The Checkbook

My mother called this morning, all a-twitter.  She has no checks.  (Oh dear God let her eventually remember that she has checks!)   I asked her what she needed checks for.  She said she had a bill to pay but she had no checks.  I told her that yes she had checks, and told her where to find her checkbook.  While she was going to get it, I asked her what check she needed to write.  She said it was to B of A.  I asked her what it was for and she said she didn't know but that it was over $500.  She got into her bedroom and asked me what she was looking for. I told her she was looking for her purse.  She said she couldn't find it.  I told her where to look.  She finally found it and then asked "now why do I need my purse?"  Told her she was looking for her checkbook.
 

She found the checkbook and asked me why she needed it.  I told her to look inside and see that she had, in fact, written a check to B of A.   But she has no check register.  She has a carbon copy of her checks and because she couldn't check the register, she didn't know how to find out whether she had written a check or not.

 

I told her I would be there as soon as Walt got back from the store and we would look at it together.

 

I knocked on the door to my mother's apartment and she was delighted to see me.  She didn't know why I was there.  I said I was there to help her with the bill she thought she had to pay.  "What bill?" she asked.

 

Sigh.

 

I told her she had just called me five minutes before, but she didn't know about a bill and couldn't find any bill.  Finally she found it and it was for her Kaiser coverage.  They billed her on October 10 and she had written a check on the 12th, so they just hadn't received it yet (the bill was double because they thought her original bill was overdue).

 

I told her to get her checkbook and we'd check to make sure that she paid the bill.  She said she had no checks.  I told her that yes, she did have checks and that Ed had brought them to her.

 

"Well, where are they?" she asked.

 

I told her that her checkbook was in her purse.  She went into her bedroom and then returned to ask me what she was looking for.  I told her she needed her purse because she needed her checkbook.  I told her where to find it.   Turns out she had put it in a different place this time, but she eventually found it and I showed her that she had, indeed, already paid the bill.

 

While we were talking, she picked up two pictures that Ned had brought with her birthday flowers.  She asked me who had brought them.  I told her Ned had given them to her on her birthday and she responded "so how much money do I owe?"  I told her she didn't owe anything yet.

 

I THINK she kind of sorta understands, and to help her I brought the bill home with me so I can call B of A on Monday to make sure that her check arrived (god help them if they refuse to talk to me because I'm calling for my mother!)

"How Long do you think I'm going to live?"

I made a short trip to Atria today.  My mother had asked me to buy bread and milk for her (I know that a week from now I will probably throw both out) and I had noticed she was out of ice cream, so I bought her some ice cream too.

 

We sat down to visit and within 15 minutes I had reassured her at least 10 times that Ed would be by to visit her tomorrow and would bring checks for her.   She would then turn around and say "that's good because I need to go to the bank and get checks."

 

When there was a gap in the conversation and she asked "How much longer do you think I'm going to live?  I'm old, Bev.  I'm 94.  All my family left me behind." I had to get out of there.  I just wasn't up for the "I'm old--when will I die?" conversation today.  It's the conversation we have at least three times every time I visit her.  It's a terrible thing to say, but on one level, I am almost wishing for her death.  I don't want to lose her, but she wants to go so badly.  I remember when she went through this with her mother-in-law and had exactly the same conversations with her.  Catherine lived to be ~102 and spent a good five or six years refusing to become involved in anything at the very expensive facility where she lived.  My mother was so frustrated with her and I wish she could understand (she can't) that she is doing exacty the same thing.

 

Peg told me today about a woman who lives at Atria who is 102 and who makes clothes for babies of low income mothers and homeless people and who volunteers in several other activities in Atria.  I mentioned that to my mother and she just said she was too old to get involved in anything.

 

I came home and read another book on dementia.  If there is anything comforting in these books it is realizing that as dementia patients go, my mother is high functioning.  And that, believe it or not, is comforting.

The Bank

I dodged a bullet this morning, though.  Last night my mother called and said she needed to have me come over in the morning because she had "errands to run."  I asked what errands she wanted to run and at first she couldn't remember, but she finally said she needed to get to the bank.  "Why do you need to go to the bank?" I asked her.  "Well, I have bills to pay!" she said.  I asked what bills and she said she couldn't remember but she knew she had bills to pay and she had to go to the bank because she was out of checks.   Trying to tell her that she had no unpaid billsl only made her angry.  She always does her banking at the end of the month and she needed to get to the bank.  I pointed out that it was the beginning of the month, but it was clear that she was only getting angry, so I just said I would come to get her at 10 a.m.

 

I hoped that her dementia would click in and that she would forget when I got there in the morning.

At 10 a.m., I knocked on her door and she greeted me and didn't say anything about the bank.  I sat down and she asked what I was doing today.  I told her I was working at the book store.  Still nothing about the bank.  She finally did mention the bank and I asked her which bills she needed to pay.  We must have had the came conversation twenty five times, about how she needed to pay her rent and she had to do it at the bank.  I would remind her that she wrote a check for her rent two weeks ago, she said she didn't remember, I told her to check her checkbook (which she never did).  Then in a couple of seconds she would  start all over again, forgetting we'd already had the conversation.  She needed to go to the bank because her rent was due and she always pays it on the 3rd of the month.

 

Ultimately she decided to take my word that her rent was paid, that she wouldn't be thrown out of her apartment, and, when I told her how windy it was outside, she decided she didn't want to go out in the wind, but preferred to sit in her apartment, where it was warm and cozy.

Emily Post

I went to visit my mother this morning.  We actually had a good chat, mostly because I just play along with whatever fiction she talks about now. Every single day she tells me that she slept terribly, that she lay awake until 5 a.m. and finally fell asleep and slept until 9.  Then she tells me that fortunately this only happens once in awhile.  So I don't know if she really doesn't sleep until 5 a.m. every day, or if she is remembering ONE time when she didn't sleep until 5 and remembering it over and over again...kind of her own version of Groundhog Day.

 

She asked if I was going to have lunch with her and at first I said I was coming to have lunch tomorrow, but realized that the reason was that Wednesday was our day to have lunch after the Brain Gym.  But now that the Brain Gym is out, no reason not to make our lunch day Tuesday...or Friday...or whatever day it works out to be.

 

When we walked into the dining room, I saw X sitting by herself off at a table for one.  She was just getting seated, so I invited her to join us, since we have eaten with her before and it was sad to see her sitting by herself.  She is relatively new to Atria and I know she doesn't know too many people now.  She is also nearly 90 years old and I haven't quite figured out if she is better than my mother or worse...in any event, she also has dementia, and it's quite a trip having lunch with her and my mother.

 

But the thing about X is that ... how do I describe it ... ?   She is very "fey."  That was the word I wanted to use, so I looked up, to make sure it was the right one.  One of the definitions is "excessivey refined" and another is "quaintly unconventional."  There is another definition that is "crazy, touched" but I think that wasn't what I was going for.

 

Anyway, she speaks as if she wrote Emily Post's guide to etiquette, she is over the top polite, she's fascinated by everything and expounds on it a GREAT length, whether you are interested or not.  Still, she's a nice lady.  A mutual friend (let's call her Y) sat with us for a bit and she interjected a bit of normalcy and got a side conversation going with my mother, while X continued to drone on and on and on.   After our guest left, X went on at great length about how she really liked Y and that she didn't see her often because Y had her own circle of friends and X felt it would be impolite to intrude herself on Y's friends and she felt that friendships were valuable and it wouldn't be fair if X were to interfere with Y's time with her other friends and...it just went on and on and on.

 

Then she told us that she had met a woman who was into scrapbooking and journaling and that I think she had invited X to her apartment to see the books.  She was very impressed with this woman, and with her husband whom she thinks is from India because he has a different color skin than X does and he was very soft-spoken but very supportive of his wife and she was impressed because when the wife was showing off her books, the husband didn't jump in and take over and do the explaining for her.  She mentioned many times how he was very soft spoken and very supportive and how he let the wife take the lead in the discussion.

 

I remembered that X has been divorced for a long time and she had eluded to difficulties in the marriage and listening to her talk about this "Indian" man, I wondered if her husband had been abusive and if that had left her with her various ideosyncracies.

 

Anyway, my mother and I finally made a break for it when X paused for breath.  When I looked at the clock I realized we had been sitting there listening to X for an entire hour and neither of had spoken a word in all that time...not only that, but X hadn't said anything that remotely related to us or that we were remotely interested in!

 

But at least we were able to have a good laugh about it...and times when we can laugh together these days are the best.  There was another plus today.   I had washed her laundry and brought it back for her on Monday and when I checked with the front desk, she hadn't returned ANY clothes saying they weren't hers.  We are making progress.

I Done Good

I finally took a break from my Breaking Bad marathon and went to Atria around 10:30 a.m.   I didn't want to be there too close to lunch because she always wants to treat me, but lunch a Atria every day can get spendy for her (she doesn't realize that!)
 

We had a nice visit and she laughed about my Breaking Bad marathon and how addicted I'd become to the show in literally just a couple of days.   She told me, again, that "they don't have the shows I watch up here."  This is only partly her dementia.  For literally DECADES I've been trying to get it through her head that she watched NBC on Channel 4, but that Channel 3 was the NBC network up here.  She figures now that because her shows used to be on 3, 5, and 7 and that she has no 3, 5 or 7 up here, that she can't watch her shows, but must watch different shows.  It doesn't help that there is no directory screen on her ComCast set up (this is basic, basic, basic cable, which is provided free by Atria, but anything additional will cost).  She also does not get the Davis paper.  I tried bringing it to her,but since she doesn't know anybody in Davis she is not interested in reading anything about the town, so I stopped doing that.  

 

For TV, I think she just turns it on, flips through channels (many of which are in Spanish) and if she doesn't recognize anything, she turns it off.  

 

After I got home, I kept thinking about her TV problem and I know she used to watch several favorite programs, so I decided to make her a TV guide.  I drew up a table and arranged it so that I included only the channels she would be interested in.  Also, since she doesn't turn on the TV until 6 p.m., and goes to bed by 11, I only included the 6 to 10 time slots.

 

Then I just sat here at my laptop (because I can't get a week's schedule on the cable box in my office) and just filled in all the shows for her.  It looked like this:

 

It took the better part of a couple of hours, but when I finished, I had the whole week mapped out for her and even designed a cover. 

 

 

I stapled it all together and drove back to Atria to give it to her, so she could see which shows were going to be on tonight, in case she wanted to watch TV.

 

Whenever I give her something, she's always appreciative, but she was positively giddy about this listing.  She thanked me over and over again and looked through it, delighted to find the names of favorite shows there.  "You know, I thought they didn't get the same shows here that I had..."  I was very happy that I had taken the time to put this together for her.  It can pretty much serve as an indefinite TV Guide, though I will check and see if anything major changes from week to week and then run off new pages, as necessary.

 

I felt really good about myself, so good that I came home and took a 2+ hour nap.

Fantasy Land

There may be no characters wandering around in funny costumes, and nobody singing "It's a Small World" (unless it's at the Tuesday sing-along), but I feel like I've accepted my regular visits to Fantasyland and I'm sure that ultimately I will be much happier for it.

 

Now that I have given up trying to encourage my mother to do anything at Atria, she is much happier because we don't argue any more, and, while not exactly happy, I am at least glad that I don't have to work so hard any more.

 

When I arrived today, she greeted me as if she hadn't seen me in weeks. I complimented her on her new manicure and the fresh flowers on her table and asked if she had had a nice visit with my cousin Denise yesterday.  She insisted that Denise hasn't visited her for weeks, the manicure is old and she needs a new one, and the flowers are the one I sent to her on her birthday three weeks ago.  She also said that Ned had been there yesterday for lunch.

 

But I know for a fact that Denise and her sister were there, that Denise brought the flowers and gave her a manicure, and that Ned is coming next weekend.  But it's pointless to try to get her to remember because it only frustrates her, so I play her fantasy game.  Denise hasn't been there, nobody has visited her, she hasn't had a phone call from anyone, and Ned came to have lunch with her yesterday.

 

We had a ten minute visit, but managed to stretch it out over an hour and a half.  She asks what I've been doing exciting, I tell her about the three shows I saw over the weekend, she asks what I have coming up this week and I tell her "nothing," then she tells me that she hasn't done anything exciting herself, that she just sits there, that nobody comes to visit her, and then she asks me what I've been doing exciting and what I have coming up this week.  When I finally tire of having the same conversation over and over again, I tell her I have to run errands and that I'll see her in two days.

 

She does remember that she has 3 friends coming to take her out to lunch tomorrow and it will be interesting to see if, when I go to see her on Wednesday, she remembers that they were there.

 

Acceptance is a good thing.  If you can't change a situation (and obviously I can't change this one), might as well just accept what is and go with the flow.  I've never been good at that, but maybe I can learn. As my mother has told me all my life, "this too shall pass" and I'm not in a big hurry for this situation to pass.

I Wasn't Ready

There is more to "coming home" from a vacation than unpacking, doing all the laundry (and trust me, with no access to laundry facilities, EVERYTHING, even the things you hadn't worn yet, smells!), and restocking the kitchen because you tried to run out of everything before you left, so nothing would go bad while you were gone.

 

Everyone had told me I could put my concerns for my mother behind me while we were gone and I didn't really think I would do that.  I still sent her e-mails every day (which she forgot receiving) and I was worried about her, but it wasn't until I walked into her apartment on Sunday to have the same conversation that we have been having every day for the last couple of years, that I realized that I really had put all that aside and had managed to have a "Mother vacation" after all.

 

I went and saw her yesterday for awhile and brought some postcards to show her, and brought her toilet paper (how she managed to go through five rolls of paper while we were gone, I don't know!).  She was also out of ice cream, I noticed and she said she needed paper towels, so today I got those for her yesterday and planned to deliver them today.

 

I'm still having jet lag, I guess.  I don't think of it as jet lag, but I do nap a lot and I managed to fall asleep around 1, waking at 3, with a start, and realizing how late it was.  I considered skipping today, but I had all the stuff to take to her, so I literally staggered out to the car.  I was still half asleep when I pulled up at Atria, though the chat with the girl at the front desk (who has never heard of Istanbul) helped wake me up, and off I staggered to my mother's apartment

 

The problem was, I think, that she had been sleeping too and was as groggy as I was when she answered the door.

 

So there we were, two groggy people, one with dementia, trying to have a coherent conversation.

 

In my cheeriest voice, I said that tomorrow was our big day, the day we go to the Brain Gym again.  She said she's not going to go.  She hates it.   She doesn't need any help because her brain is fine and she realizes I'm trying to help her, but she is never going to go there again.  So...so much for help with her brain, which apparently is just fine.  I'm disappointed.  I thought that was going to be our "thing," going to the brain gym and then to lunch, but it was only my thing.  Time to give up and let her just deteriorate.

 

The ironic thing, which she would never see if I pointed it out to her, was that when her mother-in-law moved into an Atria-like facility my mother spent years so frustrated with her because the facility offered so many opportunities for her, but she refused to interact with people and all she did for years was sit in her room asking why she was still alive and wishing to die.  But if I pointed that out to her, she would not see that she is doing exactly the same thing.  

 

There is a birthday dinner for all with September birthdays coming up and I asked if she was going to go to it.  She just looked at me like I was crazy. Go interact with other birthday folks?   WhyEVer would she do that?

 

Ed had been there yesterday, apparently and brought up the last of her stuff, in boxes, on a cart, with a note that it was for me.

 

You would not believe what happened.

 

She slouched in her chair, glowered toward the boxes and said "Stuff," with all the venom she used to use for "all this crap" in her house.  She said she didn't know what was in the boxes and I said I didn't either, but when I took them home, if there was anything I thought she wanted, I'd bring it to her.

 

Then she said something like:  "Well, when I moved here, you told me to just leave everything behind and I did.  You said I wouldn't be needing it.  But how do I know there's nothing in those boxes I might need?"   She then suggested that we go through a box a day to make sure she didn't need anything.

 

I told her that the thing that botherted her most about her old house was all the "stuff" in it and that she hadn't needed any of it for the past four months, so she obviously didn't need anything that was in any of the boxes.

 

She got very huffy and said I didn't understand what it was like to leave it all behind and that she really felt she needed to check the boxes to find out if there was anything she really wanted.  I pointed out that even if there was, she had nowhere to put it in her new apartment.  I was very, very angry with Ed for putting me in this position when he could have let me know he was coming and delivered these boxes to my house.

 

She then got very angry because I was keeping her from her stuff.   But as I have said before, there is an up side to dementia.  I tried to find a subject to talk about other than the big pile of boxes in her room and she was easily distracted.  But I really needed to be out of there, and I definitely needed to get rid of those boxes or she would have them all opened in no time.