Saturday,
July 16, 2011
Dear
Kathy and Suzy,
I hope you all had a good time
kayaking today…if the weather made it possible.
Mom was having a difficult day, and
there may be something we need to address as to who gives her baths (if, in
fact, it happened the way she says it did).
When I arrived, the door to
her/their room was closed. I knocked and
went in. Kay was sitting on her (Kay’s)
chair, and Mom was coming out of the bathroom and said, “You’re just in time to
wipe my bottom.”
I asked Mom whether she wanted me to do it or
really wanted to do it herself, and she said, “I want to do it myself.”
I asked her whether she really wanted to wear
three panty-pads, and she said she didn’t.
So I helped her get off her pants so she could get off at least one of
the extra panty-pads, and she said something like “The man who was just here
had some nifty idea, but it just…”
She asked me to go get a roll of
toilet paper, which I did.
Then I gave her some privacy in the
bathroom and sat down next to Kay, who was being very quiet. I showed her the picture-card of photos I’d
taken of clouds over the Columbia River and Multnomah Falls, and Kay said, “Oh,
beautiful.” Then Mom joined us and I
showed her the pictures, which she said were “Beautiful. I think I’ve seen that.” I thought she meant the river or falls
themselves.
“I think you showed them to me
before.” Of course, I couldn’t have, but
I always feel better off when I remember things that haven’t happened rather
than forgetting things that did.
Mom lay down on the bed and made a
comment about her watch and the concern
expressed by the man who was just there.
“I’ll have to have something taken
out of my watch so it will fit,” she said.
I told her maybe we could get her
one that fit better, and she said she thought this one had cost about
twenty-dollars. At first I thought she
meant that it wasn’t really worth adjusting, but then I realized she meant that
it had been quite an investment.
She seemed really, really tired, but
then she sort of popped up and said, “So, honey, what’s happening today for
you?”
I said, “Well, I just got back from
Oregon, so I—“
Mom said, “Guess which honey I
meant.”
I guessed Kay and got it right.
“How are you feeling today,
honey?” Mom asked Kay, who didn’t say a
word.
“She’s very diffident about
visitors,” Mom said, and I asked whether we should go into another room, and
Mom said she thought we should.
We did, but she seemed concerned, as
in the “old days,” about needing to go to the bathroom, and for the first time
ever, I found the one in the sitting room opened. Mom said that we’d better be very careful or
they’d report us for using it.
“I’d like to go to the bathroom
without any trauma,” She said.
I tried to distract her with the
crossword puzzle book, and finally we did sort of settle down.
We worked on the puzzle until it was
time for lunch, and both Mom and I questioned the answer key’s insistence that
elegy is spelled elogy, but that was the only way to get overturned or whatever
word was “down.”
Mom said, “Sometimes the people who write these books get tired.”
It was during this first crossword
puzzle that Mom said, “This morning was so awful that it’s a miracle I’m able
to do anything at all.”
I asked her what had happened, and
she said, “I was bathed nude by a man.”
“And it was against your will?” I
asked.
“Yes!”
I asked her whether she had
“protested” (screamed, fought him off) and she said she had been afraid to
protest because then she would get into trouble, and it would be worse.
I told her that I could talk to
someone about this, and she said, “Then they’ll say ‘Your daughter talked to
someone.’”
I said, “Well, you have the right to
ask for a woman to bathe you if you want.”
Then, when Kingsley came by, Mom
said, “That was a very nice shower this morning.”
So…she didn’t exactly assert
herself…
I said, “Mom, if you didn’t like it,
you probably shouldn’t tell him you did.”
May walked by on her way to lunch
and smiled when I said hello. I told her
Mom and I were doing a crossword puzzle, and she said, “Yes, she’s always
reading or doing a crossword puzzle,” and I wondered whether she really
remembers as I think she does. I said,
“Mom’s better at the crossword puzzles than I am,” and May smiled and said,
“You mean for her age?” and I really
think she meant old age as opposed to child-age. She doesn’t seem to get mothers confused with
daughters the way the others often do.
We went to lunch, where we sat with
a rather quiet Ada (no jumping up for hugs today) and May. I explained that I’d already eaten and was
just going to keep them company while they ate.
When I asked Ada how she was doing,
she said, “I’m hanging in there,” but she didn’t start reciting that poem she
used to recite about how “The peace of
God is my one goal.”
May said that she was missing her
teeth, which had cost nine thousand dollars, so it was hard to chew, and we
commiserated. I told her that I’d heard
the gums would harden, and then it would be easier, and Ada said, “That must be
hard, chewing without teeth…I just ran a check to be sure mine are all
there. Isn’t that funny!”
Mom ate but without much enthusiasm
for the hot dogs and chips. She licked
the relish off to make it easier for her to bite into the bun and told Ada,
“You can avert your eyes if you don’t want to see me eat.”
When Ada said, “What?” Mom simplified it.
“You can cast your eyes down. You can look down.”
Mom asked for milk, and I got up to
get it for her, but when I got it back to the table, she asked, “What’s this
for?” and seemed to think she shouldn’t
have it.
Then there was some commotion at the
next table.
Kay shouted out to our table, “Stop
shouting! Stop talking so much. She wants to make a speech.” (She may have actually said “Sybil” but in
any case, she indicated Sybil, who said, “I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”
Kay went on to say things a very
scolding mother would say—or a verbally abusive spouse.
“You’re always giving orders, but
you don’t have the guts to do the job
you’re supposed to do yourself.”
Sybil once again said, “I don’t know
what you’re talking about,” but after Kay screamed at her a third time, Sybil
turned to us and said, “She doesn’t eat her food. There’s something suspicious about a person
who never eats. That’s why she’s so skinny. Not thin.
Skinny!” Then she looked at Kay
and said, “Now am I talking enough for you?”
At one point Mom said, “She’s doing
the right thing. She’s just sitting here
and not eating because she’s not hungry,” but she was talking about me. (I was the honey this time.)
Mom finished before the others and
got up. We went back into the sitting
room and finished the elogy for elegy crossword and then finished another
crossword puzzle, and Mom said, “Whew!”
She said she just couldn’t do any
more today, and I told her she didn’t have to.
I walked her back to her room, and someone brought her her
medicine.
Then Mom said, “I’ll have to go to
the bathroom because I’ve had a very horrendous morning.”
So…who is the right person to talk
to about Mom’s baths? Since the
residents in Perry often think they’re much younger than they are, it seems
that having a young man bathe them might seem like a sexual rather than a
hygienic act. Suzette told me she
thought the preferences of residents were respected, and I left a message for
Sue.
Of course, it would be funny if a
female aide had bathed her and it was just her secret wish that a male aide
would, but I think it was really a man.
Love,
Tina
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