babybloomr

She keeps asking me if I’ve eaten.

As soon as I walk into a room, she asks. Or if I’m sitting down somewhere, reading or on the computer she sticks her head around the corner and says in a vaguely scolding tone, “Tori, what have you eaten?” I dutifully list everything that has entered my mouth in the last 5 or 6 hours, and she looks at me skeptically. Her expression makes me laugh and I say, “What possible reason in the world would I have to lie about whether I’ve eaten or not?” And then she laughs too, a little sheepishly, and says something like, “Well, you never know, you might just be saying that!”

I’m not the only one she asks; all day long she queries Madi Rose, Charlotte and Russ about it too. Even if she’s the one who made them breakfast 30 minutes ago (poaching eggs is really about the only cooking she does these days, especially when we are here), she will still walk into the den or call out from the next room, “Russ, can I fix you something to eat? Charlotte, have you eaten?” To be totally honest, it’s kind of maddening, but it’s also heartbreaking. Mom has always been a self-proclaimed ‘food pusher’ even before her short-term memory was shot to hell, but now that she literally can’t remember that she just asked you the same question three minutes ago, it seems there is some kind of incessant low-level anxiety drumbeat rising from somewhere deep in her mother-psyche: FEED THEM FEED THEM FEED THEM! It’s a nurturing impulse on steroids, a primal maternal instinct that is surely linked to the fact that she spent the majority of her life raising (six hungry) kids.

I remember her telling me once that the only recurring dream she ever has is that it’s the end of the day and she suddenly remembers that she has a baby that she has completely forgotten about, and it has somehow been left alone somewhere in the house unattended and unfed all day. As if!

Her memory issues are so baffling and weird.  I assume that technically it’s a form of dementia, but her cognizance and reasoning powers are still very much intact. She gets and makes jokes, she asks perfectly logical questions about what is going on with friends and acquaintances of ours that she has met in the past, and she carries on conversations easily. But she’s fuzzy on things like what day it is, and when she is under any kind of stress (which these days translates into anything outside of her normal daily routine), she gets even fuzzier. It’s increasingly hard to get her out of the house for any reason, and Carolyn has been unsuccessfully trying to lure her out to get her hair trimmed for weeks, now. She’s just more comfortable being here, in the house she shared with Daddy, following her routine and puttering about with faithful (and ROTUND– Mom forgets she’s already fed her) Pandy by her side. Her life is getting smaller and smaller.

She dozes off in chairs more these days, and isn’t as physically active as she was even last year at this time. Of course she still had Daddy to take care of then, so even at 94 she was still doing some of her trademark bustling about. Her main focus, her raison d’etre if you will, was to cram as much healthy food and fruit down Daddy as she possibly could, trying to keep him strong (and HERE.) She speaks of Daddy often and easily, and we talk at length about his last days, and the blessed gentleness of his passing. But this Christmas season has been very hard on her without him, much harder than Thanksgiving seemed to be, maybe because she had so many thundering hordes of out-of-town children and grandchildren to distract her. This time it has just been Russ, the girls and I staying here with her, and though we have had a lot of people and food and puzzles and Nerts games going on, it has been a bit low-key compared to Thanksgiving and she has more time to feel the loss. Counting their courting and engagement days, this is the first Daddy-free Christmas she has spent in about 76 years or so, and part of her still can’t believe he has actually gone and left her here without him. On New Year’s Eve, she (repeatedly) said in a sad little voice, “Well, I sure hope next year will be happier than this one.” I silently and fervently hope/wish/pray that it will be, too– but I worry.

There’s been some (purposely vague) talk about checking out assisted living places, to no avail. Carolyn continues to offer her home to Mom, talking up the benefits of having her own ‘apartment’ space downstairs and plenty of privacy with the added benefit and security of family/company whenever she wants– but Mom wants to stay on here in her own home as long as she can, and brushes aside our carefully worded suggestions and options with a firm, “When the time comes for me to make a change, I’ll just know.” We all nod sagely and smile nervously, then when she leaves the room we whisper our concerns to each other about the questionable wisdom of that choice and how the truth is, we are pretty dang powerless to do anything about it right now anyway, unless we want to put a gun to her tiny little white head and order her to do what WE think is best for her. Which isn’t going to happen. So we’re at an impasse– a loving, stressful, fearful, faithful, respectful impasse.

Here is my New Year’s prayer:

Dear God,

When it is indeed “time,” please make sure she does indeed “know.” And good luck with that. I humbly suggest that You might want to think about bringing back that whole Old Testament handwriting on the wall thing, because seriously? She may be a little old lady, but she’s stubborn as all get-out. But I guess You know that, because You made her.  Anyway, thank you for loving her as much as we do.

Amen.