If Then What

In the middle of the afternoon last week I received a phone call. "Susan, this is Kristie, this is not an emergency." If I were directing a scary movie, I would cue the foreboding music at the word "emergency." Because when the director of the assisted living facility where my mother lives calls, it usually isn't a happy call. This time, she informed me that twice in the last day or so, my mom had wandered off of the floor she lives on. Once she got onto the elevator and made her way to the third floor of the building (at 3 a.m.), and the other time she was found on the ground floor. The director kindly informed me that she thought it was time I move my mother into a secured "memory care" facility.

So, we have come to the point I have been dreading. The next move in my mother's life. Where I have to take her out of the place she has lived for the last 6 years, take her away from the caregivers she has grown so attached to, and move her into a safer setting.

My mother's dementia and I have been locked in a fierce battle for years. And while I won't make a pact with the devil, I will bargain with God to hang on to my mom for a while longer. I've pulled out all of my ammunition over the years.

Maybe. . .
If I move my mom closer to me.. .
If I get her new hearing aids. . .
If I get her out of the building. . .
If she gets the newspaper delivered. . .
If I try the latest in Alzheimer drugs. . .
If I hire a companion. . .
If I move her to an assisted living apartment. . .
If I move her to a smaller studio. . .
If I don't take her out of the building. . .

If I do all this then what? She will recover from dementia? My mother's senility has broken my heart more times than any boyfriend ever did.

Years ago, when my father was dying, I would walk to my office and look at the faces of the people passing me by. I would marvel about how you can't tell what people are dealing with just by looking at them.

So today I am donning my (figurative) t-shirt with the saying across the front "I'm in pain, people!!"

Grasshopper

Last summer my kids and I were in the car with my mom. My mom always rides shotgun with the kids in the back. My son use to ask Grandma "Who Am I?" This game was actually an effective way for me to gauge her cognitive decline. Usually, she would remember his name. He would then point to his sister, "Grandma, Grandma, what's her name?" Often times my mom would falter at my daughter's name. She would usually smile sweetly and say "I don't remember." Then he would point at me and say "Grandma, who is that?" It was clear my mom was going to say something! My mom, my smart, funny mom knew who I was! She was going to answer him! She replied "That's the lady who drives me!"

I am reminded of the old Kung-Fu T.V. series on in the 70's. Where if I were young Caine I would ask "Master, why should we love those who forget us?" and the blind old Master would reply "Grasshopper, love is confined in memory, but translucent in deeds."

This painting is the third in my series of bugs. I love this grasshopper. I took artistic license to change his colors and I think he is quite dashing!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly
Ugh! I hate when I forget to turn off the date on the camera! Original pastel.

Where would I be if I were a hat?

My mother's winter trademark is her white fur hat that she purchased at least 30 years ago at the Chicago Marshall Field's store on State Street. The personnel at the senior living complex where she resides knows her hat, her neighbors know her hat, and most importantly, my mother with dementia knows her hat. That hat turns up her vanity. When she places it on her head she always has to check herself out in the mirror! So imagine my broken heartedness when it suddenly came up missing. She had it at my house, I took her home and placed it on the shelf in her closet and the next time I wanted to take her out it was missing. I searched everywhere for it. I looked through every drawer, tore through the closet, looked under the bed, but it never turned up. For several weeks every time I went to her apartment I searched all over again, because the dementia robbed my mom of putting things back in places that made sense, I would search the cabinet in the bathroom, the kitchen cabinets, all the drawers I had previously searched. I know from experience with misplaced hearing aids that anything "lost" is usually in some quirky hiding place known only to my mom and if you are patient and wait long enough, the missing item turns up inexplicably. Last week I did my usual search, looking in all of the places that I had previously looked. It dawned on me that I had never checked in the fridge. Imagine my horror at finding a pair of dirty (very dirty) underwear balled up in the door of the fridge. Now tell me, what is more ironic? That I found a pair of dirty drawers in the fridge or that I opened the fridge to look for a hat?