need help. Call anyone.” I said “Do you want me to call the ambulance?” and she said, “Yes, call anyone, I need help.” So I quickly called Luke and got him and Jan to head right over and told them to let me know what happened.

Half an hour later I got an e mail from Jan saying “Gramma was mad. She was out of wine, so Luke had to go to town to get it.”  Those are the typical kinds of emergencies I have to deal with. Often she calls saying “My phone isn’t working”, to which I explain it likely is, given she’s speaking to me on it.

Mom’s got macular degeneration and is almost blind as a result, so when I say I would prefer to clean a public toilet outside of a market in Thailand to hers, you get the idea. But one thing she can see no problem is food, and she has a voracious appetite. The other night she had two helpings of lasagne followed by a large bowl of peach clafoutis for dessert.

Often by 10:00 AM she’s nibbling on chocolate and drinking wine with it. I guess when you’re that age it’s pointless to pay attention to the time of day. In fact, mom will call and ask what time it is, and when I say 9:00, she says, “In the morning??” to which I calmly reply, “uh huh.”

Next week I’m going to start recording my book, Nuttier than a Fruitcake, so that I’m ready for all versions to go onto Amazon by mid September. I’m going to enter a reader’s choice contest which has a deadline for the end of that month, so I’m cutting it kind of close, but I’ll get it done because I have a good feeling about that contest.

We’re in the midst of another heat wave so I’m watering like mad, and I can see the results of it on my electricity bill. My well is powered by electricity, and with the irrigation system running three times a week all night long that takes a lot of juice. First you pay for the well, then you pay for the power to run it so the water’s not exactly free. But I still love having my own water source.

Hence for the next seven days I believe this is all I can do: water and work toward my book’s completion. Trevor, my illustrator’s coming on Monday with the recording equipment, so I have to get serious and stop fooling around.

Elsa’s going to be in Vancouver so that should cut down on thrift store shopping, and as I don’t usually go on my own, that’ll free up some of my time. I often marvel at how I worked, had a husband and kids, a yard and garden, and now I can barely do the few things I have on my list in a day.

I also won’t be returning to Osoyoos for a couple of weeks, which will help as I find my nerves are pretty much shot while I’m there, and then it takes a day to recuperate from it when I get home. Mom’s conversations are often puzzles. She says “Jan comes in and washes the dishes, then sits down and talks to me and I can’t understand a word she says. I wish she would talk first, then do the dishes.”

I reply, “But what difference does it make if she does the dishes first and talks second when you can’t understand her anyway?” To which she replies emphatically, “Exactly, it makes no difference.”

Mom’s Quite the Handful

May29

One thing I do not do is run into the house when I hear the phone ringing and I’m out working in the garden. I don’t like talking on the phone as it is, but when I’m interrupted by something like “Did you just phone me?” asked by a 100-year-old, it gets maddening. As you may recall, Luke installed a Tapo camera in Mom’s living area, so I can see the phone ringing when I call her. Her phone then says, “M. Schiller” a few times as it’s ringing. So then I ask mom, did the phone say it was me? No? Then no, I didn’t call you.

And if it was just useless questions being asked constantly, it’d be fine, but Mom’s crabby streak has caused her nighttime caregiver to give notice, so now Jan’s going to take over sleeping there. Poor Jan. She’s the least favourite person on mom’s list. I guess everyone has a burden to bear when caring for a centenarian.

Margaret came for the long weekend, and we went down to Osoyoos to party around with Luke and Jan, and of course Mom. Though cranky, she easily drinks her .5 litre of wine and eats her two Ritter Sport chocolate bars a night. Margaret’s not used to our lifestyle and was hungover the first day but then got with the program and managed to hold her own and still feel okay the second day.

I was raised to loathe and fear teetotallers, so drinking is just what Schillers do. Growing up, people who didn’t drink were spoken of as the world’s stupidest bores, so who wouldn’t want to drink for God’s sake? I believe the secret to it is keeping it to a dull roar to avoid damage.

Sunny and Julie and their families came for brunch, as did Denis so there were 14 of us. At the last minute Mom decided she was too sick and went to bed for a couple of hours. Then came out and seemed fine. I made a particularly delicious breakfast casserole, made with croissants instead of bread. Everyone seemed to like all of it, plus fruit salad, ambrosia salad, pound cake and marshmallow and chocolate squares.

It was nice to get back home, and Margaret and I had time for a couple of hours of thrift store shopping on Tuesday before she flew home. Then two days later Elsa and I returned for more treasure hunting, and I felt fab finding a Fossil handbag for $10. So much better than the several hundred the original owner paid.

And on Sunday, June 1, I will have lived in this lovely house for 35 years! Isn’t that great? And due to the awful thrift store hobby, I can’t move, so this is it until I’m hauled out feet first. Watching Mom age is certainly scary, and I can see it takes a lot of courage to get that old, but I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I get to it. If I do, right?  Putin could take us out with a nuclear bomb tomorrow.

Hence my philosophy of not worrying, which I try to employ even though it can be difficult. When I was in Germany, I learned so much by staying with dear Hannelore, mom’s cousin who is 92. We spent every morning and evening talking about all manner of things, and one thing she stressed was not trying to predict the future and to just let it all come upon you.

And when you think of it, there’s nothing we can do except try our best to remind ourselves how fortunate we are. My problems are small: broody hens, a centenarian, clutter, an insatiable appetite for trashy YouTube videos and incurable evening snacking.  Okay, add vodka and there you have it.