My mother before a visit to the retinal specialist in October
photo taken by one of the aides

 

I don’t know how to say this so I will just let the words fly; my mother is losing it. Each day a few more crumbs of her fall to imaginary birds, called “paranoia.” 

 

This evening I brought over her rent and had to collect her mail. These are two very innocuous activities except when emotional interaction plays a part. My mother suffers, as you know, from partial blindness due to macular degeneration. She hasn’t had her eye injection in a while due to her hospitalizations and because it has been so very cold.

She is down to about seventy-four pounds and was put on a drug which I believe is used as an anti-psychotic, commonly  with the elderly with the onset of dementia. It seemed to have been working, but tonight she declared she will not take it. She says she is allergic to it. Now, this may be the case, as her whole life has been one long allergy, but I could see that her eyes were puffy and red; she says it makes her lip feel funny. But, by not taking it might bring her back to a state of severe instability. She maintained that the medication was affecting her vision and if she doesn’t take it she can see much better. She thinks she cured her macular degeneration, that there are no more wavy lines! everything is straight!

And then she declared:

“I resent that any aide can tell me I have to take medication.”

“I do not have to be in bed at 7:00 pm, no aide can force me.”

“This place is cuckoo! I AM ALWAYS RIGHT!” By now she was shouting.

Yes, Ma, you are. Always right.

Keep in mind: the aide on duty leaves at 7:00 pm., hence it is prudent that my mother be ensconced in her in bed, however, I do get that she has just eaten and it is hard for her to go to sleep. And, now that she refuses to take her meds, she won’t be able to sleep.

She insists that after the evening aide leaves, the power to her apartment is cut off, that her refrigerator doesn’t work, her phone is dead. The light next to her bed that should go on with a tap, stubbornly remains dark. I opened the door to the fridge and asked my mother if the light is on in it when she opens the door, when she feels it is turned off. Affirmative.

Then it is working.

“But it isn’t making any noise.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“But it always does.”

“Ma, it’s working.”

“And they cut off my phone as soon as the aide leaves. None of the lights work.” She insists that she can get incoming calls but can’t call anyone in case of an emergency. They don’t like that I call the police so they cut off my phone.

I can feel the walls closing in on her, I can feel her terror, the obsessive anxiety. I become her: blind and flailing, not knowing what to do or say, I insist to myself that I am sane but I know I am losing my ground, sinking into a black hole. It’s called, “the end of life,” and with that comes every boogeyman one has ever known. It is the realization that the end is near and it is a lonely place. It is palpable. I catch it like the flu. There is no vaccine for death.

I tell her that I will call her later, something I never do as I never know when she is going to sleep. I go to the door, the aide is behind me. Her mother is ninety-three and she says her mother is the same. We say our goodbyes and can hear my mother within, yelling, asking what we are talking about, that we shouldn’t talk behind her back.

Paranoia has become a wild beast that nips at her heels and tries to crawl up her four-foot-nine-inch frame.

At 8:00 pm I called my mother. She was in the dark and answered the phone. She said something next to her bed was blinking red, on and off. She said her lights were cut off and that the one next to her bed would only go on when the aide was in the room. She said she would try to call me to show me that they had cut off her phone, but being that the light had been cut off, she couldn’t. Besides that, we are on the phone.

I could feel her in the dark, across the ether, I could feel my fear build, knowing that the meds she had been taking which helped her sleep would be of no consolation tonight. I could feel my guts go into a ball as I imagined her not sleeping through the night and trying to go to the bathroom herself.

I said, “remember if you call me, you have to dial 1 and then the area code.”

“There is no way I can call you in case of an emergency.” She is sounding weaker and weaker. They cut off my phone.

Then, she added: “I was dialing 9, first.”

And now I wonder if that was the issue. But because her uncorded phone has a light that goes on briefly and then goes out, she thinks that someone somewhere has cut off her communication.

“Ma, you had to dial 9 first in the hospital, not in your apartment.” I think you couldn’t make a call because you were dialing the wrong number.”

I explained. I re-explained. Her voice soaked up my words but instead of getting stronger and empowered, it shrank into her covers, into the darkness.

“I heard a beep.”

“You pressed a key on your phone, Ma.”

“They are listening to us.” Residing in my mother’s mind must be a little police state run by a Hollywood actor; every movie she has ever seen, every bit of drama remains in her and fills her life with intrigue. Her name should be Ilsa or Elsa, and her favorite scenes must be those of her dancing in smoky nightclubs. Dancing and dancing. That’s what she tells people; that she and my father danced and danced wherever they went. Doesn’t matter that they had a lousy marriage. But, I digress.

“Nobody is listening, everything is fine. Everything is fine,” I said to my one-hundred year old child.

I could barely hear her. She had great difficulty finding the phone base and standing the phone back up in its cradle; I prayed she wouldn’t drop it on the floor.

And then, I hung up.

 

 

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here.

The next post is here