Well, friends, this is how it goes. Things are fine and then…

I am happy to tell you that my mother has completed two weeks out of the hospital after having had the corona virus.
Both of the best aides agreed to work and are living-in, one four days and one three days. The one with her today came for her shift yesterday. They watched old movies, (my mother allowed the television to be on, finally). And, my mother even ate a nice meal. It sounded like a great day! The aide was so pleased.

I, however didn’t sleep well last night. I was up around 4:00 am for a couple of hours and went back to bed at 6:30. I languished until 10:00 am, dragged myself out of bed in a semi-stupor and tuned in to Governor Cuomo’s voice of reason on this cold, windy, Spring morning. Was this a premonition? I checked my phone and noticed there was a voicemail from my mother’s number.

“could you please give me a call…mother is acting a bit upset.”

If only Governor Cuomo could help me with this.

When Judy answered the phone I could hear my mother screaming in the background. It was the same old song that she would sing when her paranoia-episodes kicked in. I will never be able to unravel the mysteries of the human brain, how things could be fine one moment and the next, the coin has been flipped.

I could hear: “My things are all wet! My clothes! My hair! Everything in the closet! There is water damage! The blankets, the sheets! I am going to die! I am going to get pneumonia!” Judy, the aide, had to go on the forced march down the hall  to the laundry room and “dry” the sheets. But that wasn’t good enough! “They are wet again!!” Laundry was done three times.

She put me on the phone to calm my mother down, but I knew there was no such thing: When she is in this crazy mode, there is no talking to her. No reasoning will work.

“I see her going into the drawers, taking my medicine, stealing MY MONEY! The $70 you said we had! She’ll take it! You’ll hang up and then she’ll do all of these nasty things again!”

After a few of my words there was dead air. I was one of those who had joined the ranks of the not-to-be-trusted. I was back to being an alien.

My heart was beginning to break, again, my momentary well-being shattered; I was being reminded of the fragility of my belief system, that everything might now be OK. That,with such a lovely aide, an aide who was praised on the phone yesterday by the visiting hospice nurse as being the sweetest and kindest, I was so lucky, we all were. But my mother was not rational and who knows how long this will last?

I called her doctor. Apparently he observed some of this nuttiness yesterday while on a visit. My mother insisted that the other aide was hiding in the corner with a man, kissing. Well, that’s a new one. I explained that this wet-clothes-stolen-money ideation began prior to Covid and he could relate: he has a ninety-year-old mother who sometimes goes over the deep end.

Did I ever tell you the story about Mrs. Brown? About thirty years ago she lived on our block: We had just moved in. This small, wild-gray-haired, old lady would go from house to house ringing doorbells. When you’d be out on the street you’d see people scatter if she came out. She looked like an escapee from an asylum, a wild woman from Borneo, a female Methuselah. She’d be looking for people, running from people, asking, telling; all inappropriate. Those of us who deal with the strange, weird behaviors of the aged, the mentally ill, the not-quite-right, get a sick pit in the gut. Our boundaries go down, we fear the contagion of insanity. Better yet, we fear that in our old age we will succumb that same madness.

I told the doctor that one of my mother’s former doctors had prescribed a drug for this. I don’t think she ever took it, and at this point, the meds have to be individually wrapped at the pharmacy, given by the aides, hidden in the food; certainly this pill will have to be out of sight. My mother said she is not sleeping, she dozes, is in and out of a dream state all day, unable to discern her dreams from truth, projecting her reality, her illusion, on what is real. In my mother’s reality, she taps into the reoccurring tune, of victimization. She lashes out at anyone and everyone to protect herself.

If I look at the themes that are expressed over and over during the strange periods when my mother is no longer my mother, I see the fear of death, mistrust: She is being robbed and assaulted, brutalized, mistreated. Over and over like an AI “host”  in the sci-fi series, Westworld, where the human-like machines exist for the pleasure of those who wish to play out horrific acts.

What a sad place in which to live, what a sad world of confusion and pain. I sent youtube links to Judy of old songs from show tunes  in hopes of creating distraction.

It’s time for a new song.

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

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