“It’s great to be back here and remember
the good memories we have over the years,” Art says as we are driving around
Chapel Hill this weekend. He’s right, as thoughts of many past visits are
swirling in my head. I am deftly maneuvering my way in and out of traffic on a
sunny, warm Saturday afternoon surprised that I can remember how to get around
Chapel Hill so easily. I have put away
the GPS and suddenly I know exactly where we are in relation to where we’ve
been and where we are going next. It’s
been six and a half years since we were last in Chapel Hill and I’m remembering
it all. I didn’t expect that.
In September 2012 Art and I made the
last four-hour trip driving back to Chapel Hill. On the return to Asheville a
few days later, Mother sat next to me in the Prius, so tiny, and barely able to
see over the dashboard but with a look of anticipation on her face at the
thought of moving close to us. Art followed in a rented SUV with Mom’s
belongings. From the time of their marriage in February 1944, Mom and Dad packed up and moved around the world and
within the U.S. at least twenty five times. Going to a new place to live was
something she was familiar with and did well.
This was her last move…from Chapel Hill to Asheville to live near
us.
We
had been making the 450 mile trips back and forth from Asheville at least once
a month for a year. Returning home in
August 2012 from one such visit, I said
to Art Why don’t we ask Mom if she’d
move to Asheville.”
“What
a good idea. Ask her and see what she says…” he told me.
I called Mom as soon as we were home
and asked if she would consider moving to Asheville to live near us.
She
hesitated and then said, “Well, I don’t think I’d be able to pack and arrange to
move like I used to…”
“Mom,” I clarified “I’m asking if you’d like to live near us if I found a nice place
for you to be. Of course, Art and I
would do all the packing and move your things. All you have to do is ride in
the car with me to get here.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed right away. “I’d love to live near you.”
It was decided in minutes. Within
two weeks we had her moved out of Carolina Meadows in Chapel Hill where she and
Dad had gone in 1993, and into Heather
Glen, an assisted living facility at Ardenwoods Retirement Community in
Asheville. At 93, she was living 20
minutes from us, the closest we had been to each other since I left home when I
was 18.
Once Mom was in Asheville there was
no need to go back to Chapel Hill. After
she died in December 2014 at 95, I thought about Carolina Meadows especially when
I would get cards and emails from Joan Zebley who still lives there. Joan lived across the street from where my
parents were for many years. After I brought
Mother to Asheville, Joan called her up and kept in touch. Much to my surprise, she has continued to correspond
with me in the three years since Mom’s passing.
Occasionally I have considered going back to visit her and then would
talk myself out of it. Would there be too many sad memories with Mother not
there any longer?
Joan Zebley
A few weeks ago, Joan sent one of
her long, detailed, perfectly type emails telling me she had her 95th
birthday and celebrated with lots of chocolate treats which she knew she
shouldn’t have. I knew that she now
lives in Fairways, the assisted living facility, in an apartment just a few
doors from the one Mom lived in. I pictured it all.
Art
said to me, “You know…if you are serious about wanting to visit Joan she won’t
be there forever. Perhaps we should go
back.”
I
knew I’d regret not seeing her again and I should make the effort to go to
Chapel Hill. I called her up and asked if we could have lunch with her at the
Fairways. I suggested a date and knew
she was pleased. Joan is not an effusive
person and it took me years to get used to her crusty, rather blunt New England
manner. She was born and raised in the
Boston area. Married and divorced from
an alcoholic husband she raised four children including a set of twins on her
own. The story goes that she was related
to the Otis Elevator family and when an uncle died, she unexpectedly inherited
a lot of money. I have heard Joan say in
a matter of fact way, “I am very rich”. But
when she talks of money it’s always when she briefly tells of paying for her
grandson to go to private school and for his college expenses, or supporting
her eldest son who has become mentally disabled due to a fever he contracted in
Vietnam during the war. An expert seamstress, she makes all her own clothes,
rarely shops and lives with minimal things, and yet gives generously to many
organizations. As the cliché goes, she
has a “heart of gold”. She will tell you she’s been fortunate to be able to
live at Carolina Meadows for 25 years.
Joan
and Mother were opposites but on some level had a real fondness
for one another.They knew how to be a friend to each other. Joan admired “Jinny”, my Mother, because of her quiet
uncomplaining ways and Mother saw beneath Joan’s exterior to the good person
that she is.
Joan Zebley, Mom, and Kaye Nelson
Last
Saturday as we park in front of the Fairways Art says, “Here’s our space,”. We remember being in the
same spot the day we left with Mom for the last time. We walk towards the front entrance and glance
over to the covered terrace along one side of the building. Art says, “remember when we used to sit out on
that porch in rocking chairs with your Mother?”
“I
remember”, I say and it feels like no time has passed at all.
We
walk inside turn left and peek into the dining room. I am struck by how lovely it all looks.
“Isn’t
this a classy place?” I comment to Art.
I’d forgotten that especially as Heather Glen was comfortable but not at
all sophisticated and expensive in the way Carolina Meadows is. Residents in the dining room are casually
well dressed sitting at tables with crisp white table cloths and cloth napkins.
Water is served in goblets and waiters and waitresses are dressed in black. Menus are passed around. This is an ordinary
Saturday lunch at Fairways. How had I
forgotten it?
I
hear the ding of the elevator door opening down the hall. Joan walks firmly
towards us with no walker. We exchange hugs, something I rarely ever remember
her doing with anyone.
“Let
me check on our table,” she says as she disappears into the dining room. Then beckons us to come and we are seated at
a table with a “Reserved” sign by the large bay windows. We sink into the comfortable upholstered
chairs. The dining room is hushed with
occasional tinkling of glassware or silverware, people talking in low voices as
they do in elegant restaurants. All I
can think is “was it always this elegant?”
It reminds me suddenly of Mom and Dad and how every place they lived
whether overseas or in the US and even this life care retirement community they
chose, was first class. They had good
taste and lived at a time when they could afford it all.
Lunch
with Joan is special and we pick up on the fact that she has not changed at all. She is sharp as ever asking many questions
about us, and our family. When I ask about her health she tells me she has given
up all her prescription medications and feels so much better “not taking
pills”.
She
continues, “You know, I still swim 5 days a week.” But the way she describes the indoor pool
needing repairs makes me think she will outlive the swimming pool at Carolina
Meadows and not the other way around. “I have been swimming since 1983 after my
first hip replacement (she has had four) , and have never stopped. ” That must be her secret to longevity. Maybe I should go back to swimming which I
left behind a few years ago.
I ask many questions about her adult children
and grandchildren as I know them all. She has a tendency to “tell all” the good
and the bad and about her frustrations with a daughter-in-law who doesn’t thank
her or ask to help her in any way...and a son-in-law who doesn’t work so that
her daughter is having to support him. I learned about her “cast of characters” a
long time ago and especially the “in laws” that she is never happy with. She
knows a lot about our family. She asks
me about Megan in California, and Hayden and his family in Washington D.C. and
the grandchildren. She loves hearing
about everyone just as if no time had passed at all. I show her my latest photo book of Austin which
she likes looking at.
When we finish lunch Joan says
“shall we take a tour of Carolina Meadows and I’ll show you what has changed?”
She gets in the car with us while I
drive and we tour the campus starting with the villa she lived in for 23 years.
She directs me to stop in front and points out how the new residents have
changed things all around both in inside and out. She’s not happy about any of
it. We just listen. We drive past Mom and Dad’s villa on the corner and it
doesn’t look the way it did when my parents lived there. The garage door is open with piles of boxes,
and cabinets and junk everywhere visible to anyone driving by. There are two
cars parked in the driveway. It’s casual
living as most Americans are used to.
Dad always parked the car inside the garage and never had the garage
door open any longer than needed to get in and out. If the door was open his garage was clean and
tidy. As we drive by slowly I remember how beautifully Mom had decorated their
corner villa – the white carpet, the Liberty of London upholstered furniture,
the floor to ceiling bookcases filled with their favorite books, an oval dining
room table with Chinese red upholstered chairs, my brother’s modern art
collages on the wall, and the Tibetan rug in the entryway. That rug is now in my house as are the
Vietnamese ceramic elephants that were once end tables at Carolina Meadows. Glancing at #318 I can almost tell it looks
nothing like the showplace it was. We go
around the block past, Kaye and Bob Nelson’s villa, and the villa where Irwin and
Judy Smarr lived. They are all long gone and yet in my mind their spirit is
very much here.
We
drive down a new road with large, more expensive villas built in the last 5 to
8 years – a whole new section of Carolina Meadows that was once woods and
countryside. It looks like any new development with no trees, double car
garages and all the amenities…with little character. It’s
hard to fathom so much building and so many more people. We park in front of
the Clubhouse. There is a memorial
service going on in the auditorium, Joan tells us. She can walk easily from the car to the entrance. She wants to show us all the changes with the
new dining rooms and the renovations to the library and large open entrance
lobby. As she walks us through I begin
to see how none of this is familiar and find myself remembering “how it used to
be”. The decor has changed to a more
sleek and modern look with lots of grays and blues and abstract patterns in
rugs and upholstery and light fixtures.
More like new modern expensive hotels.
We
go back to Fairways to see Joan’s apartment.
It is indeed on the second floor down the hall from where Mom lived but
as I turn to follow her, I don’t glance at Mom’s door. Joan likes showing off her home now. She has no complaints about having downsized
and about her rather stark and minimalist apartment. It’s how she’s used to living so different
from my mother who loved color and
pretty things around her. I think that
maybe Joan might be tired or want to take a rest but instead, she seems to get
more talkative the longer we stay.
Finally I tell her we have to go and we say our good byes. I know I won’t be back again.
As
we walk out I see Mother everywhere…picking up her mail at the mailboxes , and
maneuvering her walker out to the terrace by the golf course where she liked to
sit in the evenings after dinner. I see
her with her walker heading towards the dining room right on time, for meals. She
is everywhere I look.
Mom at Fairways
We
go out to the car which we parked in front of The Green, the memory care
facility where Dad was once one of the first patients. I glance across at the Health Center, which
Joan tells me is now called “The Pines”, a name she can’t get used to. Neither can I. I know I won’t go inside as there are too many
painful memories of Dad in his last stages of Alzheimer’s living out his life
there.
Dad at the Health Center
Going
back to Carolina Meadows has brought to life the spirit of my parents in such a
vivid way that I am glad I went. It has
not been sad but enriching. It has been
a reminder of what a good life they both had here and how fortunate I was to
come often while they lived here.
Virginia Cory Sampson
1919- 2014
