This post was begun on Saturday night, April 25, 2020.

This evening we ordered dinner in to support our local restaurants but I don’t know what I ate; I was too distracted and had a need to contact Candy, the aide, before she left for the night. Her working a 12 hour shift can’t be easy and after yesterday I wanted to know if things had calmed down. My mother sleeps a lot and sips a little of this  and that, certainly barely enough to sustain her, and yet she hangs on.

Four o’clock was the witching hour, as it was yesterday, the painful toe kicked in but this time the agony was alleviated by an Advil. The day seemed quieter, the vibe in my gut was quieter. And then the chat with Candy began, with my food in front of me—it would soon be pushed away.

“She was talking to her dad.” She was telling him, “Papa, you look nice, and she tell him to tell her Mom that she miss eating her pancakes.”

OK, so what do we have here? An hallucination, a pre-death visitation? Wishful thinking? A little of everything?

Candy continued: “She calling me MaMa sometimes.”

And I said, “who knows, maybe they are coming for her.”
And Candy said, “I was thinking the same thing.” “…she told me not to bother her I must go away she want to die….she asked me to go and let her die.”

Candy said, ” I told her she is not going anywhere she keep saying she love me.”

I pushed my food away and called. When my mother got on the phone, she said, “Susie, Susie, thank you for calling me.” She said she was so tired, that she felt like she lived through a war. She asked how I was. She thanked me over and over for everything. And then came the I love you’s. Over and over, again and again.

Clearly something was happening, changing. I did a tarot card layout and it showed a struggle but the card in her position was the Judgment card; what she was doing, the thanking, the loving, the absence of criticism, was self-judgment, a kind of evaluation. It is a card of karma. Her voice was closer to normal but it was hard for her to talk.

“Mom, I hope you have a good night.”

“You too, darling, sweetheart, you work so hard.” And a few more rounds of darlings and sweethearts. I was swallowing tears; THIS was my dinner, seeing her transformation to serenity despite the profound fatigue of the 102 years she has lived. There was no more accusing the aide of stealing, no more fury, no more seeing nonexistent smoke in the room or smelling phantom fish frying in the hall; the end was battering her with reality and truth; even though she is blind she could finally see, via a new reality that had been spurred on by an insidious virus. A virus that was the last push to the cliff’s edge.

How many more blogs will there be?

This post was written Sunday, April 26, 2020

My mother is now a petulant child who, when the aide tried to turn her on her side to avoid bedsores, threw the supporting pillow on the floor: Bedsores are on the horizon. The Hospice social worker called to say she was going for a visit. The aide said, my mother told her, upon being asked a load of questions: “I don’t think I like you very much.”

Years ago, I worked with a social worker who would visit his mother in a nursing home during lunch. Upon his return one day, he related that his mother welcomed her fifty-something year old son warmly and grabbed him by the crotch. He was no longer her son but a love interest. He took it in his stride. I don’t know what my reaction was beyond shock, but now I can relate. Read on.

The night-aide told the day-aide that at 1:00 AM my mother had a visitation from my father, “my husband is here!” and there were sex antics going on all night; imagine YOUR mother screaming ,”FUCK ME!,” all night! The aide was able to intervene with some soup and juice but that didn’t last long. When the morning aide arrived the two were talking in the doorway and my mother (and father) were at it again, my mother in sex position, pounding her diapered crotch and shooing the aide away.

My mother the porn star! My father the stud! Where did this come from? Where did MY mother learn this? I am the mortified, horrified product of these two. My mother, the filterless-being with a tangled brain that is weaving the past, present and private memories. “Fuck me!!!!!!” “It’s my husband.” Well at least it’s HIM, it could have been Cary Grant and then where would we be?

Where am I?

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 is here