Mom Thinks She's Employed at Aegis

In mid-April, 2011, I realized that Mom thought--at least for a day--that she was  working at Aegis—that it was her work place!  A friend whose mother also had Alzheimer’s offered to visit Mom with me, so I wrote her this note:

Dear Betsy,

                Tuesday sounds great.  I’ll drive because you so often do, and I know this route very well by now!  Would you like to come to my house, and I could drive us through beautiful St. Francis Wood to Monterey and the freeway?  I can be back from campus by 10:15.

I just got back from seeing my mom, and this was a really good day.  She had good days last Sunday, when Javier and I, Kathy, Suzy  all visited her (not at the same time), and this past Tuesday, when my nephew Karl and I visited her.  But yesterday she was back in the paranoia mode, begging people to leave before they were killed and she was blamed for their murder, refusing food because she knew it was poisoned, questioning the meds, etc.  In total agony.

                So… it was good to see her today NOT in that mode.  I told her I was bringing a friend on Tuesday.

            I also told her that I would come by Saturday instead of Sunday (when Javier and I are taking a birthday friend to Guys and Dolls at CCSF), and she said, “I’m not sure I’m working on Saturday.  Well,  I don’t go home for lunch, anyway…”  And then she looked a little unsure, as if she were trying to remember and maybe was starting to. 

                When I first got there, she was sitting side by side with and her roommate—the same Kay who told me on Tuesday, “Don’t touch me!  If you touch me, I’ll get what you have, and I don’t want what you have!”   Today she and Mom  seemed to be having a really good conversation.  Then we were joined by Ada, a charming woman I’m sure you’ll meet on Tuesday, many, many times, as she comes back to introduce herself—Ground Hog Day.  (But she really is very charming and sometimes converses beyond repeated introductions and her recitation of  “The peace of God is my one goal, the aim of all my living here, the end I see, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.” ) 

             Today Mom laughed at that last line, “Where I am not at home.” 

            I think today she thought she was taking care of the others.
             I brought cookies I made pre-dawn today, and they all ate them except for Kay, who doesn’t want to get what I have.  One resident came and just crawled upon Mom’s bed.  When they all left for lunch (after all the cookies), Mom wanted to stay in her room instead of going outside to the beautiful garden because “it feels so good to have the place to myself.”  But she was a little bit nervous about reading aloud from her Contrary to Popular Opinion book because “What if they see me?  They’ll think ‘She gets paid for this?!’”

                Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday and catching up with YOU paragraph by paragraph—and spoken ones!             

            Love,                 

            Tina