Where is Allen Funt, and WHO painted that google-eyed bunny?

           I was sitting with my mom in the visiting room (at the lockdown facility for high-risk people in various disturbed states) and she needed to use the restroom. Actually, I had said something like "yes, but you don't have a home yet," her eyes teared up, then she immediately forgot why and said "I have to go to the bathroom SO bad."
          So, while she left the room and I helped myself to some cold water in a Styrofoam cup, I took a look around the room that someone had attempted to "decorate" for the motley crew of temporary residents and their frazzled friends and loved ones. But the placement of the pre-fab patterned egg shapes in a horizontal, not straight but certainly not playfully lopsided line across 3 of the 4 walls was so...sad. "Look, everyone, it's EASTER TIME!" Somehow, it was just as sad as the sweatsuits. 
         And the painted brown Easter bunny taped on the wall? Was it made by an adult or a child? Was it supposed to look like a chocolate bunny? It had googly eyes and looked several years old, but well-kept. 
         Why does the woman sitting at the table across from our table have bitter beer face? 
         For survival reasons, it would be nice to see the humor in this...my mom tried to, too, after joining me again in the visiting room with the egg shapes and ice water. She was of course surprised to see me. 
         She wanted to make fun of the obese dude in the orange shirt, but all she could come up with was "he looks like a bee." Still, no matter to what extent she knows it's me, her daughter, she knew being funny was something we do, and tried. She kept telling me "you're so pretty." I just held her hand.
         After the short long visit, I asked the nurse if she was on some kind of anti-psychotic medication, because she was so listless and slow and shaky and her eyes appeared dilated, but the nurse told me she hadn't had a dose since two mornings previously. 
         I was told she's been like that the whole time, and the only time she showed any animation was when she saw me. She was holding a newspaper and looked surprised and happy, then dropped the newspaper she was holding to be dramatic..a teeny bit of her..
         There is no furniture besides chairs and a table, no personal effects allowed ..they have lot of suicidal people who can't be trusted to not use personal belongings in self-destructive ways. 
In the lobby are posters of "schizophrenia: the warning signs," and resources for the mentally ill. 
        When I left, my mom tried to go with me, setting off the alarm, but I walked her back in. She told me, "OK, so maybe see you tomorrow. You can call me, or no, I'll call you."
She doesn't know how to use a phone any more. 
She does have a "discharge manager" which is encouraging; she WILL be discharged, she just needs a place to live in a dementia unit: Locked down, and nice, and that will take medicaid. There's a team, and a few personal friends trying to find a place.
       I keep hearing that Alzheimer's is more painful on the family than on the patient. I'd say.

Things I think when I can't sleep...yes, about my mom

From late night entries on my iPod.

March 2011

Listening to sappy music after sort of sleeping...woke up sweaty enough to have soaked the bedding & jammies for a third time. How many more days will I have this fever?

The point is, I was just listening to Boz Scaggs on Pandora radio and thought of my mom listening...Our album was the one where he's smoking a cigarette laying on a lady's leg. Boz thought he was hot stuff. Given where things are now, I can almost take all the old pain of seeing my mom in her blue robe, listening to jazz albums, or Boz Scaggs, on headphones and drinking glass after glass of Franzia (Chris called them "wine pillows") I get the music and trying to wind down. But I do that by talking to my husband, and then being with my kids. 

I mean, I now get the "going away." (me and Facebook, blogger, You Tube, Hulu, take your pick!)  And, I understand the headphones because we all made fun of her bad jazz,  but the wine made her go all the way away and I just wanted her to talk to me. I see now, and get now-literally- she had nothing to say. She didn't want to be asked anything because she didn't have the confidence to answer

August 16, 2010

Can't sleep at Barbara's cabin in spite of having taken a Lunesta.  

It's  5 and I've been up since 4. So having posted upcoming events on my calendar, now I'm writing about how my best present: Having my mom remember my birthday. I don't want to know if one of her caregivers just took her and threw a few items in  cart. I really think she picked out the gifts because they looked like me and like what she recalls goes with my house. I will continue to view it as any other little miracle: believe it is and don't research why it isn't. (Which is why I believed in Santa until Dave Bennett told me at his 50 th birthday--I was 19, I think.)

"Yes Virginia, your mom remembered your birthday." 

I figure this and the video of her dancing disco with Sophia should be good for 6 months of easy time in independent living.  Jesus. It's freezing in this guest cabin!!! And now the stupid sun is already coming up and my girls are rolling all over with their sleeping bags moderately covering their squirming little bodies. Thank God we're not in a wet fricking tent.

July 2010

This is a few days after my moms birthday..On Monday, two days before her actual 64th birthday, Chris and I decided not to move mom to Clare Bridge. 

That was before her Birthday lunch.

I told her to put on flip flops. But that involved dealing with her feet.  Oh dear GOD it wasn't just the dried flaky skin but a yellowish coating & what appeared to be athletes foot but  

was just weird thick crusty film. 

So...she doesn't wash. And I am starting to see what the pros are basing their suggestions on. I was already late to take her to Lunch and I had wanted to go shopping at Nordstrom (that's what normal moms and daughters do on birthdays, right?) so I got a pan of soapy water and a washcloth and took deep mouth breaths and drew on my deepest reservoir of compassion; the one I have when my kids are sick in the middle of the night and also on gratitude that I don't have to do this kind of thing for a living. She is family so it's not as gross as a random foot. Also, while there I cut and painted her toenails. (I will be going to Heaven.)Lunch was good, though. Rock City Grill. She had iced tea, I had a martini. 

June 2010

Fucking insomnia. 
Here's a thing: How can I still be popping zits when I have to also pluck gray chin hairs and dye my hair every 2 weeks and hand my mom over to “the state” I say it this way to be dramatic but I do feel this guilt if I were just more compassionate or maybe Japanese I wouldn't have a choice . But there is something about our  

society dropping off it's mentally ill old people..Mike doesn't  

understand how I could be feeling sad about letting go if I never had her I the first place ..unrequited love maybe? 
Damn this gaping hole! Why can't I be OK with what was and is? Shoulda coulda woulda my dad would say back in the 1970's. Got it from Laugh In or Saturday Night Live, I think? 

It's because now I know that mothering is NOT a basic function. It's an up in the morning, late at  night pride swallowing siege yes I'm misquoting Jerry Macguire. 

Must sleep. Therapy and court date (to assign a guardian)tomorrow. The temptation to drink is high. Too bad that's not something my mom and I do. Now we don't really do that much at all . She pays someone to put together a puzzle. 

Touring Clare Bridge with the family was helpful only to see it won't be a place they'll want to be..even to a greater degree than where she lives now. But as old as those residents were, and hanging out, waiting for the next meal-of course thinking that they hadn't yet eaten-they did remind me of mom. At least people are on the same wave length there. Alex said he didn't like grouchy ladies snapping at Bella and that it's "too far away." I am just not doing anything..but I'm not sure thats  

OK yet.