Fury and calm

The Penalty Box

Sister S came week before last and Sister K left just yesterday. So Mom has had lots of attention. The Sisters bring a lot of energy to it -- getting her in the pool, taking her outside -- and she tries harder when they're here, summoning cogency and a determination to make the most of it. Meanwhile I have faded to a frequently seen, uninteresting object, like furniture.

It's OK.

Gannett, which publishes USA Today, has bought the Journal company, where I work, and there's lots of upheaval in the newsroom. In our little suburban shop we've lost seven or eight people, and we will be sending our stories and dummies to Des Moines for layout and copyediting. It's almost funny. We've spent hours in training to learn the new Gannett software, and meanwhile, of course, our bosses have chosen this week, launch week, to take vacations, so a few of us are doing an extra paper. Learning new software and doing more work. This is infuriating. The "servant-leadership" model is a foreign concept hereabouts, and the managers are all about domination and privilege. It is hard to hold my tongue, and sometimes I don't.

We got away for a couple days to the Vospers' island place a couple weeks ago. A lot of driving, but worth every mile.

The Fourth

Such a depressing week. Nationally, locally, momishly. Gun policy has got to change. Americans are so pigheaded about their "rights." What about the right to life? I like the New Yorker reporter I heard on the radio who said, bring a gun into your home to protect your family, and the likelihood of someone in your family being shot rises dramatically. By that very same gun you bought to protect them.

Mom's friend Dar died Friday, and it is really sad. She was 75, chipper, lively, in pretty good health. To look at them, you would've thought she would outlive Mom. She and Mom were buddies in Cranberry, until Mom declined and couldn't keep up. Still, they exercised often together. Dar had a stroke a week ago, lingered in hospice, incoherent, for a few days, until it was over. Her obit is here.

So I went in yesterday and we worked out a card, and I'll send flowers to the church. Mom  understood it and was clear-eyed, but then last night she told Uncle M on the phone that somebody had died, maybe her daughter. I straightened it out.

At church today she just could not follow the liturgy or sing the songs. She repeatedly dropped her bulletin, and looked so tired I asked her if she wanted to leave. She said no, then immediately fell asleep, slumped over in her chair, and I took her out.

Up in her room, she said, "How do they make this movie?"

"What movie?"

"This movie."

I put in her bed and she slept.

From the room across the hall, I could hear the ear-splitting shrieks of B -- she has frequent episodes  -- but when I left she was at the corner sitting calmly in her chair, her hair freshly washed.

*

We had a Black Lives Matter protest in Wauwatosa Friday. A guy sleeping in his car in a park -- he had a gun in his lap -- was shot dead by one of Wauwatosa's finest.

Here's a little taste of the protest:

Getting there

The moving truck

We had the truck come last Friday, and spent Saturday cleaning the old house. What an awful day that was. But now we're firmly ensconced, if not quite unpacked, and the condo -- ah, it's going to work out great.

We can't find anything and wander around looking tentatively into boxes, wondering where the cups are, the knives are, the bowls are -- especially the bowls. Funny how, when we packed, I'd finish a box, label it and say to myself, "I know exactly where that is," and three days later it's lost forever.

We don't have internet yet, thus my long absence. Without internet, well, you might as well not be living. OK, that's taking it too far.

Mom has champed at the bit to see the place, and so far I've fended her off. The one-mile drive would seem interminable to her, and I'm afraid she'd have a bathroom episode on our beautiful floors. But I'll probably bring her over Monday.

She was in the penalty box when I got here today, all the ladies lined up. Her face was red and drawn, her mouth hanging open. She said they'd been talking, but she couldn't remember the topic. Quite possibly they were all talking at once on entirely different topics.

We did her mail, and I showed her pictures of the condo, and we called Sister L and Sister S, and went to the Bistro for Dove bars. Mom talked about a woman named Pat, who had called her and wanted a good get-reacquainted chat, but Mom wasn't up to it.

"I couldn't hear, I couldn't get it straight, so I was miserable, so that was a failure," she said. Pat said she'd call back in a few days. "But maybe she won't. I don't even know her name."

It's a cruel thing, what she's going through.

Bicycles in the dining room.
And, where is that thing?

Getting there

My lair