Mom After Life Still Life
Three weeks after Mom’s death I got the bag I kept in the trunk for her and brought it up.
It sat up for a week.
Then, Thanksgiving Day I needed it for transport of two salads, the dressing, pine nuts, avocadoes—the last minute things—and La Crema Chardonnay. So I dumped out the bag I kept for visits to see her.
The Creek Alzheimer’s & Dementia Care big bag we got on the “Walk to End Alzheimer’s Funding” just weeks before Alzheimer’s ended in Mom’s brain, which didn’t get the oxygen it needed to go on after she choked on her dinner.
Inside it was a black and orange Giants bag.
Some Mom’s (brand) Iced Lemonade cookies that weren’t all that good. Better were the Magic Cookie Bars and other things I made for her. So there!
A paper plate and napkins to serve her and “friends,” the other residents in Aegis care.
Two small boxes of facial tissues, the kind to fit the system that she had--one to use for new, one for the used.
The purple “Walk to End Alzheimer’s water bottle (stainless steel, not plastic)
Women’s Wit the 16-month calendar that turned out to contain her final days.
(“It takes a long time to grow an old friend” on the cover.)
One day I tried to read aloud quotations from this Women’s Wit collected here, but Mom protested, “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve read these?”A little short with long-term memory, she.
A mini Whitman’s Assorted Chocolates box I got her in memory for the Whitman Sampler that made me dream back in Blackfoot, Idaho—Someday I’d have one! (Some day I did, but See’s was better then.)
The Sunday paper from September 25th because I thought she’d like to read an article or two, and she could underline and make margin notes the way we like to do.
Was the 49 mile SF Food Tour just for me?
The October issue of the Funny Times (with How to Make a Satan Sandwich: debt ceiling, fiscal pickle, supply-side baloney, devil in the details. cold cuts to college grants, colder cuts to seniors,)
A flyer for The Daisy Field by Amy Sutton about a little foster girl caring for an urban flower garden and the old woman in the senior care facility across the way—that would be Mom?
A to-do plastic folder with some things I never did the to-do for.
An Aegis Living business card for the LVN who interviewed Mom in the hospital between her home and Aegis Living, when Mom identified the demons on the ward for me but still knew that she would never hurt a soul and another Aegis Living business card for the LVN, the Wellness Nurse, who found Mom choking in the dining room and gave her CPR, called 9-1-1, and after Mom was gone called Kathy, me.
A picture of a daughter and a mom who back in July were the newest ones; we took their picture and the daughter took ours too
An Aegis Living business card for the LVN who interviewed Mom in the hospital between her home and Aegis Living, when Mom identified the demons on the ward for me but still knew that she would never hurt a soul and another Aegis Living business card for the LVN, the Wellness Nurse, who found Mom choking in the dining room and gave her CPR, called 9-1-1, and after Mom was gone called Kathy, me.
And then Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom, from which we read occasionally until the last few weeks when lying down on the bed together seemed better.
Lying there and singing show tunes she could play on the piano, “Bali Hai May Call You.”
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