I don't know how Mama is this morning, as I have yet to get my act together and get over there. As of last night, when Laura and I left her, she was mad.
It is not a matter of reading between the lines to figure out why, because there are not straight lines. It is more a matter of discerning potholes through a shifting fog. I think mostly she is mad because she is 89, although Laura said she said, while I was out of the room trying to negotiate getting her house cleaned, that she perked up when she realized her skin didn't look so bad for somebody that had been using it for "almost 100 years."
She's right. Perhaps a steady diet of Fig Newtons is the way to good color.
Before I left home, before the emergency part of this jerked me across the mountain, I ordered three books from Amazon to help me deal with the latest Mama chapter. As I recall, they have titles something like: 1) There's Really No Way to Prepare; 2) This is Going to Be You Someday, No Matter How Many Supplements You Take: and 3) Just Get Through It. I don't remember what they are called, and they were delivered to my house probably just after I roared out of the driveway, cellphone tuned to the surgeon's office, prepared to beg.
I didn't have to. The compassionate man, when he heard her latest symptoms, moved whatever it is you move around and "worked her in." This was because the day before, she had lost the ability to walk, was in pain which could not be controlled, and had lost control of her bladder.
She doesn't remember any of this, is mad because "people" made decisions for her without consulting her and if she wanted to die, well that was her business.
Where do you start?
I started with a long, deep breath, because what I really wanted to do was clobber her. I was sitting on the side of her bed, propped up with a quadruple Americano and Visine, holding her hand. This was at the end of the third full day of this customized version of General Hospital. I had just gotten off the phone after dealing with caregiver politics, had cleaned up some family politics that insulted the doctor, and I was ready for, let's just say, a change of planets.
I looked at her and smiled, which helped me not say what immediately came to mind. Another deep breath. She is so dear. She really is, and I may have still said it a little strongly, but I just reminded her of Sunday and Sunday night and Monday and the trip to the ER for pain, and not being able to use her legs. And it was OK if she didn't remember, and it was OK if she wanted to just ease on out of here. Understandable. Sweet sister Laura, on the other side, chimed in with her side of the chorus, that she had had major surgery less than 24 hours before, that this pain was different than the pain she had when terrorist bone growth zeroed in on her spinal cord. That we needed to just take this a little at a time. It was OK. It was really OK. This was progress. She was safe.
We all breathed a little more deeply. Laura asked Mom if she wanted a clean gown as her dinner coffee had gone awry. "We're going to get you dressed up," I told her. Smiling, she asked if she could have some perfume. The nurses were able to find a lone bottle of Johnson's Baby Lotion that someone had left, a treasure. We massaged her hands, her arms, her legs, her shoulders.
We had all come back to a less chaotic orbit. A good time for us to leave. Well, there is no good time, let's say opportune time, a time when we would be in marginally less trouble than other times. Laura and I have done this tag teaming before, and we know one of the first orders of business in whatever town holds the hospital that holds the reason you are there is to search out the good restaurants. The really good restaurants.
Over a lovely meal, in a darkened room with white tablecloths and a perky waitress that wants to move to Asheville to pursue her dreams, urgencies receded. By the time we shared the rosemary caramel truffles and speculated whether the gay date at the next table had gone well, there was a bigger life than Room 6408.
Thank all of you for being part of that Bigger Life, for sending me news from that Life, for just hearing your voices in all the dear forms in which they have arrived. Mama is better for it, honestly, and I know I am. . .
Much love. . .
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