During the last week or so I have been receiving phone calls from my mother. My mother calls frequently to make sure that if there is something she needs I am on it a.s.a.p.

She called and told me to get her a new commode. The instructions were to call her long-term care, but I knew before hand that just sending out the command does not get the order placed. You need a PRESCRIPTION. You need a CODE. Invariably, as this time, it doesn’t go through because something is missing or wrong and I end up making at least two more phone calls.

Then there was the order for Preservation A-Reds 2. My mother heard an ad for it and decided this would be her cure for her legal blindness. We stopped taking her for the shot-in-the-eye which didn’t seem to be doing much of anything for her macular degeneration. I had been getting her the version of this preparation from the doctor’s office but if I recall, she complained that it was too-something and I think she stopped taking it. But the TV knows best and so I put in an order for the stuff she heard about, from Amazon.

I returned home yesterday to another message on the machine for an order. There was my mother’s voice urgently dictating, reporting what she had just seen on television. “The man just told  everyone about this wrinkle cream, night cream” that she wants. (She told me I should get some for myself.) This was the order of orders! More important than a commode! More important than being able to see! It could be gotten at Walmart according to the man on the whatever she was watching. (A place where I do not set foot). Back to the Amazon website I go! I did a bit of comparison pricing, picked the best and shipped the product my mother heard about on this program or ad or whatever, that would remediate the lines and wrinkles on her soon-to-be 102 year old face. It would make her young again. It would make her happy.  The next time I would see her she would question me with the usual: “Do I look too bad?” In her message that I played a few times, she said: “I bet you are listening to this and you are laughing.”

But I suppose that if you are almost 102 years old and still concerned about your appearance, it’s not such a bad thing.

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

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