People ask me frequently: “How is your mother?’ I have to say for a woman of ninety-six she is doing well. She is all there. She has made peace with her life in New York City (although she buys into the news-spin and thinks it is the most dangerous place on earth) she knows how to handle herself and lives how she pleases. She has found her “way to go.”

So, let’s not cross her. She has decided that she will remain in her room for meals and pay the fee to have them delivered. This is her assurance of quiet eating, that she won’t be stuck sitting with someone who has dementia or who is unfriendly in the main dining room. She prefers it that way.

Eating is important and losing her appetite is dangerous: she is about eighty-three pounds and the size petite-small clothing I bought for her hangs off her child-sized frame. She knows she can’t afford to get sick, for if that happens she can end up hospitalized. She adds, dramatically, I am ready to go, but if I get sick that’s the end of me. Did you catch the ambiguity there? She is ready but there’s a hint of: if I get sick and hospitalized, that is the end of me and that’s not the way I want to go.

Is any one ever really ready to check out? My mother thinks she has outlined her way to go and that it will all fall into place. Knowing her, it might.

My mother is in charge. When Bebe, one of her aides, was caught rummaging around through my mother’s things in the bathroom my mother told her she could no longer use it. She had to use a bathroom in another part of the building. “She was going through my things! She took my Dove soap!” And in its stead she left three fairly reasonable-looking but greasy facsimiles. Bebe also mentioned to my mother that she earned a lot of money on the side running a strip club. Well, that was the last of Bebe. My mom had her thrown out on her butt. You don’t steal Dove soap or run strip clubs on my mother’s dime. The agency was aghast at their employee’s behavior.

Gradually, my mother’s life has fallen into place in New York. Part of her doctrine is not to leave the building. To stay out of the cold. That includes going out to attend Thanksgiving in the home of family.

One of many unseen holiday turkeys

My mother has always put her health before her family. That’s how she’s lived so long. She knows how to be selfish and how to say “no.” She is not like other mothers. Nope, I don’t think so. She doesn’t want to get “excited.” For my mother, excited is just another word for “near-death experience.”

Slowly there are signs of temporal memory loss encroaching. She’ll relate a tale and the time sequence doesn’t make sense. Or the people in that sequence couldn’t have been there.

She is becoming more and more comfortable away from people. “I finished the crossword puzzle book, please get me another one!”

I have followed behind her making sure her life is in place. I continue to stay on the phone for hours. I continue to complete endless paperwork. I continue to do chores, getting the things needed, wanted and wished for. She was certified for financial aid. Now she has to be re-certified. This will occur every six months, her circle new of life, and it is my job to get everything in order.

People pat me on the back and say: “Way to go! You’re a good daughter, look at all you’ve done!” But the fact is that all the stress that ensued, literally saving my mother’s life, left me with a migraine condition that became the new norm. I have an ocular migraine event almost every day, sometimes more than once, or some other kind of migraine. My body seems to have reacted to about two years of poor eating and sleeping. I have tried everything to get myself back in order, but it is as slow as snails.

What a way to go.

This blog is part of a series.

The next installment is:

Part 79: Observing. A Look At My Mother