Here I was living my La-di-da-life, thinking that all had been solved, that everything had become worry-proof,
that my mother was so much better: She fooled me! The aide texted me and asked me to call my mother, who was seemingly cogent, asking for the family, how were we all, what was going on? Offering unsolicited advice: You should do this or that or the other… But then the threads of the weave began to wear and fray. This is the way things go. The illusion, then, the wearing. The edges of the fabric begin to pull. 

They don’t let me call you, they don’t let me have the phone. Why shouldn’t I call you if I need to? They are controlling me. They prevent me from speaking to you. Why!?

I had to excuse myself to get dinner going.
“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t eat yet!?” Doesn’t that caring sound “normal”!?

I know why the phone is not accessible. She hides the phone from the aides and calls the police, dials wildly, dials wrong numbers, people call back in alarm.

I had a long talk with the “main” aide, I let her vent. She has just been through this with her father, who lost his mind to Alzheimer’s, who wandered South Queens barefoot on cold nights, who fought to find the front door and oft could not, in order to make his escape. She has just been through this and now she has my mother for whom she has been working for four years. My mother, who morphs daily into someone unrecognizable. Who sometimes, in moments of clarity, apologizes for her own behavior, only to, moments later, curse and yell, yabber throughout the night for hours, attempt to get out of bed. One of the ladies who delivers the meals and who knows my mother for years was greeted with: Call the police! This aide has been holding me hostage and has not fed me for three months!” The woman went from alarm to pity-for both my mother and the aide.

My mother threw the clergy out: she liked when he initially visited; they would sing and carry on. He came the other day and brought her cake. She told him not to bother to come back.

She told the hospice nurse who visits once or twice a week that the doctor hadn’t visited, when in fact he had just left. She called the aide a liar for saying so.

Where things had been quiet for a bit at night, now we have the aide up again: to wit: the aide awoke at 3:00 am to find my mother  sitting up in bed naked with a wet diaper on her head: The entire bed was soaked with urine. The aide used her own money to use the laundry as she feared what my mother would do if she caught the aide in the money drawer.

My mother took two new boxes of tissues and scattered the contents on the floor. She threw spoons behind the bed and into the garbage.

The antics go on and on but my own brain has repressed a lot, is overloaded with visions and thoughts that I can’t associate with that of my mother, that do not belong with her or to her. It is easier to delude myself that everything is under control, even when the world is not.

My mother is losing a lot of hair. She has always had a full head of great hair and to hear it is falling out is but a symbol for what is happening to her inside. Loss.

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

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