"On the other side of the door. That’s where I don’t want to be.”

Tuesdsay, August 30, 2011

Hi~

            I’m glad Kathy has had some good hours with Mom recently because this one was a lot like last Sunday.  Could it have anything to do with the time of day?  I’m going to be there at 11:00 on Saturday.

            Mom did say she wanted to go home, but she didn’t have her bag packed and she didn’t direct me out.  She just talked about it.

            When I arrived at 1:20 or so, she was at the door of her room, and Divina came down the hall to say that Mom had just finished playing the piano.  Mom, who wasn’t wearing her teeth, said, “But please don’t make me—“  And before she could finish her sentence, Divina said, “I gave her some prune juice.”

            Kay was in her armchair but not looking in our direction.  She might have been snoozing.  When I asked Mom if she’d like to go to another room, she said, “I guess.”  I asked her about her teeth, and she put them in.  They were painting the 4,3,2, 1 # door, and John, Ella Mae’s son, was helping his mother make her way out in a walker with the wheel chair behind her.  Mom helped with the wheelchair, and John thanked her. 

            He said, “She plays the piano beautifully,” and I repeated the compliment to Mom, who may have forced a smile but looked like the leading revolutionary in Tale of Two Cities—as if she had heavy matters on her mind. 

            But we made it out into the garden in spite of Mom’s mild protestations that we couldn’t go through that door.

            She said she wanted to go to a cool spot.  “That’s where we went last time,” she said.

            So we sat down in a bench in front of the fountain, and I put my arms around her and we just took in the beauty of the scene—or at least I did.  I’m not sure what she saw, but at one point she did speak about a bad dream.  I commented on a man who was out walking his dog, and I said, “That’s a terrier, like the dog Dana and her family had.”

            “Write that down,” Mom said.  So I looked through my bag to find a notebook, and she said, “What are fumbling around for?”  I told her she’d asked me to write down terrier. 

            “And write down ‘fountain.’  You can just write foun. For short.  Like—you know—“

            “Shorthand?  An abbreviation?”

            “Yes.  Write ‘In good condition.’”

            “It is in good condition.  They really keep this place up,”

            She told me she didn’t like her job.

            I asked her what she didn’t like about it, and she said, “Well, they always have me do the cap on the paste.”  (Cap and paste weren’t the words she said, but they make as much sense.)  I asked her what she’d like to be different about her job, and she said, “I’d like to have a particular hour to go.”

            I asked her about playing the piano, and she said she didn’t play very much because there weren’t enough people who wanted to hear.

            “Well, every time I’ve heard you play, people have really enjoyed it.”

            “Do you think Kathy’s hurt that I’m here instead of with her?”  She asked.

            “I don’t think she’s hurt.  She loves you and wants what’s best for you.  She knows it’s best for you here.  This is where you asked to come.”

            “Where?”

            “Aegis.  You said you wanted us to find you a place away from home where you’d feel safer.  And so we looked for places.”

            “Who’s ‘we’?”

            “Kathy, Suzy, and I.  And this was the best and the most beautiful.”

            “What’s it called?”

            “Aegis.”

            “I like Aegis,” she said.  “But I don’t like where I am.  Could  I go home with you for just a little while?”

            “Well…maybe some weekend.  I hesitate because you came to my house one Christmas, and you really didn’t want to be there.”

            “I want to go home to Kathy.  I want to go to Poshard and just see if it can work.  For a month.  I’ll tell Kathy that I won’t intrude.  I just want to go home.”

            “But you know, Mom, when you were there with Kathy on Poshard, you wanted to be somewhere else. “

            So that’s how the conversation went out there in the garden.  I tried reading her The Funny Times, and that distracted her for a few minutes.  She wanted to add words and labels to the cartoons.  I tried to avoid the worst political cartoons, but she wanted me to read the one with Obama saying that he had a good plan that would make everyone happier, but he couldn’t tell us what it was.  Then the TV came on with a hypnotist and said that 4, 3, 2, 1, when you awakened you would believe you had a good job.  Even Obama fell for it.

            Then, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I tried the Unlikely Friends again.  But after I’d read the introductory paragraph about the pony that liked to lick the dog, Mom said, “This is terrible!”  I asked, “You don’t think the pony should lick the dog?” and Mom said, “The way it’s written.  It doesn’t make sense.”

            But…Mom was much sharper than I was on one of the cartoons.  It was one where a man in a diner tells the waitress, “If you slip in some trans fat, I’ll give you a big tip.”  I was wondering why he’d want her to slip in trans fat (thinking of slipping on a banana peel), and  Mom said, “He wants her to give him something that isn’t usually on the menu.”

            “Oh, Mom, you’re right!  I was thinking of slip in like slip on a banana, but it’s just what you say!  People usually try to avoid trans fat, but he wants her to slip some in, not slip in it.”

            This coup for Mom didn’t really brighten her up much.  Maybe her triumph was weighed down by the realization that her sixty-five year-old daughter  hadn’t been able to figure it out for myself. 

            We went back in to the lounge of Aegis, but when we got to the end of the hall and she saw the door, she said, “No!  This isn’t where I want to go.  This is the door to the place I don’t want to be.” 

            I told her this was the Perry section of Aegis—Perry, like her dad’s name.  She said, “Parameter is on the other side of the door.  That’s where I don’t want to be.”

            “But you don’t have to go to your room if you don’t want to.  We can go to the dining room or the TV room or the patio.  Here.    Would you like to play the piano, and we can sing?”

            “No!”  she said.  “Good bye.”

            “Do you want me to go now?”

            “I don’t want you to go, but you’ve got to go.”

            “I don’t have to go yet.  I can stay longer.”

            “No, go!  I hate to see you go.  Go!”

            I told her I love her and she told me she loved me.

            And the staff promised to take very good care of her. 

            I hope they can.

           

            Love,

            Tina