Yesterday, Friday, 12/29, did me in emotionally; it was gray and frigid and the wind battering the hospital came in Arctic gusts. I was never so happy to be inside of a building. Even a hospital. Up to the third floor. My self-assignment was to visit my mother and to case the joint. I wanted a clearer mental picture of the lay of the land. It was about 4:00 pm when I got to the floor and I asked for nurse Marilyn who was so very nice to me on the phone. We looked at one another and hugged. Two short women from different countries linked by a patient and a parent. As I touched her I could feel her compassion.

I knocked on my mother’s door and opened it slowly, announcing myself to a dark room. “Mom, it’s me!”

Slurred speech responded.

“I was just sleeping, I just woke up.”

I took the place in. This is the hour when babies cry during the witching hour and the elderly become agitated. My mother is in the bed closest to the door, the bathroom, the closet. She is beyond lucky not to have to share this room. The blinds were almost down to the sill and twilight was contributing to the ambiance. Gray.

“I brought you your Refresh eye drops, some extra Ensure and a bag of great cookies.”

“I don’t eat cookies, I can’t chew them. I don’t need more Ensure, take it back. They give it to me here.”

“I promise you will love these cookies, they aren’t hard and nice with tea.” I rested my case and at some point she said she’d try them and offer one to anyone who came into the room. Nurse Marilyn came in, but eventually got the boot. “Could you leave, please, I want to talk to my daughter — and close the door!”

Sun-downing. No filter, no inhibition, gray matter goes wild and fills like a pitcher of negativity, a pitcher with expandable sides that grows and grows, eventually overflowing into and onto everything. Unfortunately I left my life preserver at home. I heard my mother’s echoed ideations of the disdain for the staff, disdain for anyone she didn’t thinks was “born here.” The misery bounced off the walls and smacked me. “They are all from farms, they know nothing!” is always the common thread. They are crude, rude, they don’t answer when I say “Good morning.” I haven’t been bathed since I’ve been here and my teeth aren’t clean (what is left of them). But, on occasion, there was a turn around: she praised the physical therapists and those who “believed her” when she said there was a man who had come into her room. She pulled out names of the people who were kind to her and respected her and stared at the ceiling and talked about self-worth and how she had “value.” I heard all about the woman who was bathing her with a cloth who allowed a man to enter the room, and if my mother’s reaction to the bather’s male admittance was any indication, I’d say, hell broke loose. “How dare you allow a man into the room when you are doing this!” Both were tossed out the door.

“I’ve eaten breakfast.”

“You’ve also eaten lunch.”

 

“What time is it?”

“It’s 4:45.” I got my info from a large clock at the other end of the room which my mother can’t read. Macular degeneration plays hide and seek with the numbers. I said, “it’s almost time for dinner.” But, my mother thought it was almost 5:00 in the morning and had no concept of am or pm. Her post-physical-therapy-nap played tricks on her mind.

And then while she went on for over a half hour, almost as it was rehearsed, memorized, the stories of family members that I have heard and heard and heard, as if repeating them thousands of times reinforces the veracity, brings back something pleasant that she knows is true and that can’t be contested … I smelled it.

Her breath. From feet away. The smell you’d run away from if you were talking to someone face to face. The odor you’d hide from with a tissue to your face, as acrid as the fires in California that permeate you nose and clothes and memory. The odor that would cause you to change your seat if you were on the subway.

The odor of earthiness and uncleanliness. Of fear and terror.

The odor of death.

The person in the bed, my mother, had her own agenda. She was busy making peace with her own thoughts. And yet, she speaks of her going home after her twenty allotted days of physical therapy. Going home to her own place. If this is true and if this can happen, I cringe at the thought of this seventy-four pound person being loaded into a transport ambulance, in the frigid air, back to the place where she fell. I wonder how many more hours insurance will provide, if any. I wonder if she would make it, three months away from her hundredth birthday. I wonder if I will make it.

So, all of this, I packed with me into a plastic bag along with the Ensure I brought, collected myself, almost leaving my scarf on a chair, and made for the door once given the cue that “you should go now.” I made sure lights were on,  I repeated the time. I adjusted the phone, put the water pitcher on the nearby sink. I looked under the bed for any strangers and bugaboos. And, went back to the nurses’ station.

 

There was Nurse Marilyn. “You wouldn’t believe what my mother looked like when she was young,” I said, offering something to the nurse to ponder and imagine. (In fact, I was thinking of posting a photo, you know those gorgeous photos I sometimes post of my mother, on her door, with a caption: “This is who I really am. This is who I wish I still was. Please find me and see me. See me inside this tiny, child-like body, see me, the child who is fearful and in terror of dying and offer me a kind word.

I was young once.”)

I was so tired. It is a cumulative fatigue of years of notes and letters and bills and conversations, thousands and thousands of phone calls. So tired that my mind bounced from image to image and replayed that hour, what I saw, what I heard and what I smelled. I couldn’t sleep. Maybe if I had gotten up to write in the middle of the night, the time my mother thinks is day, I could have rid myself of this insomnia-plague.

I needed to document.

What I smelled.

 

click to play Bobby Lewis/Tossing and Turning

 

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 in the series is here