Between
my visits on Tuesday and Thursday, Kathy sent me a message about visiting Mom
in the early evening, around 5:45 PM.
Mom
told Kathy she was glad to see her and was just going to call her to come and
take her home.
Kathy
told Mom she was glad she came even without being called, and for now being at
Aegis was best.
Kathy
said there wasn’t too much paranoia just the obsession with her BMs.
Nan,
Mom’s faithful every-Wednesday friend (when Mom was at home) came before Kathy
on Wednesday and had a “decent” visit.
Kathy
thoughtfully mentioned seeing Jonathan’s aunt and uncle featured in the San
Francisco Chronicle in an ad for the Sequoias, a retirement home where they
were much more content than my sweet mother was at Aegis!
I wrote about Thursday, May 05, 2011, the last time I would
see Mom before Mother’s Day.
Dear Kathy and Suzy,
When I got there at 10:50, Mom was sleeping, and I sat down in her armchair
(not Kay’s!) and started to sleep myself, but then Kay came to the door and Mom
woke up.
Kay
said there were going to be a lot of people, but this time she didn’t say, “in my room, so get out.” (“I think you should
leave now.”) She said there was a party. Downstairs. She told
Mom she needed to get up and go with her “Because you know the way.” (I’m
almost certain she wasn’t talking about hell.)
Kay was
friendly to me this time. She said, “My, you two look alike,” and then
she asked me, “Are you her mother?”
I
identified myself as her daughter and said I was happy to hear that I was like
my mother, and Mom said, “And we both have beautiful teeth” and flashed a smile
that wasn’t there after all.
“Oh, I
don’t have any teeth. Where are my teeth?”
So we looked and looked, though’ Kay left for
the party downstairs without us.
Mother
seemed sane, the way she had the first few minutes of my visit on
Tuesday. She told me I was lucky that I’d gotten her disposition instead
of my dad’s and in a sort of sane way.
We
looked through everything but never found the dentures.
I later
called Aegis and got someone named Suzette, who said “Oui” instead of yes and in
reference to the Perry Section for the Memory Challenged told me Mom was in
PaREE, which I think is where Mom would like to be--PaREE, France, though’
today the theme was “I’d like a place that was like this but not so high toned,
with people of many different nations but not at the exclusion of
whites.” No more reference to Aegis’ being for the “lower economic
strata.” (I finally found the missing Visitor’s Book and saw your April
30th entry, Suzy, and Mom’s comment about wishing all the people of
the world had the same amount of money.)
Anyway I asked the French-accented concierge about the dentures
and begged to be called when they’re found.
I was there just a little bit
more than an hour, and all my time with Mom was in her room, looking through
her things for the dentures.
Close to noon Kay came back and
said she’d resigned. When I asked from what, she said, “I don’t
remember. I know it was a high position. But when I saw who I’d
have to be working with, I thought, ‘No way!’”
Then Mom, who’d gone back to bed,
said, “Kay, I want to tell you how sorry I am because I’ve been thieving from
you.”
Both Kay and I expressed surprise,
and Mom asked me, “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? I’ve been doing
something that hasn’t been good or fair for you. And I’m so sorry.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me except that I’ve gone mad.”
Kay just commented again on how
much Mom and I look alike (though my teeth were in my mouth), and she
went to lunch, which Mom didn’t want to do, and I didn’t think I should have
her eat, toothless, the sandwich I brought her.
I told Divina and another Aide (it
was a bit harder to find aides this morning) to remind them not to let any
garbage go out without the denture check, and Divina showed me the box with the
glass missing from where she said Mom broke the glass of the fire extinguisher
box at 5:00 am this morning. This was the second offense.
Mother did say, as we were looking
for her dentures, “Do you know what’s ironic? Just when I need them, the
police are going away somewhere. I saw it in the newspaper. Look at
today’s newspaper, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Sure enough, there was a headline,
“Cop jailed in drug scandal.”
On my way out of PaRee, I stopped
to talk to Carol (another concierge—and isn’t she sweet!) about including Ada
on Mother’s Day, and then she asked Yerba (?) and Sue, who told me about
Mom’s breaking the glass “Maybe with her elbow.”
We talked about the medicine and
the possibility that it could be changed.
“Her hallucinations are terrible,”
Yerba said.
They think that Ada is available
for Sunday. They haven’t heard about any plans with her own family.
So I could bring flowers and cards for both mothers.
Love,
Tina
Looking back, the scenario was quite hilarious! Your mom is really cool; she wasn’t even bothered while looking for her lost dentures. Anyway, how did the search go? Were you able to find the dentures? I know some people find not having them on uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteHaleh Ashkevari