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by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris ~

If you’re an animal rescuer, chances are that you harbor rescue impulses toward human animals too. The same heart that can’t tolerate suffering in dogs, cats, goats, birds, or other animals will be wrenched by people suffering too, especially if they are loved ones.

My mom Spunky Stella was one of the humans whose suffering I could not abide. In her late 80s, endangered by an alarming case of osteoporosis, she was falling frequently, sometimes lying banged up and alone for hours on the floor of her little Texas apartment. Her gastroenterologist had prescribed a special diet for her painful irritable bowel syndrome, but that diet was not being provided. Forgetting to take her blood pressure medication, with no one to make sure she did, caused a stroke just before Valentine’s Day in 2014.

She wanted to live with my husband and me in California, and we wanted the same. But just when we got it all arranged, in summer of 2015, I got stupid endometrial cancer. A few months after my surgery, when my doctors gave the all-clear, we arranged Mom’s move again. Then I got stupid endometrial cancer again.

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After recovering from the radical radiation treatment needed for my cancer bout number two, we brought Spunky Stella to our home in August 2018. I felt jubilant to finally have her safe with us, but the diversion of Mom’s income by some relatives came as a horrible shock, as did their inexplicably cruel behavior toward her. So during holiday time that year we were in survival mode here, and didn’t do much.

The next year though, we managed to have more fun. I’m deeply grateful for that, because it turned out to be the last holiday time when Mom still was able to leave the house. It was December of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, about a year before she became bed-bound, and about two years before she passed away.

Stressed while caring for an elder loved one during the holidays? You are not alone

If you’re currently in the thick of caring for a senior human loved one, you might go through many new and perhaps surprising feelings in response to the new and surprising situations that elder care throws at you. If so, you are not alone. I’ve been in that boat, and many others are there with you right now.

Emotional responses might become more intense during the hustle and bustle of the holidays, when we might have higher expectations of ourselves. Perhaps also there are unfair demands coming from others who want us to create wonderful experiences for our elder loved ones. 

For example you might feel more pressure to make things extra special because of your worry that this might be your senior’s last Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas or New Year’s Eve. Or maybe it’s relatives who pressure you, insisting that holiday gatherings or family traditions be carried out a certain way, even when you, as the caregiver, know that those particular ways of doing things no longer work so well for your elder loved one, or might even cause harm.

Nevertheless, even with all the challenges, caring for a loved one during the festive season can be delightful and tremendously gratifying.

This year brings the first holiday time of my life without my mom on this planet. I’m at peace with her passing, but still it feels extremely weird to not hear her laugh or to receive the beautiful blessings she recited in Greek to us every year.

So I’ve been stepping back in time a bit, looking at photos of that last year when she was able to leave the house for some Yuletide fun, 2019, and thought I’d give a little tour of our outings and of my feelings during that time—Spunky Stella’s 90^th holiday season.

1. Challenge:  Cold weather

It was unusually chilly that year, at least for San Diego, and we worked to keep Mom warm while on the outings. During a visit to the Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island off San Diego, she wore about four layers, with a blanket on top.

Pleasure:  She kept cracking jokes about the various items she felt she resembled: an onion (with many layers), a pita (Greek sandwich), a baklava (dessert wrapped in layers of phyllo dough), and my favorite… a “butterfly-to-be.”

Due to dementia Mom couldn’t remember the word “cocoon.” I never quite got used to my brilliant, articulate mom having lost most of her power of speech. Often that made me very sad. But sometimes her still-creative brain came up with great word substitutes, like “butterfly-to-be.”

Gave me a big smile that night, and still does.

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2. Challenge:  Wheelchair access, and the fact that she even needed a wheelchair

By federal law all public places in the United States must include wheelchair access. Sometimes, though, the access is nominal. Or sometimes it’s an uncomfortably narrow ramp. Or it features a huge bump that you have to get over first. Other times it’s circuitous, where you have to go a long way to reach or to complete it. And sometimes, especially if you’re already tired, pushing even a light lady like Spunky Stella up some of the longer ramps can make your muscles ache.

Going downhill was even more stressful for me, because I had an irrational phobia of the wheelchair escaping. This never, ever happened, and it was highly unlikely since I was plenty strong and extremely cautious, so it truly was irrational, but what can I say? There it was.

Also I hated it that my energy fireball mom, who had been the fastest walker in our family even though she had the shortest legs, could no longer walk at all.

Pleasure: A few times on those outings while I pushed her chair, Mom turned around and asked me in perfect Greek, which sometimes came easier to her than English, “I’m tiring you, honey, aren’t I? You work too hard. You don’t need to do all this for me. We can just go home and I’ll make you popcorn.”

Mom couldn’t even stand up by herself anymore, much less move around a kitchen to make popcorn, or even remember how to do it. But I loved it that she was still thinking about me and my needs, and that she still wanted to do something nurturing. Up till the very end, her phenomenal mommy urges never went away.

3. Challenge: Recent loss of one of our dogs

Just a few days before those 2019 holiday excursions with Mom, we’d had to euthanize our sweet pooch Melina due to lymphoma. Although she had made it to a good age, nearly 17, it was still devastating to lose her, as it always is with our fur babies, no matter their ages.

Mom had helped me rescue Melina back in 2003 on the Greek island of Santorini. So saying goodbye to my little spaniel girl sort of represented the additional loss of those days with my mom, during that amazing year when together we’d rescued two adult pooches and five puppies.

Stowing the pain away so as to make the holidays nice for my mother, I felt off-kilter and on the verge of crying half the time.

Pleasure: Mom’s dementia already was pretty advanced by that year, but it rarely kept her from remembering someone else’s troubles. Although she couldn’t keep track of the details, such as Melina’s name, or even the fact that Melina was deceased, she still had finely tuned radar for my feelings, and asked me several times, “How’s the doggy?” Or sometimes she would just pat my hand and murmur, “I’m sorry.” That meant a lot to me.

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4. Challenge: Mom’s loss of knowledge

At the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, California, Mom was enchanted. She loved fairy lore, and they had spruced up the garden like a fairy land for the holidays, including the presence of a Fairy Ice Princess.

Also she was a plant fanatic. She felt about green living things the way I feel about animals. Cooing, blowing air kisses, telling the plants how gorgeous they were, even calling them by name, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of many plant species.

But sadly dementia had robbed her of much of that knowledge, so it was painful for me to remember our previous visit to that garden a couple of decades before, when she had served as my personal tour guide, giving me all sorts of fun facts about the various specimens.

Mom had taught me about Poinsettia plants—first off, how to pronounce the word. She explained that the showy, brightly colored parts that looked like flower petals were actually leaves. Also she said the plant was originally from Mexico, and had a beautiful name (cuetlaxochitl) in the indigenous Nahuatl language. Then botanist Joel Roberts Poinsett introduced it to the United States, where it was re-named after him. Poinsett later became the first ambassador to Mexico from the U.S.

Mom proudly pointed out that Poinsett was sort of a predecessor to my own grandfather, her father-in-law, who served as a consul general from Greece to Mexico in the 1940s.

Pleasure: I realized that although Mom’s brain power had now waned, while she’d had it she had used it to infuse my siblings and me with a love for learning, and an appreciation for science and the study of the natural world.

Those gifts from my mom have given me great joy in life. That night, as she took in all the lovely sights of the garden, she couldn’t verbalize much, but I could see that joy still shining in her eyes. 

5. Challenge: Mom’s magnetism for children

Mom adored children even more than plants. Wanted to hug them, kiss them, chat with them, and not let them go—even the children of complete strangers we’d meet while on our outings. And the kids happily cooperated.

The coronavirus pandemic hadn’t quite hit yet—we hadn’t even heard of it at that point—but I was always extremely leery of Mom catching a virus like a flu or even a cold. In her fragile state it could turn into pneumonia and kill her. I deliberately chose outdoor places for our holiday excursions so as to avoid crowded, indoor, virus-infested venues. Yet interacting with the kiddos brought her such joy that I didn’t have the heart to stop her.

So you’ve never seen so much hand sanitizer as what I globbed on my mother during those nights. Also I constantly begged her to pull-eeeeze not touch her eyes, nose, or mouth with her fingers.

In retrospect, I should have gotten her to wear a mask, and worn one myself. And of course if I’d had the slightest inkling about the killer COVID virus lurking just around the corner, there’s no way I would have taken her out at all. As it was, I had plenty of anxiety even about the viruses that we already knew about.

Pleasure:  It was a beautiful sight: Mom enjoying the children—probably about two dozen different ones on those outings—and them enjoying her right back.

One sweet little family spent an extra-long time with her. Afterward the parents took me aside and said, “Thanks for letting our kids visit with your mom. Our moms and dads passed away many years ago, so the kids have never had grandparents, and they often tell us they wish they did.”

Made me teary-eyed, and still does.

6. Challenge: Mom’s needs came first, and they could change drastically in a heartbeat

By the time those holidays came along, my husband and I had already figured out many of Mom’s needs and how to meet them. For example during her last several years in Texas, on top of the irritable bowel syndrome, poor Spunky Stella also had endured a bizarre spontaneous vomiting problem, which seemed to get worse during outings, especially if she was tired. She’d be absolutely fine, then boom… barf!  It happened a few times a week, and made going out quite an adventure.

But during her first couple of months living with us, I noticed that the symptoms were very similar to those of some of our senior pooches, who had tummy acid reflux, cured by our veterinarian with the recommendation of small daily doses of Famotidine. After getting the OK from Mom’s doctor, we tried it, and it worked like a miracle. Almost no vomiting from then on.

So we didn’t have to worry about that particular problem anymore during those holiday outings of 2019, thank heavens, but I still watched Mom like a hawk for signs of any type of discomfort or distress, or for being overtired.

Mom’s fantastic doctors and nurses taught me that as we age we can become more sensitive to many things that don’t phase younger folks. Our bodies are no longer quite as good at regulating systems like temperature and blood pressure, so even happy excitement on an evening away from home can bring changes and create small internal imbalances that might trigger anything from fainting to worse.

In addition to the special holiday fun offered by the San Diego Botanic Garden and by the Hotel Del Coronado, there were other events I’d love for Mom to have experienced, such as Balboa Park December Nights, with all kinds of food and musical entertainment, and the San Diego Bay Parade of Lights, with hundreds of boats and yachts all dressed up. But I knew that Spunky Stella’s nonagenarian stamina only allowed for a certain amount of entertainment.

Pleasure: Even at the time, I understood that Mom’s remaining days on this earth probably wouldn’t be many. Of course that was saddening, but it also magnified everything we did together. Each moment during our outings that holiday season was a little brighter and more meaningful. There weren’t quite as many outings as I would have liked, but they were enough.

I miss Mom like crazy—her keen and ever-ready sense of humor, her drive to learn and understand everything she possibly could, her intense compassion, and her boundless capacity to forgive and forget. There’s no one else like Spunky Stella, and never will be.

I’m forever grateful to have had those holidays together, no matter the stresses and hassles involved. And I’m forever grateful to have had her as my mama.

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Rescue Diva helps needy animals and their rescuers around the world, such as:

~ Diva assists Kefalonia Animal Trust (KATs) in Greece to provide free spay/neuter for hundreds of animals per year, which is one of the best ways to prevent the abandonment and misery of puppies like Noah and Kyla.

~ Diva donates to Center for Animal Protection and Education (CAPE), Praying for Paws, Southern California Siamese Rescue, Aniplant (Cuba) and many other groups.

~ Diva does in-the-trenches rescues of angels like Robin, Chance, and Tiger, with help from San Diego Animal Support Foundation; of Marisol and Lisa, with help from Last Chance at Life; of Mandi (Diamandi), with help from Graeske Hunde, and of Roki, with help from Stichting AAI.

About the author:

Katerina Lorenzatos Makris is a career journalist, author, and editor. Her fiction includes 17 novels for Simon and Schuster, E.P. Dutton, Avon, and other major publishers (under the name Kathryn Makris), as well as a teleplay for CBS-TV, and a short story for The Bark magazine.

Katerina has written hundreds of articles for regional wire services and for outlets such as National Geographic Traveler, The San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales, NBC’s Petside.com, and Animal Issues Reporter.

Together with coauthor Shelley Frost, Katerina wrote a step-by-step guide for hands-on, in-the-trenches dog rescue, Your Adopted Dog: Everything You Need to Know About Rescuing and Caring for a Best Friend in Need (The Lyons Press), coming soon in digital format!