Miss Jo's San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO’S ASSOCIATION AS A CITY OF SECOND CHANCES dates back to the California Gold Rush of the mid 1800s. Fortune seekers from all corners turned a sleepy port into a swaggering metropolis where commerce and corruption ruled.

Miss Jo will never forget her unexpected feeling of being given a second chance the first day as a San Franciscan on April 5, 2005.

After landing across San Francisco Bay at Oakland Airport, she found herself speeding across the Bay Bridge in an airport van and exchanging relieved smiles with her husband, Jeff.

The sunshine and bay views had a calming effect on everyone, including the third member of their party, Miss Jo’s elegant-but-screwball mom, June, who even in the throes of advanced Alzheimer’s was ready for adventure. She was also still good company, mostly easy to please, and of course, had a memory like swiss cheese.

San Francisco’s skyline came into view like Emerald City.

“This is not how I remember it,” June snapped, momentarily shattering Miss Jo’s optimism as only a mother can do. Everyone had been up all night. The day before movers emptied their side-by-side northwest D.C. condos and a pet transport service collected their three cats, including June’s loyal black tomboy, Rudy, who had to be tricked into his carrier.

There were last hugs for awhile with close friends and Miss Jo’s sister, brother-in-law and their girls, the youngest then starting high school and the oldest heading to college.

It was a wistful farewell, since la familia had never been separated since the girls were born.

Now their Aunt Jo wasn’t just going on one of her long vacations, she was moving across the country and taking Baba with her !

It had been two years since Baba– the girls’ name for June— came under Miss Jo and Jeff’s wing, after the death of Grandpa Frank, Miss Jo’s dad.

In many ways, June’s move to San Francisco was a lot easier than getting her to leave the Capitol Hill row house she had shared with Frank for almost 30 years.

Because she was incapable of acknowledging anything was wrong with her, June defiantly protested the idea of leaving her 19th-century attached brick row house.

Her poor judgment and living alone became a frightening prospect.

On one occasion, she walked four blocks to Pennsylvania Avenue to the bank and tried to withdraw money with her address book. Another day, an observant police officer gave her a ride home when he saw her wandering by the Supreme Court with a small bag of shrimp, her favorite, purchased a mile away at Safeway.

Then there was the night when she called with exhaustion. “Could you come over ?” she asked. “The house is so hot. I keep turning up the air conditioning.” But the house had no a/c. Instead, she was turning up the baseboard heat—- later discovered to be scorching the back of the couch and in time would certainly have caused a fire.

Dementia and danger be damned, mom was staying true to her independent character. Why change course now ? Then 83, she had already outlived her identical twin whose cause of death eight years earlier was Alzheimer’s, a diagnosis June never accepted.

Likewise, her estranged older sister, Jean, died a year earlier in Los Angeles of Alzheimer’s at 86, after weeks of living with a gang that she invited to move in. When Jean was taken to the hospital shortly before she died, her gang friends torched the house

Thankfully, June’s housing crisis had a happy ending.

After arguing for weeks, she agreed to find an apartment. “I want to live where it’s mixed,” was her explanation for just wanting to be a regular tenant— not a resident in a quasi-healthcare facility for the elderly, or living with Miss Jo’s sister’s family.

It was a request that would be hard— really impossible— to fill, and a move likely to change June’s circumstances little. Of course she could rent an apartment near Miss Jo’s, but what would keep her from wandering down Wisconsin Avenue at all hours, or taking strangers home ?

As if on cue, the condo next to Miss Jo and Jeff’s came up for rent.

Living as neighbors seemed like a sound option. At least June’s youngest daughter and son in law could keep an eye on her, while still keeping their lives relatively separate. There would also be peace of mind, which until then Miss Jo had taken for granted.

Otherwise, they had no idea about how to take care of June, let alone how to keep her from wandering off and showing up on the evening news. All they really had was love for all concerned and a desire to help June live as gracefully as she would want.

Thankfully, too, there was Miss Jo’s sister and her family as Baba-care backups.

Photo by Miss Jo