5/25/20

A pipe broke under the sink and we had no real kitchen access for a couple of days; these things always seem to happen on a holiday weekend. Some people say that when there is a broken pipe and a flood, it is due to all the negative energy in the environment. There may be some truth to that.

Just has the plumber completed the changing of pipes, just as he left, wearing his mask, having done a good job, just as he left and I was going to eat breakfast and get the kitchen back in order, you guessed it: The phone rang.

The aide, #1, was in a tizzy. My mother was ranting, again, in the background: She hadn’t eaten, was refusing food, refused to be washed, refused to be touched. The aide even called another aide in, Sally, who used to serve my mother dinner in the later shift before the 24-hour care, to give her a hand. My mother threw her out.

So there you have my mother in bed, hours after she usually eats and still hadn’t, having been awake all night, keeping the aide up all night, ranting, and now urine soaked. My mother, the perfectly coiffed star of the show, well dressed, beautifully presented, nicely put together, whose first and foremost concern was how she looked:

No more.

She was fighting for and against every minute. Battling and rattling the aide, who, in desperation, called the doctor, and was waiting for hours for him to make his rounds.

My mother took BOTH home phones and put them in a bag; she was threatening to call 911.

I told Candy (aide #1) to let me talk to her. She let me do so on her phone.

“How are you, darling?” She was in chuckle mode. I’m thinking maybe I have diverted her.
That was my entrée to begin a chat and see if she would respond properly. So I offered a dose of reality:

“Well, a pipe broke and we had a flood in the kitchen. The plumber just left. I’m cleaning up.”
“Take $500 from my money and ask him to bring me a hamburger, I want a hamburger.”
“Mom, plumbers do plumbing, they don’t deliver food.”
“If you give him enough money you’ll make sure he’ll come back, he’ll do anything.”

Then, of course, the complaints about the aide, how she brings men and hides them in the room, accusing her of pornography, thievery. How she doesn’t feed her. The agitation is spreading over the phone line. I say, “please, you have to listen and let her bathe you, you haven’t been changed since last night, you are wet!”
“I am NOT. The heat is on 80°. The bed is dry!

And then I said something I’ve been wanting to say for a long time: Mom, your parents are watching you, they miss you. If you feel life has gotten too much for you, it’s OK to let go.”

“What kind of shit is that? YOU’RE A HOAX, TOO!” and she hung up.

So much for that line about granting permission that everyone was telling me about: she’d sooner see me dead. I kind of, well,  smirked. I got to her, paid her back for my anger.

What did I feel: Did I feel guilty? No. My mother heard me, she has my permission to leave. Her quality of life is far from beneficial to herself or anyone around her.
Was I upset? Yes, but, more so for the aide.

Or not.

I needed to vent.

I have been in grieving mode for years, watching subtle changes in behavior, living in denial for quite a while and then entering the stage of anger, of fury, for years. And as a matter of fact, I have been through all of the five stages: I have bargained, I have been depressed, I have reached acceptance. I accept that my mother has left herself, bit my bit, minute by minute. Her soul is ebbing second by second and it still fights to hang in; she drowns in paranoia and claws her way back to the top of the back hole: She doesn’t want to go. Is it that she thinks I need her?That she can help or the family in some way? Or is is just plain fear, if not terror, in dealing with this transition which has become a pool of her own anger, agitation, anxiety, loathing and paranoia. Perhaps the loathing is for herself: she is no longer the beauty and never developed anything she could be proud of, except her children whom she really has no interest in.

A change in medication is coming. We’ll see if she takes it, if it works, if we can find some calm.

For all of us.

5/26/20

A call from the doctor who prescribed a drug to calm her as needed. He is the best for commiserating and we learn from one another.

A text to the aide:
How is it going today?

Hi Susie, she slept all night, she wake up at 8:00 am (a far cry from the years of waking at 5:00 am).I clean her up and give her breakfast. She is calm she said she dream a lot about birds.

She just say goodbye to the bird.

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

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