Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Sunday, June 8, 2008
10:01 p.m.
The heat has been amazing. Just the day before yesterday I was shivering. Today I could not stop sweating. It doesn’t help that the hot flashes care not what the outside temperature is.

I went into town to buy coffee (Ethopian yergachefe) while Hubby was cutting the grass, got myself a sorbet and looked in shop windows while I ate it. I refused to cook this evening, so Hubby took me out to Shalimar, the Indian restaurant, for the Sunday buffet. We sat on the terrace and enjoyed the evening ambience, watching as storm clouds approached from the north.

The sky was amazing. Looking up at the clouds as they passed over us, I imagined that if I were on Saturn or Jupiter, this is what I would see over my head. There was lighting and answering thunder, and then the rain came down and we had to move indoors. It pelted against the windows, which were closed in a hurry. I telephoned home and told Little Princess to shut the windows there. We stayed and waited it out, Hubby finishing the beer, I having some rice pudding for dessert (they make the best rice pudding). Eventually it let up enough that we were able to get to our car and come home.

I have been feeling decidedly odd all day. My mother called this morning and we had a long chat. She was feeling quite lonely, saying that on Sunday no one comes to see her. I think she has gotten used to the nurse coming daily and my brother seeing her on Saturdays. Sundays, though, are quiet and she was very bored. Also it was too hot for her to go out for a walk.

She kept asking me repeatedly about people and their relationship to her. We kept coming back to my brother, the one who lives near her who doesn’t talk to me. She could not remember how he was related to her. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: What is L.’s last name?

Me: It’s the same as yours, and mine.

Mom: Oh. So is he my cousin?

Me: No, he’s your son, my brother.

Mom: That’s interesting. He doesn’t act like a son.

This really bothered me. My brother goes to her every week, spends as little time as he possibly can get away with with her, and refuses to get involved. No wonder she doesn’t remember that he’s her son. It’s just bizarre. She remembers my children, whom she rarely sees, better than she does his daughters, whom she saw much more of growing up because they lived so close. There is just something very wrong with this picture.

We talked for 45 minutes, and for the most part I was telling her her life story. Sometimes the clouds would clear and she would come out with something that only she could know. The rest of the time I had to keep repeating stuff. As zitagsd said, she’s lost the path through the filing cabinets. The files are still there, she just can’t access them.



|

<~~~ * ~~~>