Manias of kindness

The Highland Games

Such a disturbing visit tonight. I went for dinner and arrived just a few minutes after 5, and everyone was already seated. The chair left open was at the end of the table, one space away from Mom. The dining room was too hot, and Mom's face was flushed and frozen, a red mask. She was bugged that we weren't sitting together, but when those around us offered to move, I said it was fine, and she said it was fine. We should be able to sit one space apart, I thought.

But the offers to move continued and continued, from the left and the right, and even two spaces away, right on through dinner. Voices rose and L, on the right, who never wears her hearing aids, said "What? What?" even as she continued saying she would move. Bent-over A, on the left, could not bear the thought of letting it lie, offering, out of a near mania of kindness, again and again, to either switch with Mom, or scoot her chair over so another chair could be put in, all of which I declined over and over, till I finally stopped replying to put an end to it.

After three bites of her food, Mom stood, and I thought: Oh, now she's going to insist on changing -- and I think she did think of that -- but then she pushed her plate toward me and said she couldn't eat any more, and I should have it. I said I didn't want it. She pushed it again, and I said, "Just leave it there." She still stood, directionless, lost  -- she almost never will just sit and stay -- and finally said she had to go to the bathroom and hobbled off.

When she got back, she looked ill, and said she was too hot, and I took her to her room. It was cooler there, and, yet again, she would not sit. She stood at the table, fingering papers, walked to the bedroom, and back to the table. She said she wanted to make a call, so we called Sisters till we got S, who I could hear chatting amiably, informatively, and Mom seemed to lift a little bit. And, of course, along the way, she managed to hit on her incessant theme: "I'm getting tired of this now, and I want to live close to my family, but they're not even home."

I wish she had an interest in something, anything, outside of us.

We wrote a check to church, and then she had to go the bathroom -- it was almost like it was happening, but she was afraid that I would leave if she actually took the time to go, so I told her to go, and sat glumly while she went, calling out "Wait!"

Her walking is perilous at almost every step. She's had a lesson with a walker, and been advised to keep the flimsy walker she has, for now, and not get, as she said, "a leather one." And she went to the dentist, she said, "for five minutes. He said my teeth were good."