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.