Howdy, Buckeroos. I returned from a short sojourn where I tried to turn off my head and was partially successful. Toward the end of the week the phone began ringing with questions and issues; there went the final days of vacation but I tried to keep my cool. Before I sort through some of my trip photos (no place new, the annual cultural trek to the Berkshires which I have blogged about endless times before) and begin making sense of it all, I’ll just say this:

Mom is leaving Florida next Tuesday. No more rats or lousy food. Except maybe on Jet Blue. She’ll be accompanied by her aide and some family. The movers will start loading later that day.

Done.

She’s anxious and so am I. Anxious enough to be plagued by the ocular migraine stuff throughout the trip. I can’t imagine what it is like to be ninety-five years old and about to face a major move, back to the city of one’s home. We all know it is never the same. People we knew are now ghosts in memory, the buildings we recall are likely gone. My mother will be a stranger in her old city in another neighborhood. But, for the first time since the 1980’s she’ll be near the small family that is left. It has to work. There is no choice.

Instead of thinking about organizing my vacation photos (and there isn’t as much as usual, I just gave it a rest) I spent most the day on the phone and have many more calls to make:

• dealing with my own paper work and follow-up calls (Remember the Verizon issues? That’s still another story!)
• talking to the funeral director to let him know we’re cool for a while and Florida is out of the picture. The account has to go into a trust as per the lawyer;
• talking to the person in charge of the apartments at the new place and making lists of what is needed, asking questions;
• writing to the director of the old place and saying that we are set to launch, buh-bye!
• filing a change of address form on line;
• setting-up cable and phone service. Nope, not with Verizon! The difference in fee was double and this way, with Time Warner she’ll get a little basic cable and phone service for not much more than what the phone service would have been alone with Verizon. Still it adds to the rent, and prior to this time in the rat-haven, cable was included.

Later in the afternoon I purchased two pieces of equipment: a combination rollator/wheel chair and a special transport bench for the bathtub. As I stood in the medical supply store an ocular migraine hit and lasted about thirty minutes. A visit to the ophthalmologist yesterday assured me that my eyes are fine. It doesn’t make me feel much better knowing that the blood vessels in my brain went into spasm again.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I would be writing blogs about auras, or that my mother would be ninety-five and moving back to New York in a matter of days.

I have lists of things to do seem like they will take forever. For now I am riding off …

I hope I can hang up the saddle and bed down for the night.

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

continued here