It’s bad enough to lose your mom mentally to dementia, for her to not know you’re her daughter, for her to not know your kids that she used to love so much, but now she’s starting to fail physically. The UTI that a few years ago wouldn’t have made her miss a beat, damn near landed her a stay in the hospital last week. It did land us in the ER for five hours, and she’s still not steady on her feet.

I knew something was very wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. It started with her becoming increasingly shaky and being very quiet. Quiet is not like her. I told my father that we had to get her seen, that she wasn’t drinking enough, that she was having trouble even feeding herself. He seemed hesitant, not sure what to do, so I called my sister Sissy for back up. Sissy came and we carried our mother down thee steps and out to the car and straight to the ER. All the while me promising her that it would be all right, that I would not leave her.

They came to the car and took her right back, and I was able to stay with her the entire time. They wrapped her in warm blankets, took blood, and started hooking mom up-this she did not like. I held her hand through almost all of it, and that was good because she really wanted to pull that IV. I kept telling her that it would just be for a little while, that if all went well we’d go home soon. Her eyes, it was all in there, the fear and the trust, and I told myself how bad I would hate me if they decided to keep her.

But we were lucky, half-way through the IV fluids she started to perk up a bit. She told me my sister’s ass was fat. There’s the feisty mommy I’ve grown used to! The doctor ordered an IV antibiotic and some potassium drink. He told us that they could keep her, and as my sister and I both shook our heads no, he said he felt that since it was not life threatening and that being in a strange place would be more upsetting than beneficial, we could take her home so long as we strictly followed up on his orders. Of course we would. I said, “See that? I told you we would get you fixed up and back home.” She smiled at me finally.

We were able to walk her up the steps by the time she got home, but it’s been up and down since then. Saturday morning she seemed well on the mend when she went out for follow up blood work, but by that evening she was again having trouble walking and feeding herself. We wheeled her to the steps in a computer chair and Cleetus got behind her and carried her up, my dad reached for her arm and she snapped, “Don’t you fucking touch me!” I stood there trying to reconcile how she was being carried by the man she’s been kicking out of the house every chance she gets for the past year and slapping away help from the man she loves.

But there’s no real reconciling of any of this, the not knowing what we’re going to face day to day, my fathers’ initial inability to act, the helpless despair in his eyes as he told me he maybe could have carried her, that he used to be able to just whisk her up and carry her anywhere…none of it, there’s just the dull ache of inevitable acceptance. I tell him, “Dad, I know, but you just can’t risk it now, Cleetus is plenty strong, he doesn’t mind, let him help.”

There’s a stairlft in our future. And probably a transport chair. I can’t have her isolated to that bedroom if she doesn’t have to be.  

Next month my little family is going to a wedding. My nephew Adam is getting married, and we’re all excited and happy to be going. An invitation that includes our kids? Oh, yes! I even got a new dress for the occasion. It is gorgeous, and I know just the kind of earrings I want to wear with it. I could make them, in fact, I used to. I used to make and sell them. Why don’t I do that anymore? What the hell happened to me?

Tonight will be a short post, but meaningful to me, and anyone who knew Edger. With his memorial coming up, and our group growing by leaps and bounds I just wanted to take a moment to reflect.

I wonder if you knew your reach, my friend. I like to think you did, I like to think you know still, that you can see all the people you never met, but still affected, who miss you terribly.

I’m left to imagine what you would have said as the Snowden doc won the Oscar, or after the John Oliver interview, and I miss your dry wit in the group. And I know I’m far from alone in missing that.

Most of all, as we hit the milestone of 15 thousand members, I hope that you’d be proud of the job we’re doing, me and your friends who stepped up to help after the devastating loss of you.

I’ll end by saying thank you, Edger, for everything, but more than anything, what you always said to me: thank you for being you.

Every other Saturday night here at chez triv there’s a poker game. My nephew/godson Jon and his girl, Jen come over and play Texas Hold ‘Em with me and Cleetus. The game lasts about four hours and it’s my respite, my time off. My mom and dad retire to their room and watch tv–usually. This week my dad dozed off and we had company at the table.

My mom doesn’t remember much, in fact, she doesn’t know who the hell I am. She likes me, I’m her BFF, but she doesn’t know my name. The one thing she does remember is that she smokes. This has become a problem. A big one. It isn’t enough anymore just to hide all the lighters, she’s at the point where she’s dangerous. She burns holes in her clothes, knocks the cherry off the end of her cig, she’s even put her smoke out right on the tablecloth, a brand new tablecloth, I don’t mind saying. Want to know the best part? She wasn’t enjoying it much. She would make “yukky” faces and even say, “Blech!” while exhaling, but she wanted to smoke. You can’t convince a person with dementia they don’t want to smoke, they think you’re crazy and evil.

Tomorrow me and Cleetus are headed into Dan’s school to make gummies with his class. There’s only six students, so I have plenty of molds and ingredients and all that, but I’ve never been that mom who’s at school volunteering for things left and right. I’m kind of tied up here at home taking care of my mom. But this year Dan’s class has this star student of the month thing, where every week a different thing revolves around him and on the last week, if possible, the parents come in to do a favorite activity with the class. I’m a little nervous.

It’s not that I’m not good with kids, for twenty years before I had any I was the fun aunt. I was also the friend who if I had any sort of demonstration or home party, yeah, bring your kids, I can have an activity all set up for them. You want to decorate a fancy bag, kids? here ya go, stickers, glitter glue, foam shapes, whatever you need. I like kids, I like doing crafts with kids. And if it’s a craft that’s new to them or even just new supplies–oh, it’s almost like magic. I’ve had a table full of kids making bags, jewelry, puppets, all kinds of things, too many times to count. So why am I nervous?

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve done it with any kids other than my two boys, but I’m pretty sure it’s like riding a bike, so I shouldn’t be nervous about that. Is it because they’re special needs? Nah. My niece used to bring her adult clients from the local workshop over and when Barb wanted to make a dreamcatcher, I said, okay, let’s make one, and out came the supplies. I believe that dreamcatcher hung in her room until the day she died. I don’t have a problem working with any kind of special needs. I think it’s the whole going into the school thing.

I just associate school with authority. It makes me uncomfortable. I have a difficult time reconciling school and fun together in my mind. And this thing not taking place at my house, my OCD-ish nature keeps making me sure that I’ll forget something that will turn the whole thing into a fiasco and Dan will be humiliated in front of his friends. I know that’s not reasonable, but that doesn’t stop me.

Anyway, wish me luck for tomorrow, I have to go check my supplies again, it’s been over an hour and some may have escaped.

She’s done nothing but rap on the table and tell us all that this is her house for days now. She tried to throw Dad out yesterday. I’m going to guess that was because Cleetus wasn’t available. When my father went into the kitchen she smiled at me and confided that she might just take off her shoe and sneak up and hit him with it. Once again, I reminded her that she’d better keep those shoes on her feet if she’d liked to keep them. She took umbrage, oh yes, deep umbrage at that. Like that bothers me, heh!

I had to go out yesterday, and while she will usually nap in the afternoon, it was as if she knew and got a sudden burst of energy. I had to wake my poor father to come downstairs and sit with her while Cleetus and I went to Dan’s school for a meeting. I thought for sure he would have gotten her to lay down by the time we had returned, but no dice. How the hell does she keep going? She’s up by five or six every morning. She allows Cleetus to get her coffee and light her a smoke–then she begins to spew venom at him. Just part of her daily routine. He’s always sweet to her, but the ’40’s style gun moll that lives inside her sometimes can’t wait to let him know that she’ll fix him, all right. I think we all know by now that she “knows a guy.”

This morning after an hour of the table slamming and carrying on I said, “Ma, for Christ’s sake, we know it’s your house, could you please stop pounding the table?” She was outraged. “Why? Why should I?”–say it with me now–“THIS IS MY HOUSE!!!” Oh boy. “Yeah, Ma, I know, but my head is killing me, I got a headache, could you tell me it’s your house without pounding for a bit?” No….no, apparently not. In fact, I could go to hell. Well- shit, Mom, some days feels like I’m already there. But that’s just the bad pain days.

There’s been too many bad days in a row lately. I need a break. It doesn’t look like I’m likely to get one, but poker night is coming, so at least there’s that.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it here, but a month or so ago one of Baboo’s teachers asked him why he wasn’t in the gifted program. He told her he didn’t know. He came home and asked me, well I didn’t know either. Turns out that public schools test for that in second grade. Baboo wasn’t in public school in second grade, so he had a Terra Nova test instead of whatever they took. So–I was advised to call the guidance counselor, as surely, Baboo is gifted.

The first job I ever had was at a shoe factory. The first spring that I was able to drive, my uncle–the daytime foreman on the cutting side of the factory–told me to get a few of my friends to get our working papers and come on up to the factory for part-time jobs. That way, we would beat out the college kids coming home for spring break for the summer full-time positions. As I now had a car I wanted to put gas in and insurance to pay, this sounded good to me, so off to the shoe factory I went. That job ruined me.

I have a lot of facebook friends, and by that I mean plenty of strangers I friended for gameplay and maybe 100 people I actually know, kind of know, or people I used to know. I see a lot of hateful divisive crap posted, mostly political, and mostly from people I don’t really know. Game players, team mates, I just scroll on by or hide their posts for the most part, but lately I’ve started unfriending them. And I’m talking both left and right, yes, mostly right-wing, because they have some really far out there hate, but I can’t deal with the hateful shit from either side. I don’t even care if I need team mates for that game anymore, if I see one more post that makes me feel slightly ill just looking at it, unfriended.

I just had to unfriend somebody I kind of knew. She used to live around here, she was friends with one of my nieces, nice kid, I thought. She moved away and we were facebook friends, facebook game team mates for a game or two, and she would post the kind of things anybody in their teens would post. Then things changed. Ugly posts. A few months back I saw a post where she basically argued against a living wage. I couldn’t believe it. Are people so petty that because they make too little they believe everybody should? Fifteen dollars an hour for burger flippers? NO WAY!!! I wanted to say, come on, little girl, anybody who works 40 hours should earn enough to live, but I didn’t.

The last straw came when she posted her deep thought that it wouldn’t surprise her if Obama changed the pictures on our currency. Now, WTF? Why? I mean, to what end? Plus, it was poorly punctuated, with misspellings aplenty, and most of all–ridiculous CT. Why does the right wing hate Obama for all the wrong reasons? And, if you call them on their crazy, why do they automatically assume that you’re a huge Obama fan? I got called a grammar nazi, okay, that’s fair, and also told to “come over here and say that.” Um…sweetie? That’s not how facebook works. This is the internet, I’m not standing anywhere nearby. I’m so tired of this “I’m hatefully ignorant and proud of it” crap. Unfriended and blocked.

I have a lot of conservative facebook friends who dislike the President, most of them don’t go posting hateful racist crap or ridiculous CT. I dislike a great many of the President’s policies. I think if you’re going to hate on a President, do it for what he’s actually doing, do it for what he’s responsible for, not for some crazy assed bullshit you think or heard he might do. This President has a veritable feast to choose from, come on, people.

When I post anything political on facebook now, it’s generally about a specific issue, an issue that I believe affects us all, like Social Security, the environment, or how both parties serve the 1% and not us, the average American. Now, I know the tea party people think they’re trying to do something about that, but they’re so not. Being divisive and hateful? Divvying people into who’s deserving and who is not? Voting dickheads who will not serve their interests any more than the last jackass into office? No, that’s not helping shit. Oh, and btw, your little tea party is funded, gets it’s talking points, and is run by people who don’t have anything but the interest of billionaires at heart. Democrats? Not much better. OFA? Go suck an egg. And that goes for most of the so-called progressive groups out there. You don’t serve our interests anymore either, and I learned that the hard way.

So yeah, I’m done with it. The only exceptions I’m making are for comedy. Some things are just downright hilarious. The YouTube of the homeschooling mom who thinks the dinosaur bones came from dragons? Yeah, that cracked me up. But if people just have post after post of ugly hateful shit? Done. I am done. The great unfriending has begun.