Every evening I wait for the phone calls that will tell me who will be coming the next day. The aide, the PT, the nurse, and now that mom’s on palliative care, the nurse practitioner will be making house calls as well. The nurse and the physical therapist are always the same, but the aides have been different every time so far, I jot down their names along with the time window they give me.
The bedroom has been cleared of a washbasket and a storage tote, to make room for a commode and a chair or two for visitors. I tell my boys to please keep the downstairs presentable. Yeah, I know they all come to look after mom, don’t give a hoot about the house, have seen plenty worse, go straight up the steps…I know all that. I also know that the mom who raised me would want them to walk into a decent looking house. It might seem silly, but there’s not much I can do for her now, and I know she would want it.
I’m trying to keep a sense of normalcy for the boys, but I wonder to myself–what is normal for them? Their mommom has been anything but for the past year. But she’s been here, talked to them, liked them, loved them, and now she’s not. She’s mostly unresponsive in her room. If this had happened a year ago I think it might have devastated Baboo, he was her boy, her buddy, but in the past year her aggression has been so scary to both boys, I don’t think they know how to feel now. We’ll figure it out.
Me, I feel like I’m living a waking dream, I try to keep busy, but I can’t seem to concentrate on the book I started. I made some earrings, I made a cake, I play games, I make the appointments, I make hamburger gravy for the second time this week because mom can still mange to eat that. Will this be weeks? Months? There’s no telling at this point. I worry about dad, he doesn’t call me to help when he should, I give him hell, but it doesn’t matter. Am I going to have to start following him around? Listening for movement in that room? He can’t keep trying to change her by himself, he is going to be 80 years old and that shit is totally unnecessary.
For now things are okay. We have help coming in, and family showing up, people I can call if I need to. I keep telling myself I’ll be okay, I’ll get through this, I’ve done this before. But it wasn’t my mom. I used to tell her that I knew I wasn’t her favorite…but that’s okay, she’s still mine.
2 comments
Author
So that’s something.
and yours as you go down this last road with yer ma…