Last Rites of Passage

62 years.  That's how long these two have been married. Two months.  That's how long it's been since they've seen each other. When Mom got sick and went to the hospital, then to rehab, she didn't want to see Dad.  Or talk to him.  She would get angry any time I brought him up.  So I stopped.  She would say terrible things about him -  that she was afraid of him, that he was trying to poison her, that he was mean to her.  None of this was true but the paranoia that kicked in hard about that time made her think those things.  Dad is just big and loud and trying to take care of her, which was an extremely frustrating task at times.  Add to that the fact that my mom is deaf as a post and he had to raise his voice just to be heard by her - I can see where someone like her would think that.  It made Dad very sad when I told him what she'd said.  When she left for the hospital, he worried for her, but didn't want to make her feel afra...

I have always gotten through all the things I needed to get through.  Not one for drama, I put one foot in front of the other until I come out the other side.   There are times I KNOW I've been depressed.  Dealing with an abusive husband and feeling stuck.  I wanted to die and tried a couple of times but failed.  Talk about a drastic way to escape a bad marriage!  Finally came out the other side and just said I was leaving and did.  I also has a small bout of depression when my son was born and again when my granddaughter (stepson's child) came to live with us - was prescribed medication that time, but didn't use it for long.  When my now-ex stepped off the deep end into alcoholism, I was depressed for a while.  Usually the realization that I was NOT stuck but only temporarily seeing no way to deal with the problem pulled me out of it. Most of the time, I don't even recognize it until after it's done.  I move on and only when lookin...

The coherent days seem to be over.  Even mornings, when she was at her best are no longer good for conversation or getting paperwork done.  The Power of Attorney that we'd been working on will probably never be finished. She still smiles when I arrive.  She calls me "Sweetheart" but never my name.  I don't think she remembers it anymore.  When I talk about Dad, she smiles, but I'm not sure she knows who or what I'm talking about. Dad has been laid up with a broken leg since a week after all this started. and hasn't been able to leave the house, much less visit.  It's been nearly two months since she left the house in an ambulance.  At the time, she was very angry with Dad (the paranoia) so he abided by her wishes to not see him - then the fall and the broken leg and he couldn't .   In that time, I gave him daily reports on how she was doing, including when the cognitive slide began.  I knew he'd want to see her at some point and I wanted...

Brothers came to town yesterday.  We met at a local pizza place for an enormous pizza and beer.  This has become a regular thing for us when one of the out-of-town brothers comes to visit.  Having two of them this time was a bonus.  It's an opportunity to relax and talk about things that need to be discussed. They were planning to have breakfast with Mom Friday and Saturday.   Friday's breakfast stretched into a couple of hours.  As they drove to Dad's house afterwards, they called.  Mom was quite aphasic today - incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts.  Since I spend at least an hour with her every day, I know this is becoming the norm and don't think much about it anymore.  But it's been two weeks since THEY saw Mom and the difference to them is dramatic.  When they were here last, there were smiles and complete sentences made up of thoughts expressed.  It's a bit alarming how quickly she's gone down.  I thought that m...

My brother called me while visiting Mom yesterday.  She had declined going to dinner.  He was sitting in her room with her when the nurse came to check her blood sugar.  It was 47.  Hypoglycemia begins at 70 and she was well below that threshold.  Both my brother and the nurse implored her to eat something and finally she said she'd eat a PB&J.  The nurse brought it and as soon as the nurse left, Mom refused to eat the sandwich.  Desperate, my brother called me and put me on speaker.  I know that cajoling doesn't work with Mom (as her child, I am VERY aware of that), so I told her that she was in very dangerous territory and if she didn't eat the sandwich, she'd be heading to the hospital.  She reluctantly ate the sandwich. I went to see her today at dinner time on purpose.  I wanted to see what was happening.  When I arrived, she was already at the table and when the food was set down in front of her, she glowered at it.  ...

  One of the interesting things about Mom having been in rehab and now in Memory Care is meeting the people around her.  The nurses and CNAs are wonderful, but the other people who are either patients or live in these places are wonderfully kooky.  Part of it is the disease, of course, but I wonder how living institutionally like this also affects them. The rehab that Mom was in is also a long-term care facility, housed in a different wing than rehab.  All the wings met in a cross in the middle of the facility though, and there was a group of regulars that hung out in the intersection at the end of the day.  I was often with Mom for dinner and long enough to put her to bed for the night, so I ran into these people almost every evening.  At first I didn't say anything, but nodded to them.  Then I started saying things like "excuse me" or "good evening".   There was one tiny lady in a wheelchair always holding a doll and stroking its hair....

Finally...  she has a place to live.  After nearly two months of bashing my head against every door in the assisted living community in our city, one finally swung the door open and said come in!   It's a small community (only 32 beds) and all they do is memory care.  No trying to keep regular assisted-living people happy, just keeping an eye on and interacting with the memory care people.  They have activities, exercise time, movie time, game time and eating in the dining room, assisted if necessary.  Mom can feed herself, but her food has to be cut up for her because she can't manage a knife anymore except for spreading butter.  The staff is cheery and helpful and genuinely cares about the people there. Moving day came quickly.  Medicare had denied coverage a couple of weeks ago.  I appealed and got her an extension of a week.  Then appealed again.  Denied again, but in the one week she was extended, on the last day she had a...