It was another day I left Atria feeling like I wanted to
cry.
I was bringing my mother's meds for next week to her.
I knew she would be running out of them today and didn't want her to skip a
day.
I knocked on the door to her apartment and she called out,
as she always does, "come in!" which is silly because she never leaves the
door unlocked and always has to come and unlock it.
She answered the door with unkempt hair, as if I had
awakened her, and the first thing she said was "I forgot to go to lunch" (It
was about 2 p.m.)
I went to replace last week's pill container with the new
one and discovered she hadn't taken her pills for almost the whole week. She
tried to convince me she had taken them, but that's something she
can't talk her way out of because the pills were all still there.
We sat down to talk and I reminded her, as I have every day
for the past two weeks, that we are going to San Rafael tomorrow to have
lunch with her friends. She looked surprised, then got huffy and said
"I never agreed to that!" Then she said that she felt "terrible" and
just didn't feel like going "but you go and have fun." I
reminded her that this was a lunch for her birthday and if she
couldn't make it her friends would undoubtedly cancel it.
Based on her reaction today and how she was last time we met
them for lunch, I've decided we just won't do that any more. The first
few times we went to these lunches were wonderful and such a tonic for her,
but not really any more. She enjoys the lunch, once we get there and she
realizes that she knows the women we are meeting, but the anguish of getting
ready to go when she doesn't recognize the names of any of the people we are
going to see, and the nervousness of leaving Atria, and the hour long
questions on the drive down about who is going to be there and who decided
we were going to meet and why were we going to meet, over and over again are
exhausting for me, but worse for her because she really is afraid she
is going to get lost, going to have to talk to people she doesn't know and
isn't comfortable being away from her familiar surroundings. She is
also nervous when looking at a menu because it's impossible to decide what
to eat and she usually whispers to me to choose for her. (Things are better
on the ride home because I have a playlist of music from the 40s and 50s
that I have downloaded from iTunes which has all of her favorites and she
sings along with every song all the way home -- proving that even
people who can't remember anything else can still recall song lyrics!)
I tried to identify why she wasn't feeling well and she
doesn't know. It's not pain, it's just...something. I
asked if she had breakfast that morning and she said no. I pointed out
that she hasn't had her pills all week and hasn't had anything to eat today
and maybe that was the reason why she was feeling so bad. But that
requires too much cause-and-effect processing to sink in.
She once again explained her not taking her pills by
reminding me that she has never been a "pill taker." Whenever her back
hurts and she moans about it and says her back is "killing her" and I ask
her if she has taken a pain pill she says "No--I'm not a pill taker."
In truth I don't know how much, if any, relief Aleve (which her doctor
suggested she take) would give her but we'll never know because she's not a
pill taker, even if it might relieve her pain.
We left it with that I will either call her or come over
every day, now, to remind her to take her pills and I will wait on the
phone until she has taken them. We'll see how long that lasts.
(I will also remind her to go to lunch.)
But
she sat there in her chair, looking like a limp dishrag, with dark circles
under her eyes, staring out the window, sighing and telling me she was old.
When I mentioned she would be 97 in 2+ weeks, she seemed surprised that she
was so old. Then she'd tell me she doesn't know why she doesn't
take her pills because she sees them every day. That is always
followed by the inevitable "stupid, stupid, stupid!" indictment she is fond
of giving herself. I tried to remind her that it's not because she is
stupid but because her brain doesn't work right any more, but that, too, is
more than she can process now.
I tried to get her to laugh and remembered a photo Laurel
had posted of Lacie, which I was able to call up on
my phone, and that did make her smile and ask who the cute little girl was.
Sigh.
It wasn't a "visit" today. It was two people sitting
in pretty much total silence for an hour until I decided it was time to
leave. She didn't even tell me how pretty the leaves on the trees
outside are today. That was definitely unusual.
With no lunch to go to tomorrow, that means I will be here
to get things ready for the refrigerator delivery, which is, I guess, one of
the perks of staying home.
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