“YOU NEVER BELIEVE ME!”

Now she is the child who may or may not have taken something. Or carelessly crossed a street. Or misjudged the contents of a glass, or what was or was not in the closet. Now she is the child.

She hung up on me.”

I wrote about this here.

For over a week I did not hear from my mother. She was cognizant that she had hung up on me, in fact she told the social worker that she was well aware and would call me “next week.”

“Next week” came and went.

As for me, I am going into the ninth week of unresolved issues with agencies. I believe I mentioned that I reached out to a social worker who is now regularly visiting my mother; I venture to say that by having another person visiting, a person who is, by the way, my age who had parents from the same neighborhood as the one where my mother was raised, that some pressure has been taken off me.

I decided to call my mother. When I do I frequently get a sinking feeling in my gut. Which one of my mothers will speak to me?

1. Will it be the mother who sounds like the one who raised me, confident, strong and in control? The one who I remember from childhood?
2. Will it be the mother with the weak voice? The one who sounds so fragile?
3. Will it be the mother who orders the aide out of the room and begins to rant to me, at me about all the stuff I “don’t know about.” Will the litany continue for an hour about how terrible her life is in that place?

Please let me interject here: my mother is NOT in a nursing home. She is NOT in an assisted living. She lives in an apartment building for seniors which is NOT under the jurisdiction of the state and which enables her to rent an apartment and have prepared meals. It enables her to take part in activities in the building, to have banking and medical resources in the building. There is a library, lounge, magnificent roof garden  with a view that can’t be matched. There is bus service to shopping and entertainment. Several aides help her with her daily living; they are under the jurisdiction of an agency that has an out-post office in the building.

My mother does the following: she stays in her room and leaves to go downstairs weekly to have her hair done, and to visit the doctor monthly for her B12 shot. That’s it.

Her meals are delivered for a fee from the dining room. Her major complaint in life about the building is that whoever puts the meals on the trays screws up royally many times during the week, and that the guy who delivers the meals frequently spills food on her tray from someone else’s tray.

Fortunately, she has an aide assisting eight hours a day and the person on duty goes to the dining room and straightens it all out.

In the best of all possible worlds, no one should have to straighten out anything because everything would be correct if not perfect.

So, when I call, I can expect some kind of familiar normalcy, OR I can expect another gut-wrenching rant about misery and horror. How she and “all the little widows on the floor” are victims. It is the old-age version of how LIFE SUCKS.

I still don’t know, [because now I am dealing with the hear-say veracity of my mother, the coordinator of the aides, the building social worker, the private social worker, the dining room administrator whom my mother has to call each day with her food order] whether the aides’ coordinator called 911 or not. There are too many people involved and my mother’s life is now a tall tale that is written by all who come in contact with her.

This is an interactive post: YOU can pick the correct answer.

• She was out-of-control so I called the police. (said of the aide’s coordinator)
• The police were summoned to calm her down: she was told there is a camera outside her room and it can see who is coming and going; the police will watch the aide and makes sure she doesn’t take anything. (told to the private social worker)
• What is the point of calling the police? Why make things worse? (said to me by the building social worker)
• Your mother won’t let Lena back in the room. (told to me in a phone call from the evening aid who was called by Lena)

So, getting back to my last phone call, the evening aide (Sally) who is there on weekends, answered and told me that Lena, the aide whom my mother had ousted a week-plus ago, has been reinstalled in her position after “apologizing” to my mother. Yes, she is back. I am wondering what the apology was for; undoubtedly a peace-making ploy.

Did she spill out the 1/4 cans of Ensure from her apron pockets and do penance?

Did she cough up all of my mother’s blood pressure pills?

The phone was then handed off to my mother who is behind door number two! It is the fragile, soft-spoken mother who says, “Susie?” She remembers me, knows me, I am not the one at war with her. She asks when I am coming to pick up the mail. She tells me it is going to rain on Sunday so I can go out but shouldn’t stay out late for fear of getting wet. She sounds like she is going off to sleep. She says, “everything is alright,” and she tells me there is a camera outside of her room watching the comings and goings.

There is one given about the outside of her room: there is always a food tray leaning against the wall near the door, for pickup, until the next meal arrives. I am always wondering how many more trays are left.

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 following post is here.