Mom
on Sunday, August 07, 2011
Dear
Suzy and Jonathan,
Suzy, how did things go with David
on Saturday? So nice of you to take him
to the dentist when you have so much else to balance in your home and job. (I know you won’t get this till tomorrow,
when you go back to the office. Any
estimated time for the upstairs being completed? I think you said that AT&T was switching
on your phone service last Thursday?)
Jonathan, how did the volunteer work go yesterday?
Today I got to Aegis around 11:20,
and Mom and Kay were both in their room.
Kay was giving Mom a tongue lashing as usual, and when I came in and
warmly, politely, and (remembering Jonathan’s advice to be calm, and
remembering Mom’s comment that her daughter—meaning me—got “riled up”) calmly
greeted them both.
Kay responded by saying, “I’m not
sure you should come around. You’re a
bad influence!” She went on to say that
Mom breaks things—things like her owl.
(It didn’t look broken.) I sort
of guided Mom out of the room but invited Kay to join us. She said, “I don’t care what you do, but I
was here first, and I’m older, and I should have some rights.” I agreed, saying she definitely had some rights,
and so did Mom.
As we went out the door, Mom said,
“I’ve got to get out of this place.”
I suggested the garden.
Mom said she needed to go to the
bathroom, so we went out the 4,3,2,1 # door to the one around the corner, but
it had a WET sign (which seemed to be using WET as an adjective, not a verb),
so I took Mom to one we’d never before visited together way down the hall in
the other section. As soon as Mom came
out, she said “I need to go to the bathroom,” and I reminded her that she’d
just gone. I led her out towards the
beautiful garden, and she said, “There’s no bathroom out there.”
I said, “No, but we’ll be very close
to one, and you love the outdoors. You
love flowers. You love beauty!”
Mom said, “Yes, I love beauty, but I
love my bottom more.”
We saw someone with an adorable dog,
and I hoped that would attract Mom’s attention, but she just grasped my wrist
that way she has of communicating an urgent message, and we did one of the
fastest walk-throughs the garden could ever have had. We went back to the newly-discovered
bathroom, but this time it was occupied, and the occupying force would not make
an early withdrawal. We made a tour of
the “higher functioning” unit, and at one point Mom said, “Let’s get out of
here. I see someone I recognize.”
“Want to say hello?” I asked.
“No!” She said, and then the woman (an aide) saw us, and Mom smiled her
noblesse-oblige smile, and we returned to the Perry section. Ada and Dory were already seated, so I
thought we should join them early so we could have the possibility of some kind
of response by the non-comatose, and that turned out pretty well. Ada was at the table, and she was back to
being Ada—very warm and bubbly and with a memory of about twenty seconds.
Mom introduced me to Dory. “This is my daughter,” and Dory woke up and
smiled and nodded.
“I think we’ve met before,” I said.
Ada said to me, “I like your hair.”
I said, “Thank you,” and she asked,
“Is it natural?”
I said. “My hair is natural, but the color isn’t.”
She laughed and said, “I just had to
ask.” Then she said, “I really like your
hair!”
“Have you ordered yet?” Mom asked her, and I told her it was a menu
fixe!
Mother suspected that they weren’t going
to serve lunch. It was probably already
over. I offered to change places with
her so she could see them in the process of getting the trays ready, but she
said she was too tired to move.
I asked for a glass of milk for Mom,
and Ada had a stash of pre-lunch things—a banana, which she said her kids
always pronounced “blanana,” and a couple of graham crackers packages. She gave one to Mom.
“But don’t you need it?” Mom asked.
“No, I’ve got another.” She said.
So Mom accepted it and thanked her, and then pretty soon lunch was
brought to the table.
Ada opened up her sandwich, which
was iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and bacon, and said, “This doesn’t look very
good to me.” We worked together on
cutting up her peach, which was very slippery (from a can—and they don’t
provide knives or other deadly weapons), and then she opened up her sandwich
and said, “This doesn’t look very good to me.
I have this banana. My kids
always pronounced it ‘blanana.’”
We laughed about this. Many times.
And then she said, “I like your
hair,” but instead of asking whether or not it was natural, she said, “I think
you and I have a lot in common.”
I said, “Yes, I think we do,” and I
looked at Mom to make her part of the “we” we were talking about. I looked at Dora too, but she was fast
asleep. (I could have told her that I
had things in common with HER!)
Mother asked, “Where am I? How did I get here? How do I know where I am?”
I answered those questions the best
I could.
“Well, I hope you have a bucket of
money because I didn’t bring a cent.”
I told her the meals were included. It was a package deal.
“But where am I going to go from
here?”
I said we could go out into the
garden or to the sitting room.
“But eventually I’ll have to go back
to the crabby lady.”
We talked some more about how the
crabby lady couldn’t help herself and maybe there was a way not to be bothered
by her comments, but when Divina came over to the table, I told her Mom was
worried about going back to the room. Kay
was usually out in the dining room by now, and she hadn’t come out.
Divina said, “Don’t worry! I’ll talk to Kay.”
Mom said, “Better be careful. This could boomerang.”
Ada told me, “I like your
hair!” Then she noticed the banana near
her plate and said, “My kids used to call this a blanana.”
Divina told us that Kay was
sleeping. Mother and I excused
ourselves, and Mom wanted to use the bathroom.
I peeked in and saw that Kay had awakened. In the bathroom Divina helped Mom tear off
the panty-pad closest to her body, which was wet. Mother pulled up the other two and then
pulled them back down, saying that she had to go to the bathroom.
Divina offered to get her some prune
juice and left to go get it.
Mom pulled her pants back up and
walked into the room and gave Kay a warm hello.
Kay said, “Hello,” and before I
could hear what else she had to say, Mom turned to me and said, “Bye!”
On my way out, I saw Divina
returning with the prune juice.
“We’ve talked about your mom and Kay,”
she told me, “and we’re going to make a change.”
I’m planning to see Mom tomorrow and
Tuesday morning even though I’m a bad influence and I’m not sure I should be
come around so often. I’ll let Nan see
Mom on Wednesday, and then I’ll go back to seeing her only two or three times a
week after Kathy gets back on Wed. or Thurs.
Love, Tina/Mom+
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