Cheating

            Studying her acrostic puzzle, Mom asks, “How often do I cheat?”

            “I don’t know . . . as often as you want,” I answer. 

            A few seconds pass before her proclamation:  “I’m not even sure I know how to cheat.”

            Laughing, I say, “Well, that will keep you an honest woman!”

            Minutes later, she comments, “Oh.  That’s what I’m doing.  I’m working puzzles.”

            We are listening to classical music this evening.  Actually, Mom has been listening to classical music all day while I have been agonizing over care-giving decisions.   Predictably, the visit with Sue from Island Home Nursing did not a happy mother make.  I believe indignation best describes Mom’s reaction to the news that she will have the company of an in-home caregiver when I am away from the house.

            With that much-dreaded milestone reached, another looms almost immediately.  On Monday, when I stopped in to Island Home Nursing, I believed that a few visits a week would provide exactly the respite needed.  But today is Friday, and much has gone wrong since Monday.  Each day Mom gets noticeably weaker and more confused.  I worry about her falling when she inches her way down the hallway.  She eats, literally, a couple small bites at each meal—and that much only because my brother and I coax her to.  Yesterday I suddenly realized that she is too weak to bathe herself any more.  What was possible a week ago is no longer feasible.  Thus, my brothers and I decided today to take the next step in the process started almost exactly a year ago.

            In January 2011, I visited Home Place, a memory-care residential facility.  Very impressed with what I saw, I went ahead with the preliminary paperwork and made the refundable administrative fee deposit.  Today I contacted Wendy, the community relations director, who will set up an in-home evaluation.   Mom might be entering residential care in a couple weeks.

            Thirty minutes have passed, and Mom still sits, pen poised in hand, studying her puzzle.  A flute concerto plays in the background.  I am writing on my laptop in the living room, ready to jump to attention should she need me.  Soon I will help her get ready for bed.  Somehow, today’s decisions feel like cheating, but I still hope to remain an honest woman.

Through the Mist

            It’s pretty bad when I get excited about an unexpected trip to the pharmacy and grocery store.

            The call from the doctor’s office came at suppertime last night:  Mom’s blood work indicated infection, so an antibiotic prescription was called in to Lind’s.  That meant a trip to pick it up this morning.

            Leaving the house on a weekday morning is a deviation from my routine of morning flute practice.  However, leaving the house to do an errand all by myself has become a rather novel event.  I was very excited about a little trip to town.

            Once Mom was up and settled into her recliner with coffee to drink and classical music to listen to, I was off.

            Even though the sun was hiding somewhere in the Northwest sky, I felt as though I was driving out from under a cloud (not the white, billowing beautiful things, but the heavy, foggy mist).  A little stab of joy cut through the gray in the ten miles between Greenbank and Freeland.

            With that jab (joy + stab = jab), I remembered again how I am no good to anyone when I let my burdens become so heavy, as I have of late.  I now understand the need for respite care.  And, thankfully, mine is on the way.  Susan from Island Home Nursing will be doing the home visit just two days from now to get some in-home care started for Mom.

            I picked up the prescription at Lind’s and then walked across the parking lot to Payless Foods.  There is nothing quite as invigorating as a list of sale items to pick up on a Wednesday morning. 

            In the store, I found something I was not looking for:  the tender welling of compassion for random strangers going about their daily business (a focused love not my own, a heartfelt silent prayer, a sense of peace and joy, the tiniest comprehension of God’s love for each and every human being in the world).

            Then followed the drive home, dotted with bursts of prayer for whoever came to mind.  I am so grateful that God broke through the mist once again. 

           

Eight to Eight

In bed at eight, up at eight, and probably little sleeping in between:  Mom wakes up this morning not feeling well, wondering why, and asking what she has been doing of late.  It’s a familiar refrain now:  “What am I supposed to do?”

“You were going to go sit in the living room and drink your coffee.  But first let’s get your robe on so you are warm enough.”

She inches her way to her recliner as I heat her high-calorie coffee drink in the microwave.  I bring it to her along with her former favorite breakfast treat:  a mini cinnamon roll.  She does not want the roll.

Three hours later, she goes back to her room to get dressed.  I hear her singing an old song that she and her college friends made up as a parody to the sentimental and hugely popular tune of the late 1940s, “White Wings.”   (“White wings, they never grow weary. / They carry me cheerily over the sea; / Night comes, I long for my dearie, / I’ll spread out my White Wings, and sail home to thee.”)  I rather enjoy Mom’s parody better:  “Black socks, they never grow dirty. / The longer you wear them, the stronger they get; / Sometimes I dream of the laundry, / But something inside me says, ‘Don’t do them yet.’”

And now I will fix lunch.  Maybe Mom will eat a bite or two of yogurt with fresh fruit.  Then she will retreat to her recliner to nap and listen to classical music.  Later this afternoon I will take her for a ride in the car, her favorite entertainment.  This evening I will make another meal that she will not eat.

That is the sum of her eight to eight day.  I’m glad she can still sing about her black socks.

Friday

            I sit at my computer in my room tonight so I can be close by while Mom takes her shower.  The water is not on very long, and some minutes after she turns it off, she calls for me.

            “Jan?  Could you come in here a minute?  I need help with my buttons.”

            I enter the bathroom and there she sits on the toilet seat with her pajamas on but the shirt unbuttoned.  I chat with her, trying to make her feel at ease as I button her up. 

            “What do I do with my towels?” she asks.

            “Oh, just leave them there on the floor,” I answer.  “I’ll wash them.”

            “Do I look alright?” she asks.

            “You look fine,” I reassure her.

            “I’m so tired,” she comments.  “What am I supposed to do now?”

            “You’ll want to go back in the living room and sit in your recliner.  I’ll heat you up some chocolate Ensure.”

            And so now the washing machine is running, a small load of items including the stained long underwear I discovered earlier.  Today has been her worst day yet.  She eats only a few bites, declares she is not hungry at all, has a hard time getting up from her chair, and is slow and unsteady on her feet. 

            Is this what the end looks like? 

Brewed Beverages

            I do not have enough hours in the day to drink all of my brewed beverages.  It is a serious problem.

            Mornings are incomplete (and incoherent) without a couple cups of coffee made in my new Sowden’s Oskar Soft Brew porcelain coffee pot.  Talk about smooth!  The steeping method makes for a far less acidic cuppa than the standard drip coffeemaker.  Admittedly, I have become somewhat of a coffee snob, though I still leave the roasting and grinding to others.

            When I discovered roasted cacao bean beverages several months ago, I slurped down a potful (four 5 ounce cups) at a time in the evening.  That was until I made the connection between theobromine, chocolate’s close cousin to caffeine, with my insomnia.   How I love an afternoon mug or two of antioxidant-rich and calorie-poor brewed dark chocolate! 

            But it is on winter evenings that I crave a nice hot drink that won’t keep me awake. Unfortunately, herbal tea always smells better than it tastes.  So last week as I browsed through the Star Store in Bayview, I decided to try something new:  Teeccino.  The ingredients list is pretty impressive—or strange, depending on your grounding in the health food movement.  I’ll leave off the word “organic”:  carob, barley, chicory, dates, orange peel, almonds, natural citrus flavor, figs.  I hoped it would taste reasonably good, but it turned out to be utterly delicious! 

            So, as I said before, it is hard to fit all these brewed beverages in a single day.  But because I love each and every one of them, I’m keeping up with my daily grinds.