Helen C. Nouza

Helen Carter Nouza

Friends, this is to try to capture who my Mom, Helen Carter Nouza, really was, and then briefly take you through her courageous 10 year battle with dementia which resulted in our losing her this past weekend, just before her 94th birthday.

I’m sorry it’s turned out so long - it morphed into both a tribute and a blow-by-blow that I hope is of some use to those facing situations with their own aging relatives.  If you get bored - and you will - just skip ahead to the pictures :)  It’s just something I had to write…

Helen was born in Mt. Kisco, NY in 1925 to William Edmond and Jean (Couston) Carter.  Her dad was a farm ‘superintendent’ with an agricultural degree from Cornell University, rare for those times, who worked on both small farms and large estates throughout southern New England.  But as a result of this itinerant work, my Mom moved more than twenty times during her school years, ultimately spending six months in Ridgefield, CT where she graduated from Ridgefield HS in 1943.

Despite an isolated and mostly rural upbringing with little chance to develop enduring friendships Helen thrived sufficiently to both welcome adventure and hone her God-given artistic skills.  So it was that upon graduation Mom somehow convinced her cautious and protective parents to allow her to enroll in the Traphagen School of Fashion at 1680 Broadway in New York City, and permit her to share an apartment with five other girls (across the street from the Carnegie Deli with a view of Central Park :)

As can be seen from the pieces below (five among the dozens I’m fortunate enough to have) her steady hand and eye for detail flourished, and Helen went on to both graduate and ultimately work at Berghdorf’s for a number of years before meeting my father, marrying in 1951, and shortly thereafter moving to CT.

So that’s a tiny part of Helen…

Fast-forward to 2008 where my Mom is living in the same house that she “retired” to in Spring Hill, FL in 1971 (at the age of 46).  “Come On Down !!!” they told all those Yankee winter-haters, and my father took the bait, dragging her along with him.  They had a nice twenty years together until he passed in 1991, at which point my mother’s story really begins…

Never one to ask for a favor, or rely on anyone but herself, Helen pretty much kept her house, yard, and life ship-shape for the twenty plus years after my father’s death.  She used this time to both generously bestow her love and wisdom on her granddaughters and to travel the world extensively.  Well into her 70’s no adventure was off limits - I recall sharing a “car” with her and the kids on “Space Mountain” at Disney World when she was 72. A few years later she hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and rode a mule back up. Generally a loner, she would cruise or tour and be invited to join the married couples for dinner.  She’d respectfully spend a first meal with them, then politely decline for the duration and say (a la Garbo) “thank you but I prefer to be alone…”  Eventually foreign travel became dialed back to US National Park tours, Bobby Vinton’s place in Branson, MO, as well as a few bus tours within FL.  But her spirit and the gleam in her beautiful blue eyes certainly never waned.

By her early eighties, I suspect Mom was aware of some cognitive difficulties, but she was smart, and careful enough to put her life on auto-pilot in order to stay away from dangerous situations.  She drove, but always took the same route to the supermarket or church, and began using a limo service to take her to the airport.  Flights we arranged together always included the sky caps having instructions to take her straight to curbside, as by this time she was walking with a cane as a result of year’s earlier hip injury.  She still did crossword puzzles religiously, and wrote weekly letter to her son and granddaughters, an effort on her part I’m sure to stay fresh…  But it must have been getting harder.

One amazing story from about this time that I only became aware of later (since stoic Yankee moms never burden anyone with their troubles, nor ask for help):  At some point the plumbing underneath the terrazzo tile floor in her house needed replacement.  While the work was being done - which took a week and involved giant airplane blade fans running day and night - there was no water in the house.  But instead of leaving or getting a room at a hotel, my 5’2, 120 lb. mother formed a one-person bucket brigade, lugging pails of water from the neighbor’s yard to fill her bath tub and provide drinking water for the duration of the job

It wasn’t until 2010 that I first became aware how “confused” Mom was.  I’d flown Helen up for an 85th Birthday Party at my house in Brewster, NY, and on the drive back to Westchester County Airport, she asked me “Now let’s see, did I come to visit you, or are you visiting me?”  We laughed it off, and then thinking too that her confusion was somewhat natural since she HAD spent years in New England, I filed it away.  However, around this time I was visiting her every few months, and the repeated questions made it clear that new info was simply not being retained.

Shortly after this, I was able to arrange for neighbors to bring groceries over, and look in on Mom, though she was still ambulatory (with the use of a walker rather than a cane) and capable of managing the house.  All the while, she was adamant that she wanted to stay in her own home, and was doing just fine, though “she appreciated my concern”.  Any real cooking had given way to nuking TV dinners, and eating lots of raw fruits and veggies - healthy enough, and not different from the diet that had sustained her for years.  Along with a whole lot of strawberry ice cream.  I should add too that this was a woman who had literally not been to a doctor more than once or twice in 50+ years, and whose idea of taking medicine meant MAYBE tolerating a multiple vitamin.

Again, in hindsight, i realized that when we went out to dinner on my ever-more frequent visits during 2011 and 2012 that Mom’s strategy of “Oh, I think I’ll have what you’re having” was cleverly designed to save her making a complicated choice. This later gave way to a more direct “why don’t you just decide for me?”.  So it was a learning experience for both of us, but still manageable with the blessed assistance of one caring neighbor in particular who befriended Mom and looked in on her quite often.

However the time finally came in 2013 when she slipped and was not able to get up.  She’d refused the idea of a medical alert bracelet, which I knew she’d never wear, so it wasn’t until later that morning that our angel neighbor checked in on her.  Mom went to a rehab hospital, was diagnosed with a fractured hip, fought everyone the entire time she was there, and was ready to head northward about 60 days later.

I at first arranged assisted living, recommended by an ‘aging counselor’, but which proved to be a mistake and only lasted 3 months.  Although Mom was placed (following an evaluation) on a “mild memory care” floor, she proved to be a night wanderer, as they could not prevent her from getting up on her own schedule (which she of course was used to from her own home) and cruising the floor. Which in turn meant more falls, and a couple of trips to nearby Danbury Hospital.

At the point when the facility demanded that I add a round the clock private duty nurse to her care plan, I realized that “skilled nursing” would have been a better choice, and moved her to one (while still getting a private daytime nurse to keep her company - and attempt to persuade her to participate in daily activities, which she invariably refused:  “Who are those people, I’m not like them, etc.”, intermingled with “they’re not friendly here, I don’t think they like me”, and “I just make them bring my meals to my room - I’m NOT going to that wretched dining hall”… Meanwhile I searched for a house in CT which could accommodate “in home care”, meaning quarters for a live-in caregiver as well as her own.

Fortunately, after nine months of generally decent nursing home care, everything came together and by April of 2014 I was able to move Helen into our home in Wilton - which marked the beginning of the last chapter of her life, and which was to last a little more than 5 years.

Mom’s dementia had progressed to the point where she sometimes didn’t make a lot of sense, but there was no question she was alert, and totally capable of interacting using all her faculties: 20 20 vision, hearing a school kid would be happy to have, all her teeth despite no dental care, etc. Music in particular resonated, and when we sang songs from her youth (the big band era) all the words were there perfectly, as well as the rhythm and pitch.  In the car she’d read street signs blocks ahead and have something to say about them.

The light was on, and there WAS someone home.  During these first couple of years, we’d go for rides to Wood’s Pond in Norwalk, where she’d taught me how to skate, and she would feed the ducks.  She also went to church at St. Paul’s on a few occasions and enjoyed the visits.  Sure, during the rides to and from she’d ask me where we were going or where we’d been ten times, but during the moment, it was real as could be for her.  She also enjoyed driving through our old neighborhood, and didn’t need much prompting in picking out old landmarks.

Things became more difficult by 2017 when Mom’s legs became less capable of supporting her weight for more than a few steps at a time, and she was diagnosed with deep-vein thrombosis which created swelling and was a risk in it’s own right, and which required numerous trips to a specialist.  Helen had a whole separate routine of bad behavior that she reserved for waiting rooms and doctors when she thought things were going a bit too slowly.  And oh, the questions…

But despite more physical issues and crankiness with the caregivers, up until about a year ago when she turned 93, moments of clarity were interspersed with the confusion.  Helen always remained alert and very much aware of her surroundings, especially the comfort and presence of our two Labs.

It was shortly after turning 93 that I began to wonder if the onset of apparent hearing difficulties was really less about the ears and more about the brain shutting down.  We considered getting an aural exam and/or hearing aids, but our caregiver correctly pointed out that she’d never leave them in - - reminding me that this was the same woman who’d come home from a Norwalk Hospital visit a few years earlier after a mild fall and had the cast they’d slapped on her sprained wrist off in less than 30 minutes…

So yes, I came to realize that this was the beginning of Mom’s real detachment.  What seemed like difficulty in hearing was actually her loss of ability to comprehend, respond, or create a sentence to express her thoughts.  How lonely she must have felt upon reaching this stage…

And so this last year has been sadder than the rest, yet even as recently as three weeks ago, when those blue eyes were sparkling (and they still did !!!) I could clearly see recognition and joy when she managed to squeak out an “I love you too” in reply to my standard kiss and “I love you Mom” whenever I’d come through the room…

“And”, as some famous poet said, “that makes all the difference”.