As Life Goes On...

            “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 95^th 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