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. 

A good Sunday

A long church service today, and Mom was great. They had special music from Stile Antico, a British singing group. There were a dozen members and they sang a cappella, music from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, a blanket of woven chords -- gorgeous.  Mom was right into it -- perched forward in her chair, singing with the hymns, responding to the liturgy.

We went to the Bistro and sat at the big table, a first. All the "cool" people sit there and hold forth. Mom was quiet, as she almost always is. She tucked into her apple pastry and seemed content.

I brought her up, and she wanted a rest, so I got her into bed. Immediately she says, "I have to go to the bathroom." So I let an aide rescue me, came home and paid her bills.

Sigh

What I am reduced to
(at least the chair is smiling)

It's been a tough week, with mom, moving and work. Sister S has been here, which has been a huge help.

Julie and I were supposed to see a condo in a couple hours, but the realtor called and said there was an offer on it. He'd still show it, but I just want to nap.

We had an anniversary Wednesday and spent the night downtown. Nice. But I am still coming to grips with this move, and still pretty much hate it. I have no traction, no routine, no place to work. 

The job, I feel like -- who the hell cares. 

And the Mom thing -- I'm not in love with that either. 

I'll work on my mood, and that's my final offer. 

Another trip to the ER

Mom fell yesterday and was sent to the ER. She'd been in bed and reached for something on her little rolling table, and maybe she hit the table, or maybe the floor. They found her on all fours on the floor, with, strangely, pillows under her knees.

Anyway, she got a couple of nasty-looking cuts on her forehead, one of which swelled like half an egg. I met her at the ER and we sat for a glum three hours while doctors and nurses came and went, and mostly went. They did a CT scan and took x-rays of her knees, and none of it showed any serious injury.

She was wild-eyed, haggard and indignant at the long waits -- 10 minutes to her is like three hours. She kept telling me to go and get somebody, but of course nothing was going to happen until they were good and ready for it to happen. She had to pee, she said, and a nurse did it with a catheter, drained her completely, and 10 minutes hadn't passed before she said she had to pee again. So they tried a bedpan, but of course she couldn't pee, but as soon as they took it away she said she had to pee again.

I'm inexplicably peeved at the hospital's -- what is it? -- culture? All these young hyper-fit nurses and assistants, male and female, sashaying around flirtatiously in their pajamas. It's like a slumber party. We pressed Mom's call button at one point -- "just press that and we'll come right away," we'd been told -- and nobody ever came. I even called out to a passing nurse at one point, and she glanced at me and just kept going. If she worked for me -- if I was her boss -- I'd have fired her on the spot.

*

I've been fighting a cold -- slept almost four hours this afternoon and woke up wondering what planet I was on. So I'm sure I'll have a long, sleepless night.

A rally

Nice Easter dinner with Mom today. We had Julie's mom, Julie's cousin, Ez, me and JV -- six altogether. Mom made it through church, rested a bit, and survived a coffee hour and a meal in the fancy restaurant that lasted almost two hours. She looked good, talked a little, and was upbeat. She has a way of rallying in when she needs to. She pleaded when I left, and it gave me no cheer to have to be firm.

Just to spite everybody

What could be so wrong?

Sorry to stay away so long. Its been a fraught couple of weeks, not least because of this push to move. We have boxes everywhere, and most of our furniture is gone. So, if you like sitting on bare wood floors, come on over.

Hard to sum up the mom situation. But safe to say the news is not upbeat. Two weeks in a row she didn't make it through church -- this is unheard of -- and we fled to her room where she was exhausted and got right into bed. In the last two days I've had a handful of desperate calls -- as yesterday, "WHEN ARE YOU COMING OVER?" When I wasn't planning to come over at all. This followed by another call a couple hours later when she insisted she was at my house. I did eventually go and whatever crisis she'd felt had long since passed.

Here's a sample call of a few days ago: "I lost my brain. I can't keep directions straight and I don't know where I am."

It's sad. Her decline is accelerating and it is hard to watch. Her situation has been made worse by the latest aide problem. Maria has been out "sick" or something about four days in the last two and a half weeks. She's left early twice. She has five kids -- that many kids and surely, somebody will be sick, or in trouble, or need a ride, or something. The agency tried to get a sub one day, but the sub's "car broke down," and today, finally, she did get a sub.

What a hassle.

I have toyed with the idea of quitting my job and being the aide mom needs -- she'd have to pay me -- but it would drive me crazy. The place is so depressing, and Mom is so depressing.

I rode my bike today and went to my own church's Good Friday service -- an attempt at "cleansing." But I never did quite get there -- she was still on my mind.

*

So the picture above is how I got in trouble with the cops. Driving home from work one afternoon, I came upon this elementary school that we cover in our paper. There were dozens of parents out on the lawn, and I wondered if there had been a concert or play or something. But, no, it was just parents picking up their kids.

It struck me as a kind of touching daily ritual, and I got out of the car and took some pictures, being careful not to make any kids identifiable. So, on my way back to car, this woman comes racing across the grass, yelling "Who are you? Why are you taking pictures? Who are you taking pictures of?"

I gave her my business card and said I was the editor of the Wauwatosa paper and I was just getting shots of the "after-school scene." She said she read the paper, she was a first-grade teacher, and she seemed fine about it, and she went back to the school, and I left.

I'm home for about five minutes when two cops come to the door. They have the business card in their hands. (That treacherous little teacher.) Was I at the school? What was I doing there? Had I been taking pictures? What had I been taking pictures of? I told them what was up. I said I'd never left the street or the sidewalk -- the public space -- and I showed my boring pictures, and then the young by-the-book cop insisted on calling my boss, asking him, had he assigned me to take the pictures? Was this in the normal realm of my job, blah blah blah. (As if my boss knows what the hell I do.) Then the young cop comes up to me, having not found anything amiss, and kind of gives me a stern little talking to, to check out in advance, etc etc, and kind of fishing for me to say I was "wrong" somehow.

But I wouldn't say I was wrong. I said, "I'll take it under advisement. But I want you to stipulate that I did nothing illegal." He wouldn't  give me that, but the older guy, the sergeant, said, "Yeah, I guess that's probably right."

I was just glad I wasn't black.

God I hate cops.

It's a lousy picture, but just to spite everybody, I ran it in the paper.