Adopting Mom

My mother had a very happy childhood — carefree, indulged, secure — starting at age 81

Frances at 91 at her favorite restaurant. ©melaniechartoff

When she turned 81, my sister and I enrolled my mother in an assisted living facility in Hamden, Connecticut, just outside the New Haven area, our birthplace.

Norma and her husband, Charles “Chip,” found Whitney Center, and I split with them the funding of her brand-new life in a one-bedroom apartment with a lovely view there. It wasn’t cheap, but Mom deserved better than she’d had.

Team Frances: Melanie, Norma and Charles with Norma in 2010. ©Melanie Chartoff

As we enrolled her in this private school for continuing education and decorated her dorm room, she thrived.

She brought her rich soprano to the choir, performing solos along with other seniors who shared her love of music. She found her true voice there.

Frances Chartoff also wrote for the W.C. newspaper — poetry and essays. We got her a used Jetta with our inheritance from our father, and she drove to psychotherapy and Hatha Yoga for a time.

When I’d visit, Mom and I would attend lectures by some of the other denizens, many of whom were retired educators from Yale University and the University of Southern Connecticut where she’d worked for many years. One octogenarian professor had studied a commune in rural China for several years and his films and slides were illuminating. He convinced us how well Communism worked for the people of Henan Province, with everyone on the massive farm assigned a purpose. The 4-year olds fed the babies and helped cook the foods, the elders taught and babysat. It was ideal. There was no depression on the commune, he said.

At Whitney Center, seniors enjoyed newfound fun purposes in their later years.

Dr. Hesung Koh loved it there. She told us of defecting from North Korea to South Korea as a child. Well-educated, she married the American Ambassador to South Korea, and they had many children and grands, one of whom worked in Obama’s administration, one who headed the Yale Medical School, one who appears on CNN regularly. She, too, taught at Yale, and is still in demand as a speaker and leader. She held court in the conference room, and visitors would come from all over the world. She purchased a double apartment and filled it with Korean art. Being invited to her bamboo-lined living room for tea was a great escape to an Asian world.

With such a diverse population, the level of conversation was heady at Whitney. Schoolgirl-like gossip gangs were profuse, and there were clubs with varied interests and passions that met in the library full of the donated books and art collections of the deceased. The renowned Yale “Whiffenpoofs,” an a capella group whose various iterations began performing in New Haven in 1909, would rehearse and perform there for a grateful crowd, as would string quartets and pop singers.

Never a dull moment. There were countless activities in two dining halls, a fully-equipped gym, a heated swimming pool, and beautiful grounds on a lake in the woods with wild turkeys free-ranging around the campus. We loved to go to the garden, tended by other residents who planted plots of vegetables and flowers.

Our mother made a few dear friends there, but as they began to graduate to the next level, she preferred hanging with the younger, multi-racial staff. They adored her. Management at Whitney encouraged kindness and good spirits prevailed. We should all be so lucky as to matriculate at a Whitney Center when we grow up.

She went through many phases — went to Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings, which helped her immeasurably. Her anxiety disorder lessened. We noticed her voice changing as she moved through a new kind of puberty and joined the altos in the choir.

My sister, Norma, and her husband, Chip, who live in Brooklyn, far nearer than I in Los Angeles, told me Mom was losing her “baby teeth.” They drove her to many dentists as I paid for graduating sets of grownup teeth. I owed it to her as I’d based my role as television’s Rugrats cartoon mother Didi Pickles on her voice. She soon had a very expensive, bright smile. As if we’d removed her childhood braces, she smiled more than she ever had.

Frances with her benefactors Chip, Norma, and Didi Pickles ©Charles Scott

She read avidly, especially biographies of comedians — Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Mike Nichols, Steve Martin — and loved the Mike Nichols and Elaine May comedy YouTubes I sent her.

She needed laughter to counter memories of the Great Depression and her own rather large one.

She’d been a huge Eddie Cantor fan, and his autographed photos and notes adorned the wall. My brother-in-law got her a computer and taught her to use it. I loved receiving her newsy emails. My sister got her an Ipad and taught her how to play games on it. She immersed in jigsaw puzzles, classical music, and especially old movies. She’d revel in her favorites showing up, over and over again.

I took early Social Security to help her as prices went up and she outlived her savings. She felt badly, but we told her not to worry, we’d take care of her as she had us. We did for longer than we ever thought possible, with childfree Norma and Chip reparenting her, babying her. She was the daughter they always wanted. They’d buy her playthings and comfy clothes, and she never dressed better than for the many birthday parties they gave for her, that last for her 101st.

As she shrank, she became childlike and spoiled, and they deserve the Nobel Prize for patience. They drove in often. I visited when I could and came to stay a couple months at the Whitney Health Center with her when she had surgery. She hated hospitals, refused to go when she fell and hit her head. She wanted to die in her apartment, she said, and fantasized about the scene, the light, the sounds, the songs.

But she began to tire of life. Beginning at age 91, whenever the first husband I finally brought home to mother and I would leave her, she’d say, “This is the last time I’ll see you.” But she was wrong — for a full 10 years. The last time I visited, in early August, she told me, “I actually died three months ago, but am acting alive for other people.” She felt she was just dreaming her day-to-day life with her paid aides Betty or Pauline with her 24–7.

She romanticized her funeral, what I’d wear and what she’d wear, so glad she wouldn’t ever have to put on brassieres or dentures again. She longed for death, as her failing hearing and eyesight made it difficult to read or watch television and she was beyond bored with life. She managed to arrange it, somehow catching Covid from my cautious sister and her husband, who barely removed their masks to eat. She went on oxygen, on hospice, and slept her way into leaving in 48 hours. We were relieved for her.

Frances Chartoff at 100 ©melaniechartoff

She was buried on a beautiful day in September within sight of the University of Southern Connecticut, where she was much adored by students, one of whom spoke at her ceremony.

It was a happy ending to a happy childhood — as she and we so wanted.

Originally Published in Oldster on Substack as “Raising Mom”

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