March Madness 3 Mom's Last Day at Home

 Before dawn I made pasta sauce for Mom and Kathy, and while I was making them cookies, Suzy called to say that after a really good evening last night, things were worse this morning, and Mom told Kathy that she thought she should go to a home, where she’d feel safe.  Kathy told Mom I’d be coming over, and Mom said, “I’ll probably be dead.”  Cleaning up, I found a letter postmarked March22 from John Olichney, the neurologist at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center.    I taught my morning classes and left campus for Pleasant Hill at noon.

                Mom seemed okay except for a part of her body that Cole Porter gets to rhyme with heinous and connects with Coriolanus in “Brush up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me Kate.  She wanted us to take her in to Emergency, so Kathy called the advice nurse and got India.  The Indian doctor suggested that we use Preparation H Cream, which we did.  Mom asked, "Isn't this kind of disgusting?"  and I said, "No, it's not" because it wasn't and I worried about her feeling that she was losing her dignity.  "We just hope this will make you feel better."

            We slept fairly peacefully, but when I got up the following morning at about 4:30, mom joined me almost immediately afterwards and NEVER got over her paranoia—accusing Kathy of wanting and trying to kill her.  But we were able to get her to take her medicine. 

            The plan was that I would be back at home in San Francisco at 4:00, when Javier was arriving, but because of Mom’s agitated state, I called Javier to ask him to come to Pleasant Hill instead and right away.  I didn’t want to leave Kathy with Mom—and not because I thought Kathy was going to kill her.  But when I called him, a woman answered.  It didn’t sound like his daughter. 

            The woman called him to the phone, and after I told him what was going on with Mom, I said 

I was taking him up on the offer he’d made repeatedly for the past nine years—-to be on call if I should ever need anything.  I asked him to come over.

                 “When?”

            “Right away!”  I said. 

            “In a couple of hours?” he asked.

            “No, right away.  As soon as you’re dressed.”

            He said okay.

            “Javier’s coming,” I told Mom.

            “Good.  I like Javier,” Mom said.

            We set a place for him at the table.

            He was coming from Fremont, so we figured it would take about an hour for him to get out of the house and to Mom and Kathy’s home.

            We got Mom to play the piano.

            But when Javier hadn’t come after two hours, we ate without him.  Then I called him and he answered his cell phone.  I could hear noise in the background—talking, the clanking of dishes.  Was he eating out?  With the woman who’d picked up the phone?

            He said he was on his way.

            He arrived thirty minutes later.

            Mom said, “Please leave, Javier, because I like you, and I don’t want you to get hurt."

                "It's okay," Javier said.

                "No it's not," Mom said.  "They’ll blame it on me.”

             “No,” I said. " I’ll confess.  I’ll let them know that I  killed him.”

            I offered to stay with Mom, but Kathy said her brother was coming.

            “I can stay.  He doesn’t have to come,” I said.

            But Kathy said he was planning on it, so I left. 

            I didn’t know that that was the last time I’d ever see Mom in her home of forty-five years.