Shaky

Sunday

Church was short today, and Mom wanted to get out of the pew right away. I held on to her tight and got her to the bathroom and worried as she went in, sans walker, that she might fall inside. She was back out in just a couple minutes. "I don't feel right," she said. "I went inside and all I could do is just stand there and just shake." She hadn't even entered a stall, and a woman had asked if she could help, and came out to find me, followed shortly by Mom.

We drove back to her place and I brought her up to her room -- walker now employed -- and watched as she got settled in the bathroom. Julie came, and we went down and got breakfast for all of us and brought it back up. Mom ate just a little, and we talked about a relative, Ta, who had died -- the second death in that family, a woman in her 50s -- and of her friend Ka, who had been in Cranberry, but had been moved to skilled nursing.

Mom kept insisting that Ka had had a sex change, and that she had once been Shawn, a neighbor boy we grew up with, who had died in a car accident when he was about 20. Ka has a kind of masculine demeanor, and Shawn and Ka did have a facial resemblance -- high cheekbones, tan coloring, pleasant fleshy faces -- but it was very odd. We straightened it out for her a couple times, but she kept coming back to the sex change and Shawn.

Finally she wanted to lie down. The narrow passage in the bedroom made the walker difficult to negotiate, and it took both of us to get her settled in bed. She can't stand or even get into bed without help. Julie said it seemed like she'd need a wheelchair soon.

We realized late that she had missed her 10 a.m. pill, and, although it's not a time-sensitive pill, maybe that was part of everything. She normally is not that confused that early in the day, and yet I have seen this shaking and unsteadiness growing, and it is not going away. She got the pill about 11:30.

We asked the staff if they could have their maintenance guys rearrange the furniture, to make navigation with the walker easier.

One other topic we talked about was yet another death -- a woman who attended the church. So many deaths, swirling around! This one hadn't been unexpected -- she was ill for a long time, and used an oxygen tank.

Mom said, "I wish I could join her, the way I feel. Go to heaven."

I remember when this all started, maybe four years ago, when her Parkinson's was just a tremor in her hand. It made her angry with herself, and she said at the time, "I wasn't going to be like that." She wasn't going to be a shaky old lady. But we don't get to decide.