Mindful

I think my mom tried to kill herself & we've been telling ourselves it was an accidental overdose.

Shes shy and does not drive. My dad has a second hand store in town & he takes her there with him during work hours. She sits in the cold, run down building with nothing to do. At night dad fixes dinner & they watch TV.

Mom has given up control of her life completely. She gave up part of it when she married, and then more of it when she had kids. When we moved to the small town where my dad's parent lived that was the end of her life. She took care of dad's parents & when they died she helped dad with his store. From then on she stopped caring. How can I help her? I drive down to see her once a week and we make small talk for an hour. She says she's not depressed & my dad believes it.

Mom's looking at spending 4 weeks in this nursing home. The care administrator wants her to improve her memory & her daily care. She spends a good part of her day in therapy. Dad was visiting one day & mom wasn't in her side of the room. He found Georgia planted in mom's bed. "Where's Betty?" says dad. "I don't know," says Georgia. "BETTY! BETTY!" Georgia screams. Dad says "this is Betty's bed, yours is over there." Georgia went back to her own bed.

Later I looked for some pj's I brought from home for mom to wear. The top was in the drawer but the bottoms were missing. This bums me because I really liked that pair. Dad says "They're too small for Georgia, unless she's using them as a hanky." I really hope not. So far nothing else is missing that I know of.

Now, as mom starts her second week in the home. Georgia has been let free & there is a new roommate. She's very quiet. Based on what I heard her visitors saying, shes been in a car accident.

Mom's getting frustrated with her mind. "I want to get back to the way I was, when I knew what was going on." She makes me laugh, last night we watched the Mariners & the Twins & she could name all the Seattle players but she couldn't remember if she asked how my husband is. He had surgery on his jaw the week before. "How's James doing?" and "Is James feeling better?" five or six times in a half hour.

Mom went to the Emergency Room Monday for pneumonia & aspirin overdose. She's 70 & sometimes forgets if she's already taken aspirin. This time she forgot too many times in a row and poisoned herself. After 4 days in the hospital she moved to a nursing home/rehab center to gain her strength back. She shares her room with a whale of a woman whose voice sounds like a screeching cat in heat. I'll call her Georgia to protect the innocent, and she's been nothing but nice to my mother. Georgia completely fills her twin bed and somewhat spills over. She's on pain medication but I haven't yet discovered why she's here except she's dangerously obese and has trouble breathing.

I've been summoned to her side of the curtain with a howl "When you're done over there come over here a minute & help me! Take this thing-a-ma-bob off my call button- it keeps poking me when I lay on it." There's an alligator clip attached to the cord of the call button so it can hang from the side of the bed when attached to a sheet. It's there permanently. "I'm sorry, this won't come off. Let's just hang it off the sheet so you don't have to lay on it."
"Well, okay, I don't like that poking me." It took will power not to ask why she wanted to lay on her call button.

My mom cannot concentrate when Georgia is talking, come to think of it neither can I. Her voice is loud, squeaks like the wheel on a shopping cart & gravelly at the same time. Yesterday my dad & I were trying to visit with mom & Georgia was having a conversation on the phone. Each time she yelled into the phone my mom's face went blank, her thoughts having been driven away & then she looked mad because she wanted to say something but now it was lost. She'd just flap her hand in the direction of the curtain that divides the room.

This morning I showed up when everyone was just waking up. "I'm not awake yet but I'll drink my coffee. I can't wake up, it's too early," mom says as she reclines in her bed with her coffee. She really does look like she's still asleep.

As my mom got around to donning her robe and eating her breakfast Georgia shuffled around the curtain toward the bathroom they share, which is on mom's side of the room. She hadn't bothered to put on her robe and only wore an open backed hospital gown, untied & without undies. I left before she came back out, "Gotta go mom, don't want to be late for work- see you tonight," I said & ran. If she needed help let the paid staff deal with her nudity.

My dad, being the subtle & PC guy that he is said "I hope she doesn't fall on mom." Mom's all of 95 pounds and looks like a frail delicate bird in her blue & white fleece robe. Georgia looks like a great black rhino in her solid black muumuu. She has long straight black hair that she obviously dyes, which reminds me of the heavy metal bands of the 80's.

I poke fun to keep myself from crying. It's not easy seeing the person who raised you become old and on top of that, seriously ill.

The morning after my mom was admitted to the hospital I stationed myself next to her bed & read a book as she dozed & came in & out of consciousness. She would clear her throat & sigh & whisper "oh boy." I had heard these comforting sounds when I was a toddler sleeping safely in her lap.

My mom is from a time when women weren't supposed to complain. She has terrible back pain due to an untreated injury from a car accident in the 1990's, but when the nurse asks her if she has any pain she says no. Now the reason she's in the hospital is because she took much more aspirin than is safe to control the pain she's not in. I nag her constantly to tell the nurses how she feels, how else is she going to feel better?

My generation uses complaints as conversation starters. Two women I work with became fast friends when they each found the other had fibromyalgia. It has become a competitive sport to be in worse health than the person you're complaining to.