It’s time to write about my mother. I’ve diverted myself with photography projects and crossword puzzles; life is so much easier without facing what is happening. In the photo above, I am a child running, with glee, from my mother. If the Universe could take a photo now, what would be captured is my mother running from me. In the photo above there is joy and a moment of independence. Security. the child knows the mother is behind her. If the photo were taken now, the daughter, behind the mother would have a look of dismay, upset, pain. The mother, running away, would have a similar look compounded by confusion, disorientation and paranoia.

Let’s call it what it is. Dementia. No, not Alzheimer’s. This is old age, very old age, and with it comes blindness and fear.

My mother always said she loved to entertain her mother and make her laugh. She has a creative mind, a dramatic mind, that of a story-teller. She conjures up scenarios and molds them into truth, and that truth stands and doesn’t waiver. And the people who help her, who are employed to help her, are battered by accusations and falsehoods.

I was there to visit and pay the rent last Friday. The aides work in shifts and on different days. This was the first time my mother didn’t ask us to leave so the aide could serve her dinner. She was hell-bent on packing me up with boxes of coins and trinkets so the aides wouldn’t be able to steal them. Her pennies and nickels, the glass-hearts I bought her from the Art Institute of Chicago on-line gift shop, for her birthdays. Her watch. A crystal necklace. OUT! The box now sits near me at my desk. I’ve hung the hearts to the light.

While there, I opened the box and asked why she doesn’t wear her things anymore.
“My dear girl,” she began, “look what I look like.”
My mother was always the fashion plate, but she looked a bit bedraggled, her blouse, a size to fit a child, in olive green, was stretched at the bottom.
“I get dressed up when I go to see the doctor.”

So, here’s what happened: I forgot my tote bag and it created a brouhaha. My mother hates stuff, clutter is her nemesis. She maintains that the aides are bringing stuff into her apartment and dumping it there. That they took her clothes and after she called the supervisor of the agency, they miraculously re-appeared in the closet. Along with other stuff she never saw before. Magical appearances.

My tote bag was dumped on the floor and it was assumed that it belonged to one of the aides. It was as if an alien presence made its way into the room creating a few inches of disorder. (I just called to straighten that out and it seems everyone was relieved. “Yes, Ma, it’s MY bag!”)

I had a conversation with the main aide who gave me an earful. The aides talk, the compare notes, they trade stories and relive stress up in their lunch room. I am the sounding board and I have you, dear reader. The aides try very hard not to respond, to let it roll off and not take it personally, but let me tell you, there is no way to deflect words: They creep under your skin and make it to the bone.

My mother was at her weekly hair appointment and no one was answering the phone so I texted the aide who called me.  Chew on this:

• The aides are no longer allowed to take stock of deliveries (which are stored under the bed for lack of space) My mother is now the person in charge. Picture a frail 101 year-old crawling on the floor.
• My mother told one aide that she didn’t deserve her Christmas bonus. My mother threw the same aide out of the room, pushed her, and told her to leave for bringing stuff into the room that wasn’t hers (my mother’s).
• My mother felt many of her things were missing. She called the aides’ supervisor and complained. The next day everything was back, meaning the culprit sneaked the stuff back into the room. My mother said she counted her thyroid meds: firs the bottle had enough for 3 weeks and within the day, she counted them again and all but 4 were missing. Deduction: the aide took them. My mother called the pharmacy and told the pharmacist that the aide stole her meds. The pharmacist told her that no one stole them, that her renewal was due. My mother didn’t buy it.
• My mother was afraid that the aide would take her key and rob her when she was asleep, so she hid the key, took it off the key ring. Now she can’t find the key. She seems to know it was her fault, ordered another key and when it wasn’t delivered fast enough, cancelled it. Now the aide has to go down to the desk to get the key and then return it.
• While I was there my mother claimed that all of her scarves were missing. (What scarves?) and that she had beautiful pots and pans which are gone and someone left pans she never saw before. (She only brought a couple from Florida and the ones she didn’t recognize I bought for her when she arrived, about 6 years ago.)
  
• While I was there and before the aide arrived for dinner, there was the issue of “the chair.”  The aides need a place to sit and one of my mother’s chairs was replaced after it broke. The replacement chair was from the building and likely belonged to a previous resident who passed away. But now the chair was passing away and couldn’t be fixed by the maintenance man. My mother announced that the other chair in the room belonged to the desk as part of a set and no one was allowed to sit on it, leaving the aide with a broken chair and sitting at the side edge of it. “I’m sorry, but people who weigh 200 pounds sit on my chair and move back and forth and pray while sitting on it and break it. No one is sitting at my desk chair. I am not buying a new chair.”
• The aide returned to my mother’s apartment after lunch and found everything dark. She began calling to my mother in a panic. My mother was in the bathroom. “It’s 2:00 Am, why are you here, go home!”
  “No, Pauline, I am coming back from lunch, it is 2:00 PM, you fell asleep and you got confused.” My mother insisted it was the middle of the night. The aide opened the blinds to show her it was daylight. It took her a while to re-orient herself.

So, there you have it, most of it. You can talk to my mother one minute and she is completely cogent and the next, well, the next you wonder what she is thinking, where the ideations come from. I’ll tell you: they come from clogging arteries, tired thoughts, a lifetime of self-protection, mixed in with The Great Depression, World War II, being the last survivor of a family, and the end approaching. “I know what I am talking about. I worked for lawyers my whole life. I worked for Mayor Koch. I am not crazy.”

And of course when a person says they are not crazy, you begin to wonder if they are, or you are.

Yes, she worked for lawyers. For years. Not a whole lifetime but it may feel like it.
No, she didn’t work directly for Mayor Koch but she may have met him while she worked for a community agency that hosted meetings and luncheons with city officials.

“Sit down, Ma,” I said after a recent tirade. And like a compliant child, she did, in her chair, looking smaller than ever.
“Take it easy. There’s nothing wrong, nothing to worry about, nothing going on, take a deep breath, just relax.”

I left, leaving my tote bag behind; when I got home I had a glass of wine. Or Two.

I opened the box from The Art Institute of Chicago that my mother told me to take, lest someone steal the contents. In it was stuff, most notably, two glass hearts and a watch whose battery died years ago.

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

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