Many years ago, I was on a business trip for The Experiment in
International Living. I was visiting a woman in Temecula, which is in Southern
California. I was flying into the John Wayne airport in Orange County, the first and
last time I have done so.
I remember the flight was smooth and pleasant. The sky was a
brilliant blue without a cloud in the sky all the way, but as we began to approach the
airport, if I looked down below, there was this brown gunky smog that covered the air
above the ground, so you could not see the airport.
As we began to make our descent, I watched the plane leave the
beautiful blue of the sky and sink slowly into the brown gunk, knowing that when I got off
the plane, I would be breathing that stuff. It was a sobering moment.
I felt like that today, when I got to Atria. I had so
completely put my mother to the back of my mind all weekend that it was like flying in
that clear, trouble-free, smog-free world above the John Wayne airport.
Visiting my mother this morning was like sinking back into the smog.
It was not a good day. I could tell when I called her that she
was not feeling well, and when I got to her apartment, I could see that she was not. She
looked old and worn. She said she hadn't felt well for a couple of days. She still
has not made a hair appointment and her hair is long (for her), stringy and she looks like
the stereotypical picture you have of an old lady in a convalescent home. She has to
be reminded to brush her hair. When I mentioned it to her, she ran her hands through
her hair and said "Yes, but I just don't feel like it."
The woman who has had her hair done every week or two ever since I've
known her, knows that her hair is too long, that she looks terrible, that she is going out
in public with this horrible hair, and she doesn't care. That is very sad. Her nails
are also very long, with chipped nail polish and she picks at them constantly, trying to
remove whatever is under the nails. But she didn't want to have a manicure when my
cousin Niecie offered to go with her to get one.
She couldn't remember if she had gotten dressed this morning and
decided she probaby had because she was wearing a bra, though her pants look like they
might be pajama pants (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course ... my sweat
pants are often my pajamas ... it's just quite different for her.)
She is coughing and her nose is running, but she doesn't have a cold.
She knows she doesn't have a cold because colds are caused by a bug and
she doesn't have a bug. But she coughed throughout entire visit, with some mild
congestion I could hear in her lungs from across the room. I suggested she might
like to see a doctor. She says that when she has her nap after lunch, the cough will
be gone. (If it's not gone, or at least better tomorrow, I will take her to
the doctor, whether she wants to go or not.)
No matter what subject I tried to talk to her about, she changed the
subect to one of two things: 1) how old she is and living to "hunnert" and
2) what is going to happen to all her crap when she dies. I could NOT get her off of
those two subjects. She wants to live to hunnert, but if she dies tomorrow that will
be OK, but she wants to get rid of all her crap so I don't have to deal with it.
This is a recording. An old recording, by now.
And if I die before she does, who will take care of her crap? (that
was at least a new, if not entirely pleasant topic to deal with)
I know that one of the biggest adjustments for caregivers is the
personality change, the loss of the person you've known and loved and this new person who
inhabits the body of your loved one. I know this is happening. I've been
dealing with it for some time now.
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