Things are "different" somehow at Atria these days. She
is more often than not out of her room, and may have become one of the
"wanderers," which means I often find her walking around, which is a good
thing, I guess. As I was signing in yesterday, I saw her kind of
shuffling by. I'm wondering if this is the result of the meds that are
keeping her anxiety under control (apparently she is not refusing them any
more, which is a relief).
We sat in the entry hall for awhile and then, inexplicably,
she got up to look at something on the sign-in table, then walked to the
opposite end of the hall and sat down to read.
At some point she looked up and saw me and was surprised to
see me there and why didn't I tell her I was coming and it had been so long
since she saw me. Though I know it's pointless, trying to explain to
her that we had been sitting together minutes before and that she had left
me, because
she can't process that much information, but it gives me something to talk
with her about. I moved over to the chair next to her.
I had brought a 100 piece puzzle with me to see if I could
get her to work a puzzle. It took awhile to get her to understand what
I was suggesting, but eventually she said that she'd like to work on the
puzzle and that she used to work puzzles all the time.
We walked down the long hall to the "den" (what I call the
room which has a couch, a TV on a bookcase, and a table that will seat 4
people). When we got there there was a woman sleeping on the couch,
but other than opening her eyes a sliver when we arrived, she went back to
sleep.
I set up the puzzle on the table and we were quietly starting
to work it when an aide came flying down the hall and into the back room,
slamming the door behind her. The sleeping woman woke up and glared at
us and demanded to know why we had broken into her house to work a puzzle.
But she went back to sleep.
She is someone new. I'm seeing lots of new faces around
the memory unit these days, and few familiar faces. Not sure why.
Suddenly there seem to be lots of empty rooms in the place. My mother
is still alone, since Marge moved out to be closer to her family.
Which is just fine, considering how unpleasant Marge was.
At first, the puzzle totally confused my mother. She
said "just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it." So I told
her to make sure all the pieces were turned over to the right side, and
while doing that she found a couple of pieces that went together and it
suddenly seemed like she was starting to remember how to work a puzzle.
I thought it was going so well when suddenly she looked out
into the yard and said she wanted to check on something. She went out
the door...and never came back (getting up and leaving me seems to be
becoming a "thing" with her now!)
I waited awhile and then realized the puzzle idea was not going to
work, so I packed up what we had done and left the puzzle on the bookcase in
case someone else wanted to work it. I may not try again. We'll
see.
I went down to her room to see if she had found her way
there, and she had not, so I took the opportunity to go through her drawers
and see if I could find a little scrapbook that her nephew had made for her
many years ago...and I did, so I took that out and left it for her to
"find." She always loved looking through that book because it has so
many photos of her older siblings.
Finally I decided to just leave and I started walking toward
the entry hall and when I got there, turned around and was surprised to see
that she was following closely behind me. I sure don't know where she
came from! She was so pleased to see me because she hasn't seen me in
about two years and where had I been?
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