Butting in

It looks like a lot of stuff, but it's the least I've taken on a long trip in many years. I've spent every waking moment working on it for a week and a half. I got a water bag the size of a frozen waffle, a backpack the size of a golfball, a "sheet" the size of a bratwurst, and a pillow smaller than a baseball. Thank god for REI. Next week I'll ride from Cheboygan, Michigan, to the ferry in Ludington and home -- about 300 miles in six days, unless I collapse along the way, which is entirely possible.

But enough about me.

Julie and I stopped to pick up Mom this morning for church, and couldn't find her in her room till she surfaced from her bed and looked around groggily. She seemed diminished, small and helpless, her hair flat, and her eyes squinting. She looked like she would not last long. For all my prickliness about my mom, this melts me. Her one existence, and this is what it's come to.

She'd gotten up, showered, dressed for church, and suddenly it was nap time. "I sleep all the time now," she said. Sleep is a prized commodity in the family -- afternoon siestas are a specialty -- but she sleeps more than she's awake, and can't go three hours without hitting the wall.

She hinted at a disastrous bathroom event of the day before, but she seemed recovered and quickly gained traction. "Party in the elevator!" she said when the car came and was nearly full.  Church was a short summer service, more words than music, and Mom's eyes roamed the sanctuary for the quarterback, who was not there. "His wife wrote me a card and I have to meet her!" she said, though, as I have reported, she has met her several times.

Back at her place, ordering brunch, we met up with the family of J, a resident, whose adult daughter is getting married on Friday. We congratulated him and the daughter, and he asked us kindly not to tell his wife, B, about the wedding. She lives in the Alzheimers wing and was not going to be attending. "Too many people," he said. She'd be confused and anxious. A very sad thing.

Mom heard the wedding part, but not the don't tell B part. So she got up and was making her way to their table to, well, talk about the wedding, see how she could help, ask the couple how they'd met, heaven knows what. Julie saw this developing and derailed her and brought her back to our table.

This is the same impulse that had her fretting and fretting over the death of the son of a woman who lives in the place -- a woman she hardly knows. She wondered how she should respond, as if the woman would be keeping track of responses -- my mom's, especially. I had to talk her out of going to the woman's room and knocking on the door -- to say what? What exactly?