Smiling, sorta

Happy New Year, everybody. We gathered the whole fam damly for once. Sans Blaise, who had to stay home and work.

We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with Mom. She got the seafood platter swimming in fluids -- it must have a real name -- and she ate very well -- shrimp, scallops, salmon -- and then tucked into the cherry-topped fudgey chocolate cake and ate half of a huge piece, and it was great to see her eat with real hunger. She stayed with conversation pretty well -- she gets up for visitors -- and we all had a good time. Sunday, then, she and I went to chapel and opened some of her gifts and cards, and got a call from a Sister.

She'd been begging me to bring Dad's funeral program, so about a week ago I brought it and we went through it line by line. Read the biography; the hymns (I spoke about one line of each); the liturgy; the readings (including the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want"); and the sermon, by John Rollefson, titled "Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak," which I thought was apt enough.

Aside from conversation one-on-one, there is nothing that engages her like the well-worn groove of worship of any kind. Add to that the subject of Dad, and she was rapt. She's fixated lately on those who have died -- her parents, her husband, two of her brothers -- and they keep coming up, rotating through her mind. Sometimes they are dead, but mostly they are still alive. She calls me Nels about half the time, or "Daddy," or her father. She says things like "Where's Orla?" or "Where's my mother? When will she come?" And when I say, "Your mother died, Mom," she is shocked every time.

The Sisters, Julie and I have at various times discussed this. Is it better to inform her, or to let her think what she will? It's hard for me to let her believe something that's wrong, but maybe she believes it anyway, no matter what she's told. But then sometimes I think I say what's true for myself, not at all for her. Facts are facts -- this is what I believe. Though why I should need to insist on this, I'm not entirely sure.

Too much motherlove

Huh. Jolly.

Arrived at Mom's place last night at the end of Singalong, in time to hear her say, "That's enough now. Let's stop."

She has some intolerant tendencies.

I took her to her room.

I had told her I would come over, but not said exactly when, and she seemed perturbed that it was so late, and I didn't help matters by saying I wouldn't stay long. "Oh, no, Jon. It's late. You can't leave. You stay with me now tonight." It was, maybe, 7:15 p.m., and it did seem like midnight.

I suggested we read devotions, but she had no patience for it. The terms of the visit were suddenly the entire subject matter of the visit. She asked me if I'd eaten, and I said I had, though I hadn't, and her thoughts toggled between me staying the night and her coming home with me and the matter of me eating and who had a car and who would drive.

I helped her in the bathroom, and then we discussed whether she wanted to lay down, but she was agitated and seemed not in the mood for that, so I took her out to the penalty box -- against her wishes. She said she didn't want to talk to them, and she got her feet to the floor and pushed back. What do you want? I asked. What do you want?

She couldn't say, but she wanted me to stay.

When we reached the corner, I left her for a couple minutes to get my jacket out of her room, and what I got back she'd formulated her final gambit: "How about you stay a couple hours longer and we both go together."

I said I had to go, and gave her a peck on the forehead. She watched me as I went to the elevator, her eyes furious.

*

What I feel, lately, is sad. The fluctuating emotions of visit after visit -- how I feel, how she feels -- are all part of an enveloping sadness that just has no end. Anger, joy, frustration, even moments of laughter -- it all goes in there.

Meanwhile, downstairs ...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner

We had a mass visit of the sisters last weekend, and it was great. Lots of face time for Mom, including a couple of swims. She tries harder, stays in the game longer when visitors come to town.

I went over Wednesday for a short-ish visit to let her know we'd have dinner in the fancy restaurant Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. A woman turned as we passed and said, "Your mother is wonderful. She was a great beauty." I wasn't sure how she knew this, since she'd only known her the last two years. On the other hand, in the land of the geriatrics, where most of us are headed, maybe you acquire the ability to read the young person inside the old one before you.

So we went to the fancy restaurant. She is impatient with slow service -- that is to say, normal service -- so I came armed with a folder full of things to look over -- Dad's obit, clippings from the old Albert Lea newspaper about her father at the church, her recitals, her father's retirement, etc., and one about a visit home to Albert Lea with Sister K in 1987.

"The O's are members of Zion Lutheran Church where M is active on the Christian Service Board and in a circle. ... she keeps busy almost full-time working with host families and foreign students at the University of Michigan, is on the Shelter for the Homeless Board and Social Service Neighborhood Center Board, as well as being a member of the Church Women United Friendship Circle" -- what she called her "black and white club."

Yeah, she was busy.

She listened to everything, looked at the pictures, and yet hardly moved. And when her dinner came -- salmon, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots -- she only picked at it and sat frozen. She whispered something, and I went around the table to hear her better.

"I can't eat all this and I don't know what to do."

"Just eat what you can, Mom."

But she was overwhelmed. It wasn't just the food; it was the crowded dining room full of well-dressed people, big families, lots of kids. "I can't face it," she said. So we had a little pie and then we left.

Upstairs I tried one more time. I showed her a YouTube video of the St. Olaf Choir singing "What Wondrous Love." She liked that -- and then she had to lay down.

Julie had gone to do Thanksgiving with her mother, and she and I met after our parent-service at a resort in Elkhorn Lake for a night of decompression.

I'm thankful for it all.

No solace

What it really looks like

We're still in mourning here. I wanted a better sermon today, so I went to my regular church, arranging with aides for Mom to get to chapel, and when Julie and I got to her at lunchtime, she hadn't been to chapel, which frustrates her and pisses me off. So much depends on the aide you get -- when you can find one -- and it's a real crapshoot.

We took her to the Bistro for lunch, and Julie had to dissect the omelet we got her, and still she would hold it in her mouth and gum at it, digesting it with saliva. Finally she had to go to the bathroom, but first fussed and fussed about wanting to save the ruins of her leftovers, so we found a container and scraped it all into it, and then, as we left, I threw it out.

She asks questions that trail off into inaudible nonsense, and even if she gets it out, it is a question about arrangements, like who's driving and where we'll be staying. When I get ready to go, she insists she'll come home with me, and asks what it is I have to do -- which is really to ask what could be more important than staying there with her?

Last night she said her mother would want to go to church with her, and was shocked when I told her her mother had died 35 years ago. "My mother is dead? Nobody told me! I didn't know! I didn't know!"

It is sad, pathetic, and exhausting. Today I really wanted to quit. I think, though, she might live another decade, with just enough presence of mind to keep me coming back.

Brave New World

                                                       Wednesday morning in America

The only thing that works

Tilted like the rest of us.
Downtown Milwaukee

Went to see Mom yesterday, a job, lately, I never look forward to. I found her in the penalty box, staring straight head. I touched her shoulder and she whirled around, her eyes wild with boredom and said, "I gotta get outta here." I said, "You mean, this corner?" hoping she didn't mean the building. She said, "Let's go to my room."

So we went to her room, and I cast about for things to say, like I always do. I suggested devotions, which she likes, and I read her several, including a reflection on Zacchaeus the tax collector. We talked about it a little bit, getting straight who Zacchaeus was, and then I asked her if she remembered all the people she used to have to dinner.

We listed them off: Mr. Cook, Kenny, Greta, Ole -- these were the standards, some combination of them there every night, besides us four kids, often one with a friend -- and then there was a list of irregulars, brief visitors and long-stayers: George M, who bicycled everywhere he went; Paul the deaf boy who stayed with us and locked me out of the house; the wife of the Vietnam soldier who wrote her husband every day and did a lot of ironing; the pregnant girl Lois; two pilots from South Vietnam, Reza from Iran; a man who answered the phone one day when I called home from college and said he was "Jonathan from Namibia"; Bruno from Brazil (the best of our long-stayers); and even a guy I picked up hitchhiking one day. And I know there were others.

And then there were friends of her children, who didn't always stay for dinner, but would stay and talk to Mom in the afternoon even if the kid they wanted to see wasn't home. Bruce is the shining example, but there were others. She'd put them to work folding clothes or setting the table and chat with them, get the goods, the straight dope, and, I don't know, but maybe even counsel them in a kind of invisible way.

People were her priority, the thing she did, and this is in contrast to my own visits to friends' houses, when, if I encountered the parents, they were like furniture -- a brief hello and they were off.

She was, I think, socially fearless. We might be having friends to dinner -- say, relatives from Minnesota, or maybe the N family of six? eight? -- and some motley assemblage of the others would show up unannounced and uninvited -- a combination of people and interests that just should not work. It always filled me with fear, like the world was about to blow up, but she would just say how wonderful it was that they had come, pull out the card table chairs, set more plates, come up with some leftovers, and everybody would eat and talk and have a good time.

Talking with her about this yesterday, she was amazed at all the names, and that she had done these things. She was completely absorbed, her eyes bright, her questions pretty much on point, and I felt like I should do this every night. Just to save her more time of endless waiting. 

I did go back today. She slept in church, hardly touched the food I got her in the Bistro, but, in the half-hour in her room before lunch, I read her poetry and we almost got there.

Guest post from Sister K

Halloween bowling

Here's a guest post from Sister K:

Hi All-
Having a nice time here in sunny Milwaukee. Got in the pool twice and mom gets very chatty while doing laps. She is trying to figure out why no one told her dad died, why Jon is her father, and why her friend E was singing in a choir concert the other day and didn't say hi to her. (E called yesterday and they sorted it out.) It must be a kind of agony to have these seeming truths in her head and not be able to understand them. Generally, she seems pretty ok, though. She often seems to think she's busy doing important things, like volunteer work, and I think that kind of confusion is a sort of blessing. 

Jessie's been doing a lot of activities this weekend, and I left Mom at spooky story hour last night and met J&J for dinner. Saw their beautiful apt - so nice!

She's snoring away now so we'll see if we make it to church or not. I leave early tmoro morning.

Disease

Prospect Avenue

Saw Mom a couple times in recent days. She seems fearful and unhappy. She brings up Dad now and then. This week she said, "Say, Jon. I want to ask you about something. I think more often than I did that our daddy has died."

I said, he did, in Ann Arbor.

"I have no memory of that at all." She said she wanted to go to a doctor that was "really good" to fix her memory.

This was Thursday. I took her downstairs to a volunteer appreciation reception. There was a big crowd. I got her a glass of wine, and crushed up a little sweet pastry so she could eat it. Then I steered us back toward the elevator, but she said she wanted to go back to see the people. So we moseyed back through the thick of the crowd, and a dozen people greeted her, like the reception was for her. I heard one man say to a friend, "She used to be so ... " but I didn't hear the rest.

Her therapist said she'd done what she could about Mom's swallowing problem, and she was requiring that her meat dishes be pureed. I saw her pureed turkey -- a white paste that looked like baby food. The therapist said she hated to do it, because a lot of people won't eat it.

I thought: This is my fate, too.

About five years ago I was diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy -- muscular dystrophy that affects the extremities. So my ankles have weakened -- unless I'm careful, I wobble when I walk; I can't open a pop bottle with my fingers; and swallowing can be an unpleasant adventure. I've lost weight, and while I like to think it's exercise and diet, it's one of the things the doctors track.

The reception

Me and JV both

Still dreaming

Been there, done that

Still dreaming of my bike trip.

But it was Mom yesterday and today.

She had a lot of attention when Son E and Sister S were in town. Was delighted with the boy: "He's so nice!" And he is.

Yesterday she seemed lovely and energetic compared to some of her bedraggled companions. The caregivers often put a little tasteful makeup on her and choose earrings that match her outfit -- a nice touch. We went downstairs and got her mail from the front desk and sat in the Bistro and went over it over coffee. It's all pretty much bills and junk, but she likes to hear my general explanations before concurring with me that we can throw most of it out.

I was startled yesterday, though, when she suddenly said, "Jon. It's just coming to me that your dad died."

"Yeah, Mom. He died four years ago."

She looked at me with big eyes. "I don't remember anything about it. I wasn't there."

"You were there, Mom. All the time."

She thought a bit. "I wonder if I was in Norway with the St. Olaf Choir when Dad died."

"No, you were there. In Ann Arbor. Do you remember him in the bedroom?"

"I was there?"

"You were there."

*

Today, church. We had a substitute preacher, a distinguished man with a rich beard wearing a huge kimono-like robe. He explicated a confounding parable and I liked it.

Mom can't quite follow a hymn lately, unless it's an old familiar one. She gets the Lord's Prayer pretty well.  We did communion, and then, at the end of the service, she shook the pastor's hand and said "Happy Easter."

Manitowoc

Days away

Kohler-Andrae State Park, Sheboygan 

We were up in Door County last week, and Friday to Sunday I biked home, 190 miles in three days. It was tough, much of it, as I am in no kind of shape. But fun. Sister L was here on the weekend, and I went over to St. John’s on Labor Day for the outdoor picnic with Son E, and Wednesday for Move and Groove. Mom seems more expressionless than ever, and it’s hard to tell what she’s taking in. At the picnic, she said, “I just feel lost,” and at Move and Groove, when it was taking a while to get everybody corralled, she said, “Let’s get going” and hitched forward and tried to start it herself. E has been making  daily visits — even Thursday’s singalong, the whole of it — which is a big help.

I’ve been sick and bedridden for two days, sleeping most of the time. Sore throat, plugged face. I’m staying away from SJ today so I don’t kill anybody. Julie will bring some flowers from the farmer’s market this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll see about church. Julie’s mom and cousin Paulie are coming for church and brunch, and I’ll just wait and see about that, too.  

I think this month I will be moving to half-time at work. There’s a lot of change and upheaval there — people leaving, new software, new paper configurations, designers in Des Moines — and the extent to which it was fun is much diminished. But, in any case, this is something I’ve been hoping for and it will get me back to doing more of what I like to do.

Still life with food bag and helmet

Nylon coffin

Good and bad

We are in Door County -- third day here. A year ago when we were here, I got a call that Mom had fallen, and I contemplated driving down to sit with her in the ER. I didn't go, thank goodness. Those days, I hope, are behind me.

She seems improved. She has more energy than she has had, and will choose to stay up and commune with her friends in the penalty box after church, when before she would have sought the refuge of bed. She chats, tries to engage people, often not making much sense. But the tone is right. What's sad is the state of her friends. A couple of them have sunk to non-verbal states and sit with pasted-on smiles.

We celebrated her birthday Aug. 20 -- on the actual day. Mom has always been a big one for her birthday -- keeping track, making sure it's not just noted, but celebrated. So I brought flowers, chocolate cake, an outfit Julie had picked out, and dark-chocolate-covered almonds. It was enough. She got flowers and calls from a lot of the people she knows.

Her eating has become a problem. She puts food in her mouth, chews, but doesn't swallow. I urge her to drink water, but it's really hard to help. I asked her doctor a few months ago, "What does it mean to say someone dies of Parkinson's?" He said, "They can't eat."

Mom and the one-mile trip

Well, I'm loath to show Mom online. So here is me, with a corner of Mom. She'd been begging me for weeks to see the new condo, and I kept delaying, hoping she'd forget. Mom doesn't travel well -- though this was only a mile -- and I am, well, just plain not good at taking her out.

But today, after chapel, she seemed pretty chipper, and I loaded a backpack with extra diapers and cleaning materials, wrestled her out of the wheelchair and into the car, drove the mile, wrestled her out of the car and into the wheelchair, working up a hearty flop sweat. Down in the garage, she said, "I've never been here before."

We spent about 10 minutes in the condo, and there were no accidents. I showed her all the views, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the study, the bedrooms, and all the wonderful closets. She said, "It's nice. It's beautiful." And I have to admit that, for a moment, I made a little involuntary transition from doing a favor for my mom to being really happy, really satisfied that she had seen it -- for my ownself. Your mom should know where you live.

*

That was a good moment. In other ways, at other times, her place, and this job, are really getting to me. It's not that I resent the time it costs me -- though of course I do -- it's the way it brings me down. I took Mom to "Move and Groove" Wednesday, and there were, I think, seven residents there -- seven residents and seven kinds of misery. Joy was sobbing uncontrollably, John was agitated and wondered if he should be there, Joanne was staring unhappily at the floor, and B -- good old B -- has lost so much in recent weeks that she's only barely present. I thought I'd scream. Instead I left early, feeling bad that I'd abandoned Lauren, the leader, alone in room full of hurt.

The Island Revisited
Homage to Jimmy

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

Selling the house

Sayonara

Sold the house today and bought the condo. We'll move in Friday. It's been a nice 18-year run, but it was time.

Send me an email and, if you're nice, maybe I'll send you the new address.

One of the fix-ups required for the sale should be done by the end of the day. See thus:

Josh and Dominico
replacing the porch windows

Ma and Pa Kettle

The food in Vienna

The rolling pill desk

I'm home this week. The woman has gone to Portland for a face-to-face with her girlfriends, so I am suffering through a Father's Day with my best friend under the circumstances -- myself. It's not so bad. The kids have called, and there are no control issues over the TV. I treated myself to breakfast at Simple, and got seated right way. Scrambled eggs, potatoes, sausage, just the stuff I like.

At Mom's yesterday I found her lined up in the penalty box with half a dozen other ladies, and immediately I thought of the old-folk's home horror stories you hear where people are lined up and systematically sedated. I don't think it happens at her place -- but how would I know? I tell myself it was a staffing problem -- hard to keep track of all the needy residents unless they're right in front of you.

Mom, in any case, was her normal self, which provides, possibly, a questionable contrast to sedation. We went down and checked for mail, and then went out on the plaza for a taste of the sweet lovely air. There were boats in the glistening harbor, and we sat for a few minutes -- but then suddenly she wanted to go back in.

At dinner, Fred, the man who lost his wife, Eva, a few weeks ago, ate at his little table with one of the nurses. She said "How do you like the meatballs?"

"I've eaten better in Vienna and Paris," he said.

*

Today, church. She was sleeping in her chair in the hall when I got there and didn't perk up through the entire service. Didn't even mouth the hymns, couldn't keep track of her place in the liturgy. She tried to stand at one point and I grabbed her arm and said, "Sit down." She defiantly pushed herself all the way to her feet, and I pulled her down and said, "Sit down. You're going to fall in church."

She gave me the coldest, angriest look I've seen on her face since I was an unruly kid.

She tried one more time on the way to communion. I pushed her shoulder down and said again, "Sit down."

We had quick coffee, then I brought her up and got her into bed. She had nothing left.

*

We close on the sale Wednesday morning, and the purchase Wednesday afternoon. We move on Friday. I am worried about my bike. Bring it up to the room every time? Leave it locked to the rack in the garage? But then I'd have to take off my tool bag, my front bag every time I come and go. Whatever it will be, it will be an impediment to just hopping on and riding, like I do here, and I just really hate it.

That, and I will miss living in Wauwatosa. After reporting on it, living in it, it is mine.

The Village

Totally upbeat

Kitchen and dining room

Our condo sellers invited us over for chat and furniture measurements. We also met our soon-to-be neighbor, a 90-plus-year-old Italian woman named Helen, who came over all dressed up in a blue frock. "She plays loud Italian opera, but we only hear it out in the hall," said Carl, our seller.

It was as we remembered it, neither larger nor smaller, just as nice, and, you know, one could imagine oneself living there. Our loan has been approved, and we close in 10 days. And we still have a heck of a lot to do.

Took Mom to chapel this morning. She was upbeat -- higher, really, than I'd seen her in a long time. Her muttering often made sense, and even when it didn't, it passed well for lighthearted banter. "Oopsie-doopsie," she said when we had a momentary wheelchair snag. She sang all the hymns, spoke the liturgy, said the Lord's Prayer. Watching her, she looked brave, unabashed about her frailties, as if to say, "Think what you will."

I said, "Mom, you look good."

"Do I? Well, thank you."

"You always look good, you know."

She tisked, but is still vain enough to accept it as her due.

So I wonder at this resurgence after so much difficulty. Maybe she's come to accept the place as her home. Or, maybe her mood has become detached and rises or sinks independent of her physical and mental states.

I'll take it.

Living room and porch

Piano not included

Bedroom, obviously

My lair

Memory -- I mean Memorial -- Day

Over the highway

They do nice things for bicyclists out here in the hinterland, you have to give us that. A perfect day  today, and I took full advantage. Warm air, but cool when you were moving, almost no wind.  I thought not once of my mother.

She is not uppermost, lately, in any case. It is the house sale and the condo purchase. We have been shelling out money much faster than we can make it, and scrambling to meet deadlines. Every so often when we come up for air we feel a little fizz of excitement, and I am less often weighing whether the loss of two months of the life I like will be worth the rest of my life in a condo. Gawd.

I saw Mom Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (yesterday). She is sinking into a confusion that makes it harder for her to keep track of my visits. I can't take an optimistic view of this. We went to the 10 a.m. chapel service yesterday and by 10:07 she was sound asleep. I prodded her awake and asked her if she wanted to lay down, and she muttered that she did, and we went up and got her into bed and she slept so soundly that she didn't start or panic when I left.

Still there are moments. She combed her hair in the mirror before church -- flipping it, touching it, looking left and right. They were the exact movements I've seen my whole life. No diminishment in this. You may suspect your mind isn't right, but, dammit, you can at least look like it is.

Turning out for Memorial Day 

Good news, bad news, no news

What it is. 

Hey friends. It's been almost a month, and I just really haven't had any time. The house is nearly empty of our stuff and restocked with "staging" furniture, so it's like living in a museum. Or, say, a window display at Nordstrom.

We put it on the market at about 5 p.m. last Thursday. There were 30 showings in 24 hours, and at the end of it we had an offer over our asking price. Bully! But we have to shore up the chimney (maybe you can see that it tilts a little bit), and do something about our back porch windows.

We have an offer on a condo downtown, but we've been back and forth with the owners (through attorneys -- how do I get into that racket?), and so we'll know more in a couple days. The owners are, I think, excessively risk-averse. Julie and I are living and breathing it at the moment.

And Mom, sigh, Mom. I've seen her less lately -- just twice a week for the last couple weeks -- and my visits have been shorter. Today at chapel she was perky and chatty, pointing out people she knew, but inside of 10 minutes her frozen face had returned, and finally I asked her if she wanted to leave, but no. So we stuck it out.

We made our Bistro visit short -- the bathroom called -- and I left her at the lunch table upstairs. She tries to wheedle out of me where I'm going, what I'm going to do, and I just say I got a lot to do, and she relents and thanks me for coming. It's a little formal, somehow, and it hurts just a little bit.

I think she's reached a state of stasis, or, you might say, found a cruising altitude. Not very high, very little turbulence.

A woman who ate in Mom's small dining room died recently -- Eva. She and her husband used to  speak German over dinner. So now he eats alone. He's got a boyish face and build, a nice man. It's strange because he was the one receiving higher care, and she lived in the independent wing in her own apartment. There's just no logic to any of this.

This is how I found my car when I got down to the parking lot:

So much fun.

Four full courses

Lots of Mom this week. She's been pretty good. Julie went Wednesday and they had a fancy dinner event at which they ate:

That's lamb and shrimp, potatoes, carrots and an orchid, which I think was strictly decorative. Entertainment was provided by an opera singer from the Florentine.

The picture doesn't show it, but the room was packed.

I went Friday, and today, Saturday, took her to a student string recital. So she's had a week full of culture. She can't watch TV, she can't read, she can't listen to the radio, but live music keeps her awake.

We found, in our endless packing, a diary she'd kept 20 years ago, when we'd left the kids with them for a week while we went away and had fun. Ahna was 7, Ezra 4, and she and Dad took them to the zoo, to parks, swimming in the pool, and twice to deliver Meals on Wheels to the shut-ins. She wrote that she read them the story of David and Goliath, and Ezra put rocks in his pockets, just to be prepared.

So I sat and read the diary to her -- she was amazed that she had written it -- but she kept stopping me, saying we had to be ready, we didn't want to miss the people, the people who were coming.  She couldn't say who this was, and I could only guess that in her family- and friend-crowded life, there was always someone coming, someone she didn't want to miss.

But it was also an expression of her anxiety. She can't sit still. There are only so many things you can do with her, and it will be sad if this overtakes her entirely and we lose the reading.

The best-laid plans

Packing

The house is thoroughly painted. As soon as we get it empty we'll put it on the market.

I biked to see Mom Saturday. It was a complicated plan -- visiting her, then leaving to view a condo, then returning. I thought, well, she gets two visits for the price of one. So I read her her devotions, then poetry from her poetry book. She says: "Stop now. I want to talk."

"Sure," I said.

"Yesterday," she said.

I waited. Waited some more. "Yesterday? Did something happen yesterday?"

Her eyes were fixed in the distance. She seemed about to say something. Once. Twice. Three times. I could see her searching, searching. She finally said, "I can't remember."

She wanted to lay down, so I got her into bed, put the bed alarm on. An aide came and said she would keep on eye on her. All was good.

So I left and walked to the condo viewing, just three or four blocks. Julie was there, the realtor. We went to three different buildings, all within a few blocks. My phone rang and I turned it off. Then, as we're heading back to Mom's, I listened to my messages.

"Just a minute after you left, your mom got out of bed, trying to find you. She fell. She's OK, I think. She hit her head and there was blood. We sent her to St. Mary's, just as a precaution."

I should have felt pity, I suppose, but it just made me mad. I was on my bike, we had a dinner plan with friends -- it was going to be such a jolly Saturday. Will she ever -- ever -- understand that she cannot walk without help?

Julie went to the hospital -- she's a keeper -- and I biked home. We had to cancel the dinner plan and we ate, just the two of us, in our empty kitchen. Mom got four staples to close her cut.

And, as penance for our various sins, Mom and I went to chapel on Sunday.

Isn't moving fun.