Cookie Time and Normal Life

The cookies have arrived. As if there wasn't already enough to do...now there are 300 boxes of GS cookies to distribute. That would be $1074 worth. It will give us something to do...

All joking aside; my mom needs something to do. She is not doing well. She remembers certain things really well, but then with other things she doesn't fare quite as well, and the nights are really tough. I think she will need a year's supply of Ambien.

I have asked her to please not throw anything away, but since she is in even a bigger "hog" than I am, she doesn't always comply. And the things she keeps are not valuable, whereas she went to pitch a couple of photos the other day that had quite a bit of significance to me from my childhood. I am daunted by the fact that basically every item in my parent's apartment of almost 50 years will need to pass through my hands before being trashed or treasured.

That will be my job for the foreseeable future and probably well beyond.

Thank God for my church family and friends. We haven't eaten this well, I think, ever...it is such a blessing as I float from laundry to cookie delivery, to phone call, to errand, to hug, to negotiating through the aftermath of death. There is so much to learn and the crash course isn't the way to do it. And the stories....yes, another book.

Simplify

The crusade to simplify my life continues.

Today's focus was on making sure I had enough margin in my day. I started out quietly and alone, and am finishing it quietly and alone, with God and my thoughts.

I woke up early and Howie had set the coffee to go off last night. This is a huge gift to me. To wake up and have the coffee already brewed (which almost happened...the clock was set correctly, except it was on pm not am...) is a huge gift. But I didn't have to wait long, and I retreated back to bed with my Bible and a couple of books. I am reading one on the Spiritual Disciplines, and coincidentally enough, the chapter is on simplicity.

I began my day in quiet, peace and order, which sustains the quiet sense of resolve I have adopted. Resolve not to be hurt, not to hurt, and not to be manipulated, whether that is the intent or not.

More of a painful story continues to be woven; I trust the purposes and lessons that this time holds for me.

I went back to work today. This is also a mostly solitary undertaking, and I enjoy that. It comes as no coincidence or surprise that I find myself working in long term care settings. I did call the neuropsychology department at the hospital today to see if there was any inkling at all as to how long my mom would need to wait for her evaluation appointment. I will be driving to NYC next Wednesday to go to a dinner with my dad, and she is anxious to go home. There is work to be done! I keep reminding her she has appointments ahead, and if they are not taken care of before next week, then she will need to return for them. She is not pleased about this. In the meantime, she toasted a bagel in the toaster oven without slicing it. Mistake? Confusion? Normal? Who knows. What I do know is that I will be relieved when I get a professional's assessment, regardless of what it reveals.

And Matt. Haven't had much contact with him. He has been out late and sleeping late, not in step with my schedule. I know his original plans were to return to Ithaca tomorrow, after his ortho appointment for his wrist. I hope that plan is still in effect. I am anxious, yes, anxious (as opposed to eager, although I am that also) for him to complete his internship hours, which seemed so "in the bag" and are now feeling uncertain to me, so he can move on. I have often remarked that middle aged women (that would be me) and twenty something year old guys don't belong under the same roof. That feels more true now than ever. Our schedules and life choices just don't seem to be in sync. I did write him a letter today so I have shared my piece.

So here I am in the middle of the sandwich of the sandwich generation. Can I at least make it a gourmet selection rather than a slice of generic bologna between two slices of white bread?

Peace.

My Mom's New Room

I guess I am ready to take a deep breath and write about my mom's trip to the ER earlier this week. It was Monday. Apparently Mondays are always busy nights in ER's (who knew?) but this particular night coming off Christmas weekend was even more chaotic. When they finally got my mom back in a "room" it was a curtained off area of the far end of the hallway.

It was this event that prompted the emptying out and moving of my "office" out of the space I had been toying with re-carpeting in hot pink shag carpet (Tianna has it in her room and I love it) and painting the walls alternating pink and blackboard chalk so I could scribble inspiration right on the walls. How cool would that be?

It used to be called the "angel" room because I have a host of angels, including my collection of Willow Tree figures guarding the space.
It has gone through several transitions over the years, once upon a time being set up as a small guest room where my mom stayed when she visited years ago, when all our bedrooms were occupied, before the boys were away at school and after Nicole was born. It really is a delightful space. Calm, serene and uncluttered. As a matter of fact, I am tucked under the covers with one of the cats curled up by my feet, writing in this newly created oasis.
And the formation of the room was based on relationship; the relationship with my mom and the fact that stairs have become harder for her and she needs a safe, private and comfortable place to stay when she is here.

And in the process of moving my stuff upstairs, I have organized, purged, pruned and thus simplified as well. It all feels so right.

There are a few familiar items here; artwork my dad (an artist) has done, the one hanging above the doll is a portrait of my mom. The plates both belonged to her mom and one of the older dolls was hers as well. It is a lovely, peaceful, quiet space.

Which is not what the ER was. Back to my story. Monday afternoon we got back from tooling around in the car and stopped at McDonald's for something to eat. My mom didn't want anything, but we did have some leftover BBQ sauce, which ended up being significant.

I was bustling around getting the car unloaded, getting swim bags together, and doing probably seven other things all at the same time and my mom was just sitting at the table, eating something, with kind of an odd expression on her face. I asked her if she was OK, she nodded and kept chewing something, but I didn't think too much about it. I take after her, I love to snack and so does she.

But then I looked a bit more closely, because she was oddly silent and she had a funny black residue around her mouth but insisted she wasn't eating anything when I asked her what she was eating, noting that she had a black film around her lips. Then she said, "nothing except this" pointing to the BBQ sauce, and since I didn't see anything else, and the girls were arguing over how early they were going to swim (Tianna wanted to go right away, her friends were there, Nicole wanted to stay home as long as possible, her friend was at our house) and they both wanted me to help. Thank God Carolyn saved the day and drove them, saving me the trip.

Which was also a gift from God, that I was home, because not too much later my mom came downstairs and had an awful bout of diarrhea followed by vomiting, followed by more diarrhea, followed by more violent retching. Howie was also home and despite questioning about what she had eaten, specifically anything similar to charcoal (charcoal?!?!?) she denied remembering eating anything. We got her in the shower and off to the crazy ER, convinced she was bleeding internally.

I will fast forward to the part where she casually said something about the fact that she should not have eaten that cookie. Then it clicked. And I was horrified.

I had seen an open small, sample sized packet of little triangular charcoal fire starter wafers and put them aside, wondering what they were doing on the table. My mom had picked them up, she says from under the tree, thought they were cookies (now, let me tell you that being a product of the depression she regularly eats things that I would have long ago composted, I will leave it at that...) and ate one, dipping it in the BBQ sauce because it was hard and presumably didn't taste that good.

Now would be an appropriate time to let you in on the fact that there is a raging history of Alzheimer's dementia on my mom's side of the family, a fact I am desperately trying to ignore, but it is a bit like the huge elephant in the middle of the room.

I insisted she see someone in Internal Medicine the next day because my parents planned to go home today, and my dad is going to London for two weeks, and with her gait unsteadiness and unfortunate culinary choices, I just didn't feel like being in NYC in the winter for two weeks without anyone around was such a great idea.

But she is more stubborn than I am, so I knew this advice would need to come from a doc in order to have even a marginal chance of being accepted. It ended up not being a difficult sell when she didn't ace her mini mental screening exam.

They went back to the city today, on the bus together. They have something they are doing tomorrow night that they are looking forward to. And my dad leaves Tuesday and Thursday I will drive to NYC and pick her, and her two parakeets up and bring them back to Danville. She will stay until she has more medical follow up which will include a more thorough testing and some PT for her unsteady gait, and then final follow up with her primary care doctor.

I do believe God knew I would need the next six months free of commitments and deadlines to be available to my mom and serving her needs. I am grateful for His love and providential caring; I know I will continue to need it.

My dad recognized God's hand in this situation immediately and just wished my mom did as well. He commented that he wished she could see the difference it made in her outcome to be here and not in NY, for me and Howie to both be home (when we usually are not at that time of day) and for her to get care right away because she was here when it happened. It is a story that could have a very different ending if she had been in NY.