#65: Italy and USA, July – December, 2008 Life Limps On: Two Months with Ethel, Two Tons of Olives and the Comfort of Amerini Friends

Yesterday (August 31), we had our annual party for the treasured Gubbiotti/Gallinella family (three generations, spouses and all). They’ve made us part of their family, and we feel the same. Toward the end of the meal, we told them we’d started the process ofmoving back to the States, and it became very emotional all around. It’ll be very hard to leave these dear friends, but we’re consoled by the fact that everyone says they’ll come visit.

September

[Russell writing the family letter this month.]

September was full of surprises. We learned belatedly that Nancy’s Aunt Ethel in northern Virginia had had a bad fall on 28 August and been admitted to hospital. Nancy flew over to render assistance and remains in Alexandria at this writing, supporting Ethel and her care-givers. Ethel is now in an intermediate facility, a skilled health-care center, where she’s having rehab in preparation for returning to her retirement community before long.

October

[Russell again.]

Nancy will be homeward bound on 8-9 November, after two difficult months assisting her aunt in Virginia. Ethel’s transition from post-hospital care to a long-term facility has twice been postponed but is currently scheduled for 7 November.

November

[Nancy now writing.]

When we were looking for a house in Italy, we never thought of being olive farmers, but this lovely house with its magical setting came with 100 trees, and we didn’t give it another thought. In the early years the trees were young, and the harvest was only a matter of two people and a few days. Now most trees are over 20 years old, some much more than that, and the harvest takes a bunch of people three weeks.

I returned from two months with Aunt Ethel (more on that below) and pitched in immediately. I have to admit that the first few days for me were sheer drudgery, working from near dawn to near dusk, seven days a week. Even friend Graziella, sister to our dear, departed Graziano, said it was like that for her at the start of every harvest. It’s just hard to get your body and mind wrapped around the effort to strip all those dangling branches of thousands — perhaps millions — of olives. We produced two tons. That’s a lot of stripping when you consider that oil olives aren’t as large as the ones you buy for condiments. The size of these is less than the last segment of your little finger.

With Graziano gone, we had the intermittent help of various members of his family — not only sister Graziella, but also her husband Mario (who now comes once a week to help with outdoor chores), their two sons, one girlfriend and two more of Graziano’s brothers. With the exception of Mario, none of these folks came everyday, but it made a difference to have so many helping hands when the yield was so heavy (even if it did mean lots of food-prep for the noonday meal).

Everyone here has had an abundant harvest, so the mill is running 24 hours a day. We decided to take the first 3/4 of our crop for processing because we literally didn’t have any more room to store them on our north portico. They’d been spread on tarps, heaped about six inches high, so the air could get to them, and they wouldn’t start to rot. Russell, Graziella, Mario and I filled up 30 giant sacks plus 10 large plastic crates and went off to keep our 2:00 a.m. appointment. That was the only time we could reserve during the busy season, and it turned out to be a real challenge. The mill had had to shut down to repair one of its over-taxed machines, so we had to wait until 6:30 a.m. to load our olives into the hopper. In the interim, I returned home, baked muffins, made coffee and brought both back to workers and clients alike. It sure made a difference in my ability to wait through the night, and it seemed to help everyone else, too.

By the time Russell and Mario were dumping olives off the back of Mario’s truck into the mill hopper, the sky was turning streaky silver. When they’d finished, the sun was fully up. It took another two hours before we saw our golden-green oil pouring out of the spout and into our waiting cans. That happy sight made it all worthwhile — the cold winds, injured hands, aching backs, stinging insects, cramping legs, other clamoring tasks left undone — all this and more well worth the three weeks necessary to fill our 50-liter cans and haul them home. As has been our custom, we split the production with those who helped.

I must say, though, that I’d arrived neither mentally nor physically ready to harvest. The previous two months with Aunt Ethel had been stressful and draining. As Russell related, she had a serious fall in late August and was taken to hospital, later being released to a nursing home. I only learned of this by accident, when I started phoning her to wish her happy birthday in early September. After several calls without reaching her, I phoned the main number of her continuous care facility and was told what had happened. The staff assumed that her Lighthouse Volunteer, who has both her Powers of Attorney (medical and general), would have told me. But that was not the case, and I soon learned that his behavior was causing great concern.

He’d been escorted out of two different nursing homes by their security police, because he’d been physically and verbally threatening to staff. He’d lied to Lighthouse for the Blind, which had first sent him to Ethel three years ago, telling them she’d moved and he didn’t know where she was. He’d insisted Ethel be readmitted to hospital even though the ambulance attendants said it wasn’t necessary. He was controlling, obsessive and interfering in Ethel’s health care. 

[Although my letters to family mentioned him by name, I will use “V” for “Volunteer” to refer to him in this blog post.]

All this was enough to get me on the plane — as strongly suggested by the residence staff — and I arrived at Alexandria Hospital without telling either Ethel or V that I was coming. She was touchingly pleased to see me, stroking my face again and again and asking how long I could stay. “As long as it takes” was my reply, and that turned out to be a very long time indeed.

V’s increasingly erratic behavior (one medical professional told me, off the record, that he probably has a personality disorder) and the fact that he’d received over $8000 from Ethel during August and September resulted in the county’s Adult Protective Services (APS) being called in by a medical staff member. Ethel is legally blind, so V writes all the checks — how many checks had he written to himself and for what amounts? Had she knowingly signed them or not?

The case was slated to go to court, but Ethel defended him tooth and nail, saying why couldn’t she give him monetary gifts if she wanted to? The answer is that she doesn’t have much in the way of financial resources, and if she gives them away to the point that she’s poverty-stricken, she won’t qualify for Medicare and won’t be able to remain in her continuous care facility. Ethel ignored all advice, even from her pastor, and totally followed V’s wishes, including paying for a lawyer for herself and one for him.

The legal issue was whether her increasing dementia, documented by a forensic psychiatrist, was sufficient to have the court appoint a guardian for her, supplanting V’s POAs. In the end, her mental condition was so borderline and her stance so unrelenting, that Adult Protective Services decided to spend its limited resources on cases which they were more likely to win. 

This decision was made more palatable by the fact that Ethel’s attorney had taken a personal interest in her case and come to realize that V’s behavior was compromising her health care. The lawyer promised all parties, including the court, that she would take an active role in defending Ethel’s interests. The day after this compromise was reached, V talked Ethel into firing her lawyer. 

He then persuaded her to agree, before witnesses, to an extreme revocation of her “Do Not Resuscitate” status, which she had discussed with her personal physician months before, deciding at that time that she did not want unusual measures to save her life. The new wording of the document is “any and all measures” to keep her alive. But when I discussed this issue with Ethel, using real examples (e.g., if your heart stops, do want them to shock you back to life), she refuted the document. Nevertheless, the document stands, as do two new, more detailed POAs which give V total control over Ethel’s property and all life-and-death decisions.

There’s nothing more I can do at this point. Ethel is currently staying at a rehab center, where V refused for weeks to sign a contract because it contains a clause that says he’ll be ultimately responsible for payment if her insurance and Medicare are used up. He continues to interfere with her medical care (e.g., telling her to stop eating and go to physical therapy, even though Ethel is seriously underweight and the therapist said she can come later; canceling Ethel’s visit to the urologist to check the condition of her failing kidneys, etc.). The rehab center staff are documenting his behavior, hoping to “give him enough rope to hang himself,” but I’m not really sure what this means. Obviously, if Ethel’s mental deterioration continues, we can try again to get a guardian appointed, but for now, everyone who is concerned about her (including friends and professionals who tried to inform and warn Ethel about V’s destructive behavior) can only pray.

All this is complicated by the fact that even though I’m Ethel’s only living relative, I can’t be appointed her legal guardian, because I reside overseas. The concern is that it would take too long for me to come to her aid if conditions warrant, so the court wouldn’t consider me for that role. It would have to be a local lawyer or other entity that normally handles this sort of thing.

I came home on the 9th, but not before I had been advised by three different professionals (medical, legal and social-work) to change my Virginia residence without telling anyone, especially Ethel and V, because the pros were concerned about my physical safety. It turns out that folks experienced with these kinds of cases have seen the “predator” turn violent when someone appears to thwart them, and V loudly blamed me for all the efforts of medical and APS staff to protect Ethel. Predators have even been known to kidnap and physically harm people who stand in their way. Several graphic stories got my attention, and I moved from the guest apartment in Ethel’s continuous care facility to housesit for the neighbor of friends. Even so, my sleep-deprivation lasted for the full two months. The only way I could get to sleep was to lie on the couch in front of the classic movie channel and doze fitfully through the night. All those old movies were enough to keep my mind occupied if I woke up, so I wouldn’t toss and turn worrying about V and Ethel.

One happy interlude in all this, although it started badly: When APS finished its investigation and served notice that Ethel’s case would go to court, V persuaded her to ban me from visiting her for three days (despite our cordial relations during my daily visits of 6-8 hours, helping care for her). I decided there wasn’t any point in waiting around Alexandria fretting, so I called (step)sister Mary Anne and asked if I could come spend the three days with her in Clarksburg, WV. What a soothing tonic to be in my old home town, among her loving family, just living a normal life for a while.

Now I’m finally ready to start my own normal life. I can return to work on my book, aiming to have it ready for submission to the Debut Dagger competition early next year. Another pleasure of being back is that I can write my section of the monthly letter once again. I’ve missed being in touch!

December

It’s always a pleasure to be in Amelia during the holidays. And especially so this year, what with tons of entertaining and being entertained. Because I was away for over two months in the fall and that absence was followed with the all-consuming olive harvest, I really hadn’t seen most local friends in months. So we decided to do something about that.

We hosted a lunch for twelve with Graziella, Mario and family to thank them for all their help during the harvest. We served assorted antipasti, torta rustica, turkey fillets sautéed in white wine with mushrooms, artichoke hearts and lemon slices. Then a cake from our excellent local baker, decorated with an olive branch arcing over the words “Tante Grazie” (many thanks) plus fruit, coffee and liquors. They brought home-made wine and assorted pastries and stayed laughing and talking long after the meal was finished.

We wanted to see all our buddies, but I didn’t think I could face another big lunch like that one, so we decided to have two open houses, one for the “Polyglot Lot,” as friend Ruth terms the foreigners who live here and another for our Italian friends. So we invited 21 folks for the 21st of December — American, Dutch, English, French, Irish, Scottish, Turkish. We served sparkling wine and all sorts of finger foods, repeated for 45 Italian friends on the 28th.

The Polyglot Lot are all familiar with the open house concept, but we knew our Italian friends had never experienced it. So we’d lightly explained it on the hand-made invitations we’d delivered. No need to have worried. All the Amerini arrived, sampled everything on the buffet and said it was a great idea to have a party like this at holiday-time.

As usual, we spent Christmas eve with the Rosati family, sorely missing Rino, who usually sat at the head of the table with Russell on his right. Nevertheless, a lovely evening, with Babo Natale (Santa Claus) showing up and the kids singing “Jingle Bell Rock” in honor of their American friends. “Jeengle bella, jeengle bella, jeengle bella roc…”

The holidays also included one of our periodic pizza dinners with  Amerini friends, carol-singing at San Magno high up in the old town and the annual concert in the Cathedral, culminating, as always, with the dark interior suddenly bright with light as we all join in singing “Adeste Fideles.”

With all the partying, we decided to keep Christmas simple. I managed to find a young turkey hen and roasted it with Dad’s bread dressing. We added Waldorf salad, wild and brown rice with porcini mushrooms and cream, cranberry sauce and mincemeat pie with brandied hard sauce. The American treats were purchased in Rome and carried up to Umbria, so we had a good mix of multiple cultures. A memorable evening, just the two of us, enjoying a quiet but special meal, logs burning in the kitchen fireplace, cats in their basket and Zack asleep outside the door.