Rough Draft of a Rough Day

            She’s more confused tonight than she has ever been.  We never watch TV after the 6:30 p.m. news, but she wants to tonight.  I find a channel that plays the oldies.  Over the course of the evening, we watch “M*A*S*H*” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Dick VanDyke.”  Every minute or two (I am not exaggerating) she asks what we are watching.  I turn off the TV at 9 p.m. and help her get a bowl of ice cream.  After a bite, she says it doesn’t taste good to her (that’s a first) and wants to go to bed.  Getting into her pajamas takes a while because she makes several trips to the bathroom and a couple more to the kitchen for another sip of water.  She does not want to bring the water glass to her bedside.

            It has been a long, hard day for me with the grief of this being her last day at home and her not knowing it.  The little routines that have come to define my days over the past two months are bittersweet today:  answering her repeated questions, reheating her coffee, refilling her fizzy water, turning on the classical music station, reassuring her when she is surprised she feels weak (which is every time she stands up), hearing random memories told in a cyclical fashion . . . “Mrs. Clefish was our country school teacher.  She was awful.  She had two fat daughters and was raising them alone.”  Pause for 30 seconds.  “We hated country school.  Mrs. Clefish was terribly underqualified.  I wonder what happened to her daughters.”  Pause for 30 seconds.  “Poor Mrs. Clefish . . .”

            Half of a mini-cinnamon roll for breakfast; a bite of egg salad, one sugar snap pea pod, and three grapes for lunch; a couple bites of casserole and two small pieces of cucumber for supper; a couple sips of Ensure; a taste of ice cream; two bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino; and about a cup of fizzy water:  this is all she consumed today.  She is not hungry, she says. 

            Tomorrow has cast guilt and grief over today.  Tomorrow we move her, unawares.  Tomorrow everything changes.  I hope that she will forget this betrayal quickly, that she soon feels at home in her new quarters.  I hope I will be able to forgive myself for handing over her care to someone else and feeling relieved about it.