The way things are.
11:29 a.m.
The conversation when we got there on Friday night circled around her remaining living cousins. There aren’t that many left, sadly, and she is the acknowledged matriarch of the family now. She had to be reminded over and over again that Wilfrid lives in New Jersey and that his sister Shifra has been dead for many years. She was convinced that there is a cousin who lives in the neighbourhood whom she sees quite frequently, and I asked if it was Ed, but no, it wasn’t Ed. Finally I figured out the puzzle. The “cousin” was none other than my brother, her son, whom she sees once a week. In middle age, he resembles one of her cousins, and she was confused. When I corrected her, that this was her son, not her cousin, she said, “Even better!”
My mother has always been a very fastidious person. It was from her I learned about laying toilet paper upon the seats of public toilets before sitting on them (for the record, I don’t do this, she still does). If the dish towel should fall on the kitchen floor, it goes immediately into the laundry and out comes a clean one. She always wipes the tops of tins before she opens them (I do this too, they can be very dusty) and washes her hands frequently, especially after handling money. When my daughter and I took her grocery shopping and I got all enthusiastic about the bakery section with all the beautiful freshly-baked loaves on display, she wouldn’t hear of me buying her any because they are open to the air and who knows what kind of germs are crawling on them because people touch them. She has a point.
However, on Saturday morning I went through her refrigerator, throwing out perhaps $50 worth of food that had gone bad. There were containers of cottage cheese, yogurt, leftover salads, roast beef and various other things with thick mould growing on them. Vegetables were going rotten and I had to wash the bottom of the fridge where their juices had left a sludge. Her “boarder” buys food and then doesn’t use it. He makes himself a bowl of soup, doesn’t finish it, and ends up putting the bowl, complete with spoon, uncovered, in the refrigerator, where it congeals into a candidate for primordial ooze. In the process of cleaning out her fridge, I also recovered bowls and cutlery. (Her “boarder” has a new job, is up very early and home very late, and I did not see him at all, else I would have given him hell [again, I’ve given him hell before] for his inability to store food properly.)
My mother will not buy beautiful bakery-fresh bread because it might have been touched by dirty hands, and yet she is in danger of eating food that would no doubt kill her. Her cleaning lady comes once every other week (I would be happier if it were weekly), and the place is a pig sty between visits. She does not clean out the fridge, even though I asked her on a previous visit to cast a coup d’œil on a regular basis.
My mother’s memory is really very bad. At times she remembers much, at others she forgets what she remembered yesterday. It’s like doors and windows opening and shutting. Some days they’re open, some days they are not. She has pills she’s supposed to take with breakfast and dinner, and of course she forgets. These are things like blood thinners, arthritis medication, blood pressure medication, heart pills. Normal old person pills. Her pharmacist contacted her doctor because the empty pill boxes hadn’t been returned for refilling, so the doctor called to make sure my mother was taking her pills. My mother did not remember to tell the doctor the real problem, that she doesn’t remember to take them because she has these frequent memory lacunae.
While I was there I contacted the retired teachers’ organization of which she is an associate member (thanks to my father having been a full member) and spoke to several people there about her situation, asking if they had the provision for retired teachers to visit older members who are in need of intellectual stimulation. They don’t have such a service, but I put a bug in their ears and hopefully they will start one. I also got in touch with a home care service out of a general hospital and was given numbers to call. The one person I really must get in touch with is my mother’s doctor, the one who is in a position to examine her and prescribe medication that might help with the memory thing.
My brother called this morning to find out how my visit had been. This is my older brother who lives even farther away from her than I do. I did not see my other brother. He called on Saturday morning prior to his usual scheduled visit and, upon finding out that his sister was in the house, chose not to come over. He also doesn’t answer his phone, forcing my mother to leave messages on his answering machine. I arranged with an old high school friend to go out for brunch on Sunday morning (a very boring experience, one I will not repeat when I am in town again) so that I would be away and he could come over and do for her what he does for her (read mail, go over banking stuff, etc.). He never returned any of my mother’s messages until Sunday evening when it was already too late. So, I never saw that brother.
I explained to my older brother (the one who called) that our mother needs two kinds of services: a) Someone to come in twice a day to make sure she’s taken her medication, eaten properly, throw out stuff in the fridge that’s going bad, and just generally check up on her overall well being. This will cost money; b) Someone or several someones to come in every day for an hour or two at a time to visit with her, people who speak good English, are educated, intelligent and who will stimulate her intellectually with conversation. If they have dogs they can bring with them, even better. My mother loves dogs. This second service might be a volunteer or pay thing. It is what I am hoping the retired teachers can provide.
The reason I say “several someones” is because my mother can drive a person crazy. Volunteers (and even people being paid for the service) are people, too. But I am convinced that the memory loss is driven by her lack of stimulation.
While writing this entry, (which has taken me more than two hours), I have been interrupted by the phone several times. The first was my brother. The second, third and fourth times were my mother calling. She realizes that she is alone for the next two days (her “boarder” drives a bus and is on a two-day excursion) and thought that there was no food in the house. I assured her that there is plenty of food in the house, since my daughter and I took her grocery shopping on Saturday. I reminded her again of the leftovers from our own meals with her. I am sure she will forget again. She also called because she can’t remember what her appointments are. She has an enormous calendar in which she writes her doctor and other appointments with a thick black marker in the appropriate squares. Somehow the month of May has disappeared. I don’t know how this could have happened. I didn’t get rid of it, her cleaning lady didn’t do it, and I’m sure Frank didn’t do it. So I reminded her of the ones that I remember, the dentist appointment tomorrow, the one on Monday to have her pacemaker checked, and the one on Tuesday that I did not write down there, so I can’t tell her what it is.
I don’t want advice. If you are going to leave comments, please make them of the “Aw, that’s so hard. Good luck” variety. My brother thanked me for doing what I’m doing from this end. I don’t feel like I’m doing very much at all, but I can’t move to be with her because I will go insane. The whole time we were there I was developing headaches and fatigue. I don’t know if I should attribute this to the pollution of the big city, or to the relentlessness of my mother’s situation. Her conversation is repetitive, cyclical, and maddening. It takes all my patience not to start screaming. I remember a pillar of strength, and all I see now is a caricature of her former self.
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