Kathy stayed with Mom a few minutes
after I left, but Mom didn’t one to disturb the one person in the TV area, and
she told Kathy that a particular resident, whom we’ll call Earl, was always
trying to put the make on the women.
“I’m
annoyed with him,” Mom told Kathy. “But
I also feel sorry for him.”
Kathy
reminded me of what Dee says about Alzheimer’s.
“It’s like Swiss cheese.
Sometimes you get the cheese, and sometimes you get the holes.”
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 2:57 PM
Subject: Mom Today, Thursday, April 29, 2011
Dear
Suzy,
Kathy was upstairs talking to Rosmary when I arrived at 10:45 this morning, and
she joined Mom, Ada and me in the garden for a few minutes before Mom excused
us both and we had the chance to talk. Kathy had varied her path a bit in
hopes of running into the nurse practitioner who lives a street over, and sure enough, they met and had the chance
to talk a bit. BAR said she would look for an alternative to the
anti-anxiety medicine Mom is taking now, but first they’re going to up
it. Apparently this morning before I got there Mom went out on the small
patio outside Perry’s cafeteria and started shouting for the police. They
gave her another dose of the anti-anxiety medicine then. I think we’d be
better off if we let Kathy give the details pertaining to medicine. You
and she know much more than I do. I’ll cc her so she can correct any
errors I make in that realm.
Kay and Mom were in their room when I arrived, but Mom was talking to a couple
of the aides and explaining that she shouldn’t have the earplugs or any other
item that could cause jealousy. I soon saw that she was the way she was
on Tuesday and some date before (which I’ll look up). She had a
prominently displayed sheet of paper—maybe a piece of cardboard—saying, “I’ve
admitted or will soon admit a crime.” (It could have been “confessed,”
but I think she just admitted it, and I could feel the frustration of not being
sure whether this was your diary or your to-do list.)
I couldn’t find the visitors
book that Kathy got for Mom, the one we’ve been writing in and putting pictures
in, but I didn’t look very thoroughly. I thought her frame of mind
indicated a greater need for Contrary to Popular Belief, which I was
able to find.
The big pot of flowers I’d brought
on Sunday wasn’t there, but your pretty yellow rose plant was. She’d
moved it from the window to the bureau diagonally across from the
refrigerator.
Mom told me she’d had to get rid of
some things that might hurt the children when they came. Mom asked Kay whether she would like
us to go out or stay, and Kay, who was fairly friendly, told Mom, “Go with
her.”
I said, “You’re invited too.”
When we left the room, Mom said,
“Don’t be so stupid. She wanted to go with us.”
I said, “I invited her,” and Mom
said, “Eventually, but not right away.”
We sat down in the sitting room (!),
and Mom said we had to be very quiet because the people who didn’t have
visitors or any kind of life would feel hurt and sad if they saw us.
I looked into the next room and saw
about six old people sitting still with their heads bowed,.
“Yes, their heads are bowed,” Mom
said, “And this isn’t necessary a prayer meeting.”
She said, “Some of these people
haven’t seen their mom and dad since they were eighteen years old, and it’s
like David, which makes me feel sad.”
I told her that we visited David regularly,
and she had too for years and years.
She said, “I really don’t like this
place. I’d like to go somewhere else. Not necessarily home.”
I asked her what kind of a place she’d prefer,
and she said, “Oh, I think just a regular high school.”
She told me never again to bring my
big bag (Dress for Less at Ross) because it just shouted out wealth to people
who might not have anything better than a paper bag.
“I used to have a paper bag,” I told her, referring
to the paper bag I’d take to spend-the-night parties.
Mom thought that was what I should bring next
time.
She pointed out a man in the group
of the bowed heads not necessarily praying and said that he was a man who…and
then she had trouble finding her words (perhaps through the haze of the
medication; she’s usually pretty good with words)…He liked to show off his…”What’s
a word for man?” I suggested male.
“Yes, his male…vegetation.”
I suggested organs.
“Yes. His balls. The
things that men have-- balls and a pistol.”
I suggested penis.
“Anyway,” mother said. “All that
stuff.”
Kathy later told me that a wife visiting her
husband, who she felt sure was going to get better and come home, found her
husband in bed with another woman at Aegis and was very upset because that
hadn’t been her idea of his getting better.
Kathy said that former Justice
Sandra Connor also found her Alzheimer husband, the one she gave up the Supreme
Court for, in a relationship with another woman and at first was too quick to
pass judgment but later decided that he was someone else, so why shouldn’t the
woman he was with be someone else too? And he was happy. But the
wife Dee had to deal with wasn’t so easily comforted. Mom says she doesn’t want to report the man
who shows his male vegetation because she feels sorry for him, and that seemed
to be the mood she was in today during the time I was with her—not afraid that
anyone would kill her, not obsessed with her BMs, not confessing to or
admitting any crimes (other than the one she’d put into writing), but just
concerned about making the already forlorn more forlorn.
When I directed her attention to Contrary to Popular Belief, Mom said,
“Let’s find some to bend their tortured minds to someone else’s torture,” which
wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.
We read a couple, and Mom had some
problem with the word onomatopoeia and read about the Tower of Babel a couple
of times. Then Ada came by and asked me whether I could take her (Ada)
out to walk.
I’d already suggested that to Mom a
couple of times, and she said, “No, don’t you see? You have to be very,
very careful because they can’t go out. How do you think they feel?
And I have to be with them when you’re not here, so I don’t want to do anything
to upset them.”
When Ada asked and I said, “Let’s
all go,” Mom said she was too tired, but then she said “All right” to Ada and
crossed her eyes at me, and we passed the bathroom (“And I’ll bet that you’ve
used the bathroom,” Mom said to me with a tone of resentment like the ones
she’s afraid others will feel about her privileged status) and went outdoors to
the beautiful garden, where Ada took off her shoes and socks and walked in the
grass, put them back on, and then said, “Sometimes I think I’d like to take off
my shoes and socks and just walk in the grass. Wouldn’t that be
crazy?”
Kathy joined us in the garden, and
she and Mom sat on a bench and admired the cloud formations the way we did on
the way over to the University of Davis Alzheimer’s Center in Martinez on March
1.
I told Mom I’d be back on Sunday
with Javier, and she said, “Maybe you shouldn’t bring him. Other people
don’t have someone like him coming in to visit them. How do you think
that makes them feel?”
But I know Javier can be charming
enough to meet everybody’s needs, and I did try to tell Mom a couple of times
that the people with the bowed heads really aren’t very much aware of what
we’re doing.
“You’re being recorded,” she said,” and when I laughed at a little
stuffed hippo on a chair nearby, she said, “Don’t laugh. It might be
someone’s mother, for all you know.”
All in all, I think it was a pretty good visit, but definitely not the
best. She didn’t seem tortured. She just seemed to be struggling,
which is so much better. She was struggling to keep the peace and find
the words to explain it all to me.
Kathy and I had the chance to talk after we were dismissed, so I’ll let her
elaborate on that—on what Kay’s family is saying about Kay’s needs and how they
go about making a decision about when and where a resident will go. But
they say that Mom is NOT in danger of being expelled or even suspended from
this not-quite-regular high school she’s in.
Love,
Tina
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