End Of The Road

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Having a car and being able to go where you want to go whenever you want creates autonomy in all of us, but especially in older people who find themselves giving up little freedoms with every turn of the calendar.  In many ways, Mattie having a car gave us all some liberty.  Her schedule never imposed on ours and, at 80 years of age, she loved doing things like driving out to the nursing home to play the piano or melodica for “those old people.”  There were drawbacks, however.

Mamaw Mary never warmed to the idea of Mattie driving.  It went beyond the fact that her VW suffered a fatal, crushing blow beneath the goalpost in the back.  She worried about accidents and injuries to other people.  Every time Mattie pulled out of the driveway, Mamaw fretted and, I’m sure, said a prayer for everyone’s safety. 

Your great uncles and I were forbidden to ride with Mattie and I found myself in real hot water one Sunday for accepting a lift home from church.  You could cut the tension with a knife when she came upstairs into the kitchen for a family visit.  The situation gained such critical mass, Mamaw Mary left the room whenever that happened.  I felt really sorry for Granddaddy Schaefer.  He was caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place” – the rock, his mother – the hard place, his wife. The situation, of course, was totally contrary to our normal family interactions which usually incorporated lots of love and laughter around the kitchen table.

It all came to a critical head with a phone call from one of Mattie’s friends to Granddaddy.  The night before, she joined Mattie for a concert at First Baptist Church in downtown Greenville.  The concert ran over and it was well past 9:00 PM at the conclusion.  The friend offered to follow Mattie home to make sure she made it safely, a trip of no more than fifteen minutes.  For over an hour, the friend tracked Mattie’s course as she turned first right then left and back again, heading in opposite directions on a route that made no sense except to a confused mind searching for some sign of familiarity.  The friend alerted Granddaddy out of a real sense of concern.

The incident proved to be our first insight into the start of dementia’s slow overtake of Mattie’s vibrant, fertile brain.  Granddaddy enlisted great, great Aunt Katherine’s help in dealing with the sad dilemma.  In what surely was the toughest and most painful act of love, they wrested the car keys and license away from Mattie and forbid her to drive anymore.

Taking away one’s car keys signifies an indignity akin to a slap in the face.  The gesture broadcasts that you can no longer be trusted, that you are a danger to others, that you are now on the slope of isolation that you fear the most in aging.  Inevitably, the bastion of the car keys always becomes that last battleground for independence between an elderly parent and adult child. 

In telling you this tale, you might think that I’m merely pointing out that nothing lasts forever, or that all good things come to an end somehow, or that all of life is not rosy.  But I have a more personal reason.  I have an overdose of Mattie’s genes, so my mind may go the way of hers.  Many years into the future, when your mom and Aunt Bee are making hard decisions on my behalf and I’m fighting them every step of the way, understand that they are doing so out of great love and respect for me. I won’t recognize it then, but I do now, and I just wanted to go on record while all my wits are about me to reassure them that it’s okay.