On the way to Mama's. . .

We went ballooning. . .

Looking up:

Looking out:

Looking down:

When we got there, my mother was in her chair, with an ice pack on her lower back, hydrocodone and Ibuprofen doing their best.  The surgery for her spinal stenosis was cancelled when they discovered her heart had probably had an attack and something else.  So she goes to the cardiologist tomorrow.

"I don't know how I got here," she said, "I was going along just fine and then I was old."Her body is heavy from the sweets that seem to give her a bit of relief, but now there is the diabetes.  Her spirit is heavy too now.  During my last three visits, she has worried that she wasn't there for her mother when her Dad left them for another woman, more than sixty years ago.  She has a book that she bought that is supposed to help record memories.  Page after page asks questions and then holds open the space.  It is meant to be a gift from a grandparent to a child.  In the front of the book, she has stuck pictures of children I don't know.  The book is all blank.  I asked her several times if I could ask her some of the questions and maybe she could talk to me and I would write down the answers, but she just stared at me.  "I was supposed to do this," she said, "a long time ago." Four times she showed me a picture that she took off the refrigerator, telling me that these were my cousin's grandchildren.  Four times I said, "Well, isn't that something?"

There are foods in the freezer downstairs whose "best by" date is two years ago, but she wouldn't let me waste them by throwing them away.  The caretaker that was there is named Anna and is in her late seventies.  She showed me how to crochet and I showed her my knitting.  The last time we were there Mom called me afterwards to say she was mad at the caretakers because they took all my time.; how rude it was that they kept talking to me and that they talked more to me than they ever had to her.  My sister was with me that time and we both told Mom that yes, we talked to them because it was important that we got to know the people that were now so important in her care.  We didn't say what a gift it was to have a little new conversation and some relief from the weight of her decline.

As we left this time, Mom saying as usual with that look in her eyes that she didn't want us to go, and we as usual wanting desperately both to leave and to not leave her, Anna asked us where we lived. "Near Charlotte," we said, already taking some relief from having bags in the car. We all pretended that Anna was going to come and bring Mom, that they were going to pack bags in Greeneville and drive over the mountain this way, instead of the number of times, who knows how many, we will instead pack here and do the traveling.

My brothers arrive today, and will go tomorrow to the cardiologist with Mom and St. Sonja,  the main caretaker.  The doctor may or may not clear her for the surgery on her back.  If he doesn't the prognosis is increasing pain and decreasing control over her bladder and bowels.  "Who's going to want to take care of me then?" Mom asked, looking off into the distance.