Going ... going ...

My mother has been calling me frequently of late in a state of confusion verging on anxiety. She doesn’t know where she is or how she got there and I have to reassure her that she is in her own room, at the retirement residence, surrounded by her own things. I tell her where it is located, and she is made to rest easy that she’s not in a hotel somewhere and can’t go home. She will call me upset that there is no food in the house, or that she has no carfare, or that she can’t find her glasses. She can’t see well and doesn’t know why. There are times she is convinced that she hasn’t eaten for days.

Every time I remind her that she has no food in her room, except perhaps for some cookies or milk in her fridge for tea, because she takes her meals in the dining room. She might miss breakfast, but the staff come and get her for the other meals. They won’t let her starve. She doesn’t have glasses because apparently a lens got broken and they have not been replaced, or they have been replaced and she has lost them. When I tell her to ask the nurse to phone the optometrist to order new ones, she will have forgotten by the time she hangs up the phone.

The only thing she remembers is to call me, using the programmed button on her phone. I seem to be her only link with reality, or the lifeline that gets her back on the boat safely. While I am getting used to these calls (and this evening I knew it was her even before I picked up the receiver), they are not getting any easier. My husband commented after I hung up, “You’re getting good at that,” but believe me, I’m not. I am losing it as my mother loses it, only in a different way.

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