Category Archives: Mothers

Truth. Lies. Priceless Memories.

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When I was young, I never dreamed that one day, fibbing to my mom would be better than telling her the truth. Instead, I strived to dodge that age-old, childhood taunt: Liar liar pants on fire.

I’d be lying now though if I said that fibs never crossed my lips. In fact, before I aged into double digits, I would silently breathe that insult to myself whenever a Catholic priest slid open the panel that separated us inside a confessional. Gazing through the shrouded window at the shadowy figure opposite me, I always spoke in a hushed tone, praying that whoever sat on the far side of the confessional could not hear my litany of sins, including my lies.

Karen Antonietti First Communion 1963
First Communion 1963

I recited the same list and assigned a corresponding number at every telling. I fought with my brothers and sisters nine times. I disobeyed my parents seven times. I lied eight times…Though I did not keep a tally, I was certain some of my infractions numbered ten or more. Hence, liar liar.

Fast forward fifty-some years.

I hunkered in assisted living with my eighty-nine-year-old mother after she broke her pelvis in October 2020. Her senior living community was on lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I was allowed to be her essential caregiver during her rehabilitation period. Throughout my fourteen-plus week stay, her bones healed. Sadly, her dementia progressed.

Mom’s grasp of reality fluctuated. Sometimes she knew who I was. Other times, she thought I was her friend Shirley. One afternoon, my sister Laurie called while Mom and I were eating lunch. During their conversation, Mom said, “No, Karen’s not here.” She listened to Laurie for a moment, then turned to me with a quizzical look and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Karen,” I said.

Her face softened into a smile. “Oh, you little pup!” she replied, and her words and mirth made me laugh. 

"Shirley" Karen Buley and mom, Kay Antonietti in assisted living, January 2021.
“Shirley” and Kay January 2021

Most days, Mom remembered that our Papa had died. The large, foam-backed banner that sported his picture, birth and death dates, and the words, “Forever In Our Hearts,” was propped atop her dresser. When she made loops with her walker, she’d often smile and say, “Hi, Pops,” throwing in an occasional, “Pray for us.”

After she regained her strength, we made weekly outings to a coffee shop drive through on our way to visit Papa’s grave. On the fourth anniversary of his death, we were parked in our usual spot at the cemetery. “I haven’t seen your dad in a long time,” she said. Sorrow laced her voice.

I replied with the gentle words that had softened her sadness when I’d needed them before. “Papa’s in heaven.”

“He died?” she wailed. “Oh, Dan. What did I do to you? I’m so sorry…”

I longed to dial back my words.

I had recently learned about “therapeutic fibbing”—bending the truth to match her reality—and “redirection”—shifting her focus. In hindsight, I desperately wished I had used one of those techniques that day and struggled to give myself grace.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, the senior living community hosted a reading and author’s chat for my novel Perimenopausal Women With Power Tools. Mom sat in the front row, alternately beaming and dozing. Guilt haunted me, knowing that, like my protagonist, Beth, I too was harboring a lie of omission—“the worst [kind],” according to my eighteen-year-old character, Kate.

Unbeknownst to my mom, she would be moving into memory care the following week. I’d stay with her for two days, then return home. My heart was breaking.

I spent several fitful nights lying beside her in her queen-size bed, agonizing about leaving and wishing for clairvoyance. If I knew Mom’s days were numbered, I would power alongside her until the end.

But then moving day arrived. I chased sleep for two nights in memory care, tucked into a rollaway at the foot of her twin bed. Every cell in my body ached at the thoughts of saying goodbye.

I waited until the last minute to tell Mom I was leaving. She was in the living room, watching a musical with several of the ladies. I said quiet goodbyes to staff and some of the residents, then squatted in front of her chair. I still had vacation time, plus hadn’t dipped into the Family and Medical Leave Act, but I couldn’t admit that staying and watching her decline was so damn hard. Instead, I lied and said, “I have to go back to work.”

“You do?” Anguish filled her face, and her eyes puddled as she grabbed my hands.

“I do.” I straightened, then added “I’ll be back,” and kissed the top of her head through my mask. “I’ll call you when I get home,” I said, knowing my standard words were a fib now too. “I love you,” I managed, unable to stop the quiver, but turning before tears streaked my cheeks.

I did go back, including for a weeklong stay and some other overnights throughout the next twenty-six months. During that time, Mom graduated from hospice care twice, then was referred a third time the day before she died. I was blessed to be at her bedside when she exhaled a final, peaceful sigh.

In truth, I’m grateful for more than sixty years of memories.

Kay & Dan Antonietti 1995.
Kay & Dan Antonietti 1995

I’m also grateful that, whether my mom is somewhere over the rainbow or on the other side of the veil, her journey through dementia is over and she’s living her new, best life.

Baby Charley, Butte, Montana, 1954

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I was a teenager when my mother told me about Baby Charley. He was found in the backseat of a car outside the all-boys Catholic high school in Butte, Montana in 1954. Boys rushed him to the nearby rectory, but a priest directed them to reroute to St. James Hospital, two-and-a-half blocks away.

The story was shared in newspapers around the state.

The Daily Missoulian news article about Baby Charlie, Friday, October 22, 1954.
The Daily Missoulian, Friday, October 22, 1954

My mom, newly married and unbeknownst at the time, newly pregnant, was preparing for the oncoming nurses when she heard pounding on the alleyway door. She asked a janitor to open it. “Petrified” boys passed the baby to the janitor, who quickly handed the baby to her.

“Baby Charley” as he was named, was at St. James for about two months, according to my mom. “Everybody loved him—the priests and nuns and doctors—and lots of boys would come in and talk to him and play with him. He was well taken care of.”

She dressed him the morning he was scheduled to leave with his adoptive parents. Mom had a meeting though, so was sad she did not meet the couple when they arrived to take Baby Charley home.

When I was eight, we relocated from Missoula to Butte and moved into my mom’s cousin’s home across from St. James Hospital. The hospital was boarded up by then, replaced by a new building a few blocks away. I traipsed past the old hospital’s alleyway door thousands of times in the ensuing years, walking to and from church and school. The all-boys’ high school became mine, having transitioned to coed in the 1960’s. After learning about Baby Charley, I often imagined the boys’ angst as they rushed to the rectory, then hurried to the nearest hospital door they could find.

Mom repeated the story throughout the years, the last time in early 2020 as we visited in her independent living apartment. “He was inside a paper bag, dressed and wrapped in a blanket. He had a sugar tit in his mouth, and he had beautiful red hair…” She paused. “I hope he’s doing okay.”

“I bet he is,” I said, studying the black and white photograph featuring Baby Charley and my twenty-three-year-old mother. Clad in her white cap and starched nurse’s uniform, she’s smiling at Charley, whose tiny fingers are curled around her finger.

Kay Antonietti & Baby Charlie, St. James Hospital; Butte, Montana; 1954
Kay Antonietti & Baby Charley; St. James Hospital; Butte, Montana; 1954

The photo, which Mom kept in her cedar chest, was taken for a follow-up news article. “Picture no. 3; 2 col Sun; bottom, pg. 4;” was scribbled across its back. But instead of publishing the photograph of Baby Charley and my mother, the newspaper published a photo of him and a nursing supervisor instead.

My mom passed away on March 18, 2023. Two days ago, I washed the linens that had cocooned her, and my sister and me, during Mom’s final hours. I also laundered a pair of plush throws. The blankets rushed memories of Mom and I snuggled under them during our fourteen weeks together after she broke her pelvis in October 2020. Swathed in comfort and warmth, we’d watch “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune.” We’d reminisce too, and sometimes when dementia took hold, she’d ask, “Where’s the baby?”

A childbirth educator and decades-long nurse, mother of eight, grandmother of fourteen and great-grandmother of twelve, Mom could have been referring to a number of babies. But during those weeks I hunkered in Assisted Living with her, she often lived in the past.

On this Mother’s Day I wonder, as I have before, if the infant Mom worried about was Baby Charley. My years of teaching Lamaze classes and working as an OB nurse, coupled with the creation of characters for my novel Perimenopausal Women with Power Tools, colored my emotions as I contemplated Baby Charley’s birth and his birth mother’s courage, strength, heartache and love.

Mom’s plush throws are washed and tucked away. I imagine gifting one blanket to Charley. If his birth mother is still alive, I imagine gifting her the other. Full circle from the young nurse who welcomed and loved Baby Charley nearly sixty-nine years ago.

Two-and-a-Half Years and Counting

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I have written snippets about my mother’s journey through dementia and am proud to share “I Was Really Scared Last Night” which was recently published in Please See Me. An online literary journal, Please See Me’s mission is “to elevate the voices and stories of vulnerable populations, and those who care for them.”

When I visited my mom a couple of weeks ago, she greeted me with an “Oh my God,” as I bent to kiss her cheek.

My mother, Kay Antonietti.
Kay Antonietti, cuddled under an afghan from a hospice volunteer December 17, 2022

And this week, after demonstrating an upswing, she graduated from hospice care. Her heartrate has normalized, she is more awake, her appetite and ability to feed herself have improved, and she has more frequent episodes of coherent speech.

Her eyes still hold their sparkle, and every day with her is a gift.

Project Steady Eddie

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I am four-plus weeks into my gig as an essential caregiver for my eighty-nine-year-old mother. Sitting in her dentist’s reception area while my sister scheduled a return appointment, Mom felt “dizzy,” so stood for reasons unknown. Up one moment, down the next, then an ambulance transported her to the hospital because she could not bear weight on her right leg.

She fractured her pelvis in two places. Neither break required surgery, but she was admitted for therapy and pain management. More lucid than not while she was in the Emergency Department (ED), Mom was not granted an essential caregiver beyond the ED due to COVID-19 visitor restrictions. A bed alarm, a video camera, and a room near the nurses’ station superseded having a family member at the bedside.

Three days later, I was allowed into the hospital for discharge instructions. COVID-19 visitor restrictions were in place at Mom’s senior living community too. But administration gave me permission—following a COVID-19 test—to quarantine with her and help with rehab.

Sometimes Mom remembers why we’re roommates in her assisted living apartment. Other times she does not. Some days I’m “Karen.” Other days I’m not.

She had a walker before her fall, but it sat—unused —outside her door. Mom was given a slower, two-wheel walker in the hospital, which she uses in her apartment. Last week she graduated to her four-wheel walker for outdoor treks and walks around the community. But she doesn’t always remember she needs wheels whenever she’s up.

“Who’s the little lady that belongs to that?” she asked days ago, pointing to the two-wheel walker parked beside her dinette table.

“You’re the little lady that belongs to that. Steady Eddie,” I said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re Steady, and this is Eddie.” I patted the walker. “You two are a team.”

“Oh, my,” Mom said with a grin.

Kay Antonietti, November 2020
Mom and her wheels

This Thanksgiving week, we’ll celebrate what would have been my dad’s ninety-third birthday. And we’ll offer prayers of gratitude for Mom’s continued healing and our sweet bonding time.