Today was more eventful than I anticipated.  My brother and I met with our new lawyer at 8 a.m. to sign the papers so my mother can be served notice that we are taking over her personal and financial affairs. 

What I didn’t anticipate was the fighting that took place later at my house.  S wanted to have a dinner meeting and so everyone showed up around six.  My brother made cosmos but Robi… drank straight Vodka.  S and R got into it over R “needling” Lois about her significant other or, rather, lack thereof. 

I agree it was mean-spirited but then Robi… has more recent issues with Lois, as she lived there this last year and endured all kinds of abuse.  But, hey, she chose to live there, knowingly taking it on.

Robi… had too much to drink and laid into S.  S got all in her face so Robi… stomped out to smoke on the front porch.  It’s such an about-face that this Baptist zealot has taken up drinking and smoking.  She came back from Germany a drunk. 

I went out to try and smooth things over but she told me to shut up and go back in the house.  I came back in the kitchen pretty upset, and S said she’d had just about enough.  She said she was going back over to Lois’s house to get her glasses which she’d left behind and that Robi…better be gone when she got back.  She wasn’t. 

I got there first but when my youngest sister, S, showed up I gave her the chair and I took the bed.  My mother was in the wheelchair with her back to us.  When I plopped down on the bed it seemed to give way with a sound like it was breaking.  We all laughed.

My mother was gazing out the window, intently surveying the parking lot.  It was noon and the news was on.  All kinds of interesting things like videos of a bank robbery that only took 1:49 minutes and a motorcyclist who crashed going 80 and just up and walked away from the scene, she ignored.  Even lunch, which she refused, was of interest because of the peach cobbler but she never averted her eyes from the window more than a few seconds, keeping her chair at odds with the rest of the room.

“Tell S. about your good news,” she says.

“Remember that woman from court reporting school that we ran into that day at lunch?  Well, she called me yesterday and wants me to go to work for the school, teaching theory.”

“Would you even remember that stuff?” S. sounds dubious at the idea of me working.

“I never threw any of it away.  I even kept my machine.”

My mother interjects something we don’t understand, something about when the tutor threw me on the bed.  I look at S and she doesn’t get it either.

“When did someone throw me?”

“When the bed made that plunking sound.”

“This bed?”  I try not to sound incredulous.

“Yes,” like what other bed would we be talking about.

“Well, who was the tutor?”

“The woman you were just telling S about.”

“Hmmmm,” S says in the tone she uses when stuff is just too weird to comment on.

When lunch came she took one look and said, “I don’t eat rice.”

“That’s chicken parmesan, but it does sort of look like rice,” I offered.

“And there’s spaghetti.  Well, spaghetti sauce over noodles.  You like spaghetti don’t you?”

“On increasingly infrequent occasions.”

No lunch for Lois.

I went back for lunch and was greeted with,     “Did you remember that Robi… was born in 1950?”

“I sure did,” I chirped.  My recorder group had urged me to just play along; that the quibbling wasn’t going to serve any purpose, and the agitation could make her worse.

She was trying to run down the list of four names but because she was starting with the wrong one it was throwing her off.  It was then that I noticed blood on her top, front teeth.  I put my glasses on and went over to get a closer look.

She was sitting on the bed and I leaned in and lifted her lip.  She started to recoil but didn’t.  When she was still hooked up to the heart moniter in the hospital and I would get up off my chair to approach her you could see her heart begin to race. 

“There’s blood on your teeth.”

“No, there’s not.”

I went over to wash my hands and took her back a Kleenex.

“Blot you teeth and you’ll see it.”

Instead she started fumbling with the wheelchair.  Back and forth she inched, trying to get around the untouched lunch on her tray.

“Where are you going?”

“To the mirror.” 

She is fascinated with herself, as am I.  She used the hairbrush first but then picked up the toothbrush and held it up like she was going to use it on her bangs again.  Instead she brushed her teeth.  That’s when she noticed the blood.  She got her own Kleenex and sure enough:  blood. 

Pretty soon Rose came in.  She’s the administrater.

She sat down on Lois’s bed and said, “I am concerned about the clotting level of your blood.  We will need to take you off of Cumadin (blood thinner) and you should not participate in physical therapy the next few days until we can get this under control.  If you were to bump anything or fall you could have internal bleeding.” 

“Does that mean I don’t get to catch the yellow ball?”  Lois makes a noise and gesture like she’s throwing it back.

“I catch it each and every time.”

“No,” Rose says.  “We need to be careful with you for a while.”

With that Lois sticks out her tongue at Rose.

You’re supposed to order lunch in the morning but no one was at the desk.  I went back to her room and she was actually eating some of the breakfast on her tray.  The aid came in and my mother introduced me as a friend of the family.

I gave the aid a nervous look and explained I was a daughter.  I’m just going to start calling her Lois and hope that no family member finds me.  Anyway, Lois thinks about it for a moment and says, “Oh, yes, she’s my number three child.”

I correct her, after another alarmed look at the aid.

“No, I’m your firstborn.  Remember …..” –I go through the list, in order, using nicknames.

“Well, if you are trying to eliminate your sister who spent all that time in Germany…”

“I’m not trying to eliminate her, I’m just saying I was born in 1950.  When was she born?”

More confusion. 

She’s pissed now so I say I need to go play recorder and I’ll be back for lunch.

“Suit yourself,” she quips.

My brother and I went for coffee before heading up at 9:00 to see what state my mother was in.  We figured she was still alive because the place hadn’t called.  She was up and dressed in a royal blue lounging outfit, watching TV in her wheelchair. 

We both breathed a sigh of relief, seeing she’d rallied once again.

“Did you have breakfast yet?” I asked.

She looked amused so I said, “What’s so funny?”

“Well, it’s 9:30,” she smirked.

I said again, “So did you eat?”

She said in an exasperated tone, “Why would I want breakfast at this hour?”

She caught me exchanging a look with my brother. 

“Mom, it’s morning,” he said.

She couldn’t believe it.  “Well, I don’t seem to know up from down,” she remarked, staring out the window.

I had to excuse myself to use the restroom.

Today we picked a place for our mother to live.  The bedroom opens to a private deck off the garden and the woman can do level three care which means the patient needs everything.  She can die there.

We were on our way up to the foster care home to put a deposit down when we got the call from rehab saying they’d moved our mother to a private room; that she’d been stealing.  She went into her roommate’s cupboard and took something.  Not only that, the social worker said she had been stripping.  I guess she had been vomiting, too.

We gave the check to the Romanian woman and told her about the stripping and vomiting but not the stealing and she asked if we had introduced any new medication.  She said those were typical symptoms of ……I can’t remember what drug she said.  But sure enough when we got to rehab the nurse checked her chart and they’d introduced Resperidol on Mon afternoon. 

She was clean out of it by the time the four of us got there.  We were gathered round her bed and she tried to put a sentence together but to no avail.  My youngest sister pulled out her cell phone to call my mother, wanting to see if she knew how to answer the phone because she hadn’t the night before.

My mother struggled to get her right arm out of the covers, and she was scrambling because she probably thought it was her “significant other.”  He’s not really but she thinks he is.  She finally got her arm free and picked up the receiver.  In this bright, cheery voice she was somehow able to call up she says, “Hello???”

My sister is standing right in front of the bed, holding her cell phone, saying,

“I just called to see if your phone worked.”

My mother seems confused but focuses on the phone and says,

“Robi…..? (I can’t think of a good name)

Which is weird because that’s the sister standing closest to the bed, not holding a cell phone.

“No, mom, it’s me.  I just wanted to see if you’d pick up.”

My mother looks confused but turns her attention back to the phone call saying something I can’t remember.

My brother laughs and says,  “bye-bye.”

She listens to the phone, waiting.  We say to hang up so she says good-bye but can’t figure out how to hang up the phone. 

What I am more concerned about is her shoulder.  She had tried to take the hospital gown off, which is why her arm was all caught up.  Her exposed shoulder was skeletal and an odd color:  almost the yellow you’d see with a bruise.

The woman we gave the check to is going to rehab on Monday morning to check her out.  See, she gets the deposit from us so we are committed but then she has the option of saying, “I don’t think it’s a good fit.”

That’s okay, we found two more places today that we felt good about, and there are plenty more to look at.  But we only have ’til the 27th.

My mother was in a foul mood.  So was the roommate.  My brother took three bills up for my mother to pay this morning, sort of a little test.  Even with coaching there was little success. 

By the time I got there the roommate was trying to pretend she was asleep and my mother was trying to order everyone around.  The husband was trying to lighten things up, bringing over their pictures of the first great grandaughter for my mother and me to see. 

I ate lunch and left, not having the stomach for any more of her.  We looked at foster homes today, trying to imagine her there.  And I had a telephone conference with an eldercare lawyer so we can set up a guardianship/conservatorship to pay for it.  Maybe she’ll just stroke out when we tell her she’s not going home, and we won’t have to take her anywhere.

Today was the day she saw her doctor.  Actually it was the doctor on call.  Hers is on vacation.  He met with us, then her, then just me.  I noticed his socks and elegant shoes and the way he flipped the hair out of his eyes with a shake of the head like I used to. 

He thinks rehab is a waste of time and that she should go straight to longterm care.  I pleaded with him to reconsider, saying she actually likes it there, that she even made friends with her roommate.  And she doesn’t make friends.  He prescribed mood enhancers and left it at that.  All we really needed from him was a signature on some form they keep at the doctor’s office.  It’s what the court needs to show incompetency.

So now I’ve screwed her out of the remainder of her medicare benefits at this place and have to round up a new place.  Of course she will refuse to go, not wanting to pay for it, not seeing the need.  She will demand to be sent home. 

Today was occupational therapy.  She practiced brushing her teeth and washing her face.  She was supposed to do it standing up but when it came time to push herself up from the wheelchair she refused, insisting she could pull herself up by gripping the edge of the sink.  Her little arms weren’t strong enough and she quickly gave up the idea.

She was always beautiful if you didn’t know her so looking in the mirror and brushing her hair must have seemed pleasantly familiar.  But I had to caution her about the toothpaste.  She was using the toothbrush on her bangs.