Twelve Beautiful Cupcakes

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​TWELVE BEAUTIFUL CUPCAKES

​      It's been a rough week. But then, for most of us that probably goes without saying.
    After all, there are currently so many possibilities of how life can be rough, the COVID-19 pandemic having dropped a whole new world of interconnected maladies, misfortunes, and unhappiness on top of the already vastly numerous run-of-the-mill happenings that can make life rough.
      I suppose a variation of the famous quote from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina could sum it up: These days everybody's life is rough in its own way. 
​      As for me, it was a fairly run-of-the mill development, I suppose, yet ushering in no less of an emotional upheaval than a more seismic one might  have, that propelled me into my rough week: A week and a day ago I was told that my mother, 100 years and 5 months old, was near the end of her life. 
      My mother lived in her own house until one year ago,

​...when she relocated from Seaford, Delaware to Gahanna, Ohio to take up residence at Sunrise of Gahanna, a wonderful senior care facility one mile from my home.

      From the time she arrived at Sunrise I visited my mom every day, took her to church every Sunday and out to eat a time or two a week. I watched her make friends and thrive, even after she was moved to the Memory Care unit, where she received the kindest care I could have hoped for.

     Then the epidemic struck, life became surreal, and by March senior care facilities across the country were put under quarantine and  I didn't see my mother for three months except for a weekly digital visit via my iphone screen, and even for that I was grateful.
       By June the quarantine had been lifted slightly for care facilities and for the next five months I was allowed to spend half an hour once a week with my mother sitting outside twelve feet apart.  I watched her hearing and cognition deteriorate week by week, though the Sunrise staff assured me that she was still active and quite social. I felt that if I were able to still come and see her every day she wouldn't forget who I was; if I could just sit with her and hold her hand she would be better.
        One of the nurses suggested that, as several of my mom's friends had baby dolls, I buy a baby doll for my mom, too. From then on, they tell me, my mom was never without her baby. She always brought her baby along for our visits.      

    A few weeks ago when the weather turned cold our weekly 12-feet apart outdoor visits became weekly 12-feet apart indoor visits. Last Friday, November 13, when I arrived at Sunrise for my visit with my mom I was met by the charge nurse of patient care who informed me that I could go back an visit my mother in her room.  My mother appeared to be approaching her final days, and so I could now visit her in her room every day if I wished. 
       She was weak when I saw her on Friday, bedridden by Saturday. On Sunday I was told my mother was "in transition" - from life to death, I suppose. I've sat with my mother every day for the past eight days, two, three, four hours a day in mask, face shield and gloves. 

   I talk to my mom even though she doesn't seem to hear me. Once in a while she'll say something, usually incoherent, and so softly that I struggle to hear her. Sometimes she lies with her eyes closed, so quiet and still that I become fixated on a vein in her neck, watching it to make sure it's still pulsating. 
     But sometimes when one or two of her Sunrise caregivers enter the room, all cheerful and bubbly and fussing over her, my mom springs back to life, reaches for a hug, kisses them, tells them she loves them, that she’ll miss them, prays that God will bless them. 
      And so it's gone for the past eight days. And while I've felt mostly bathed in the comfort and kindness of family, friends, and the Sunrise caregivers, several days ago I fell apart, briefly. A remark  was made to me concerning my mother, so harsh and unkind and unexpected that it left me not only momentarily speechless, but momentarily breathless. 
      For the first time since I learned that my mother was dying, I cried. And cried. I told my sister about the mean remark that was made to me. I told my husband, my children, my friends, I laid awake at night and ruminated and cried some more.
     The following day I spent an hour sitting in our family room on the phone with a friend discussing, dissecting, analyzing and psychoanalyzing the remark. When I hung up the phone my husband entered the room and said, "Look in the kitchen. Somebody sent you cupcakes." 
       On the kitchen table was a box of a dozen beautiful cupcakes.

      They were a gift from my sister Romaine, who'd sent them to make me feel better. And, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, these twelve beautiful cupcakes did make me feel better. Immediately. Romaine had ordered them from a Gahanna bakery called Fate Cakes owned by a young pastry artist who delivered the cakes to our house herself.    

      "I asked her to make the cupcakes look like desert succulents and to add extra icing," Romaine told me. These confectionary cacti were little works of art, down to the sprinkling of graham cracker crumbs for the desert sand.

      And the icing was just the way I like it: two parts icing to one part cake.

       And were they delicious? Oh yes. These little Fate Cakes and my sister's kindness nourished my sweet tooth and my spirit. 
        My mother used to say that a little kindness was like water that could bring a parched flower in a desert back to life. I might add that a cupcake desert can work wonders as well. 

Reference:
https://www.thisweeknews.com/story/news/local/new-albany/2020/08/29/gahanna-bakers-stress-relief-turns-into-fulfilling-business-with-fate-cakes/42345053/