Insanity

Near Oostburg

I have no time.

I went to get her for church Sunday and found her leaving an elevator, having come from the gym. She'd forgotten, again, that church is at 10, not 11, as at her old church back home. She said she'd exercised a little, not much, and she looked wan.

"Do you want to go to church or skip today?" I said.

We went back and forth a little bit, feeling each other out.  I wanted her to make the decision, but I think she wanted me to make the decision, absolving her of the responsibility. Missing church is not a practical decision for her, it's a moral one -- but at last she gave in and said, "I'd just as soon skip today."

We walked slowly to her room, and I thought she looked almost sick, and I said, "Are you OK, do you feel well? Are you in pain?"

"I -- I just don't know how to live here," she said. And in the room, as if still working it out in her mind, she said, "It's OK, I can skip once in a while."

So I went alone. Somehow an hour of worship, God and the devil seemed simpler than an hour with my mother.

But I did come back, woke her from a dead sleep, and after a few minutes of confusion, she was better. We had lunch in the bistro. Mom got the personal-size pizza, loaded with pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, and lots of cheese, and exclaimed with every bite how good it was.

Then I brought her up to her room, said I had to go, and gave her a hug. "I love you," I said.

"I love you, too, and I'm so glad you're so good to me."

*

So I saw her again tonight, biking over after work. We sat between D and C at our beef stroganoff dinner, and I thought that, really, one of the saddest things that's happened to her here is the loss of D as her "best friend."

They used to do things like call me up to order frozen lefse for them from a website -- a plot they concocted like two schoolgirls to get me to come over. Or, another time, Mom, D, and C started comparing wedding rings, and the other two thought Mom's was the best -- the diamond in a deep divot, with sharp peaks guarding it -- and they had me take pictures of it and print them out, because they said they were going to order their own just like it.

But Mom has slipped, and as D and C have moved on to feverishly finding their ancestries online -- even paying to have their DNA analyzed -- Mom has been left out and feels acutely that D and C are now the best friends and she is alone.

We finished dinner before the others and went to her room for our rituals. We discussed her finances in a kind of circuitous manner, then made phone calls to line up a summer week away for her with her daughters. It's probably ill-advised -- she travels badly and I don't know that she can really be happy anywhere -- but I'll take a break if it's offered.

After the calls, she hit a wall of fatigue. She talked of D and C -- "is this where they live, too? How did they get these buildings to be so far away from each other and be so perfect?" She went on about the rooms, how could they be so much the same. "These buildings -- it seems like magic to me." It occurred to me that she'd never lived in an apartment before -- didn't really know what it was like.  She seemed for a few sentences to think she was in Michigan, at her summer home, and said, "Are you going to leave me now, leave me all alone for all these days?" Then she wondered if she could have the car keys, since I was going by bike, and how could she leave without the car. She jumped between topics, expressing thoughts she didn't really have language or logic for. And I thought, really, I might lose my own mind.

At last she went to the bathroom, leaving the water trickling in the sink, like a little girl -- the sound she wanted to make. When she was done, I tried to get her to lay down, but she was full of weird adrenaline. I told her a dozen times that I would be back on Saturday, which she kept thinking was tomorrow and I kept saying was the day after tomorrow.  And then, somehow, it was OK that I was leaving and she was staying, and I left quickly before that window closed.