All Saints

Chapel 

Sunday.

I arrived at a little after 9 to take Mom to chapel. An aide in the hall told me she'd had a rough night and they'd given her Xanax at 5:45 a.m. and she was still zonked out. I found her that way in her room, but she woke shortly and I helped her to the toilet. She was parched and incoherent and not entirely awake. She said that the people were coming, and there was a meeting about her, and she wondered when it would start. All morning she kept coming back to the meeting "about where I'm going to be."

She was agitated at breakfast, eating scrambled eggs and toast, but we went to church anyway, halfway through, and it was something she knew and could lock onto and she grew calmer. Then off to the bistro for a sweet roll and coffee.

I asked what had kept her awake, and she said she was "wanting to go to bed, but they wouldn't let me," and "one of the ladies just hates me," and, finally, "I was waiting for you."

I felt awful. I'd stayed away Saturday and left her in free-fall. She'd been through something, or imagined she'd been through something, and there was no telling what it was.

"You see, I want to be my own master, but the minute I get into that room, I'm not allowed to do anything," she said. "They get so panicked when I touch the floor ... I can't make any decision about myself."

It's true, and anybody would hate it. But they are petrified of her falling -- she's done it so often -- and don't leave her alone unless she's asleep. A dozen times during the trip to down chapel and back, and even in her room, she tried to stand, and every time I had to gently pull her back down.

She was tired, and, with Julie now, we took her back to her room. A nurse came and checked her vitals and gave her some pills. The aides asked us to stay with her till she slept, and finally she did. Julie set the bed alarm, and we left.

*

At chapel, it was All-Saints Day, and they read the names of the residents who had died in the last year.

Jane, Jack, Mario, Flora, Verena, Helen -- it went on and on. Thirty-three names. It's a church under siege.

On the phone, in the room.