Sunday, March 31, 2013

"Take Me Home! I Thought You Were Going to Take Me Home."

This is so painful to revisit.  But I'm plunging right ahead.  Reflection later.


Sunday, August 28, 2011

Dear Kathy and Suzy,
                This wasn’t Mom’s best day, but she gave me more than a minute of her time.
                I called her from my View and Chew French No Brunch Bunch gathering  (which turned out to have brunch today after all) when I saw that we were going later than usual, and she told me she wasn’t sure she’d still be alive when I got there.  When I got there, Dee said Mom had asked them to call me, and there I was.
                She was in her and Kristine’s bathroom when I walked in the room, and she told me, “You’re not supposed to be in this building.”    She told me that we should definitely stop at a gas station right away, and I wasn’t sure whether she was concerned about running out of gas while making our get-away or she just wanted another toilet, but she definitely wanted to get going.
                “Let’s go!” She said.
                “Where would you like to go?  On a ride?  To the garden?”
                She said, “I thought you were going to take me home.  That would be okay.”
                Kristine was asleep on her own bed, and Mom grabbed her own bag and said, “Let’s go.”  But she was wearing her blue Velcro sandals, which were open, so I suggested the pink ones, which can stay closed. 
                She asked me why I didn’t put down my things so I could help her properly, but I had put down my things, so she put down hers.  Once we got the pink Velcro shoes on, Mom forgot about her big bag and, instead, picked up a book on the Beauty of the Seasons and a container of dental floss.
                “Let’s go,” she said once again.
                So I put an arms around her, and she put an arm around me, and we went out the 4,3,2,1 # door.  She then wanted to go to the bathroom again, and after that, I tried to interest her in the garden, but as soon as we were out the garden door, she said she needed to go to the bathroom, so we went back in and to the bathroom, and then she said, “Take me home.”  I tried the door to the Perry section of Aegis, but that wasn’t the home she meant, so I told her I’d take her on a ride.
                “Take me home,” she said.  I pointed out the sights to her—the Public Library right next door, Safeway, the road construction.
                “Maybe she’ll like me better,” she said.
                “Who?”
                “You know!”  And then she kind of stammered.  I really wasn’t sure whether she meant Kathy or Kristine, but I thought she meant Kathy.
                “Take me home,” she said, and I told her that Kathy wasn’t home right now, and I didn’t have the key.
                She said, “Don’t take me home. Take me anywhere but there.”  Then she said, “Take me home.”
                I didn’t take her by the house, but I soon headed back to Aegis.
                “Where are you going?” she asked.
                “To Aegis.”
                “I don’t want to go to Aegis,” she said.  “Unless…Do you think they might have a place for me there?”
                I told her I was sure of it.
                When we walked in, I suggested that we go to the garden.  (What’s with me and that garden, anyway?  I’ll bet Mom’s probably telling Kristine even as I write, “My daughter’s suffering from short-term memory loss.  She keeps asking me about going out in the garden, and I say no, and then she asks me again!”)
               
                Mom asked the woman at the desk (Oui, Suzette today) where she should sign in for the garden, and Suzette just held her French tongue and I said, “You don’t have to check in Mom.  You can go out to the garden without that.”  But Mom said she needed to go to the bathroom first, so we went down the hall, and then I suggested—Guess!  Mom said, “Okay, and then remembered that it wasn’t okay.  “No, I don’t want to go out there,” so I took her to the flowery door of Perry, which looks like a garden, and she said, “No.  Oh, all right.  I guess these are the people I’m going to have to deal with eventually.”
                Most of the residents were in the TV room, so I suggested the dining room, and Mom said she had to go to the bathroom.  But between bathroom visits, I did let he listen to part of a French song on my iPod, and she asked, “Why didn’t you bring me something I could do something with?”  Then she wanted to write something, so I gave her the back of my notebook, and she said, “What do I write?” and I said, “Anything you want to.”  She wrote, “To whom it may appeal.  I’ll be glad to go to any elderly shut in facility.  Honest!  Nadine Martin.  The best for me I know it.  I’ll be good & helpful too.  Nadine.”
                Then she had to go to the bathroom.  I waited but she didn’t come back.  So after not waiting a terribly long time, I went down the hall, and the door was closed.  I knocked, and when I walked in, I heard her talking to herself, but it turned out that Kristine was up and awake.
                When I walked in, Kristine said to Mom, “See what I mean?”
                So I suspected she had just been talking about trouble makers and people who get all riled up like me.
                That was when  I left.  I told Mom and Kristine that I’d see them on Tuesday, and then I went home, glad I had the key.

                Love,
                Tina

PS  Rocsana saw me shortly after I got there and said she’d given something to Mom that might calm her down.  Maybe it did eventually.
               
PS  I’m always amazed at what I forget to mention!  One is that I’d like to know how to get to a pretty park if Mom’s request to go out (go home) occurs again.  This happened once before, around Easter—the Sunday after Easter when Mom thought it was Easter.

The other is that when she said, “Maybe she’ll like me more,” and I wasn’t sure whether she meant Kathy or Kristine but thought she meant Kathy, I said, “Mom, Kathy loves you. We all do.”  She didn’t say anything to that—no sounds or contradictions.  No affirmations, either.  I wonder whether she confuses Kristine and Kathy, blending the two.  (That would help Kristine quite a bit more than it would help Kathy!)
xoxo


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