ACK! Since I last spoke to you all, and thank you for gathering here today, nothing much has happened to me except the continuing saga of dealing with my Mom. She turned 94 in the middle of August, fell down, was a bit out of it for a few days, then last week fell down again but might have had a little stroke and a little heart attack, and her kidneys weren't functioning well and she was way, way out of it. Spent a week in the hospital, and we all know how hospitals want to discharge you ASAP. Needless to say, I have put many miles on my car driving out to Carmichael and back, checking on Mom and just being there.
Yesterday I was at the hospital and they decided to discharge her, which means you wait around in the hospital room for the entire day until the EMT guys come and take her the three blocks to the new place, a care facility, for a cost of something like $1000 for that 3 block drive and then you wait around for another 2 hours until they can even talk to you about the Mom person and get her settled into this New Place and then you get an hour reprieve to go out with your sister who has handled the force of this situation for weeks and is so exhausted. You both get some alcohol (oh, thank you chemistry, for fermented products such as wine) combined with food because you have not eaten anything except a banana at 10:00 in the morning.
Then you go back to the New Place and you get to deal with Mom who has no idea what year it is or where she is or how she got there. Which is fine, of course, because that's the easy part and she isn't unhappy about it, just confused, and you put an alarm on her so she will be rescued if she tries to get out of bed in the middle of the night and you try to say "goodnight" to her, which she doesn't understand. Then you leave that place and you go to a nice hotel and check in and get couple of inches of Jack Daniels in a nice hotel glass and sit on your bed and call the brothers and fill them in on the details about Mom, while looking out the large window of that lovely hotel room at the freeway and cars going by and the large flag waving in the breeze and feeling the really cold air-conditioned air blowing on you and thinking that this is the best Jack Daniels you have ever tasted. And you get the best sleep, in that hotel bed with that cold air blowing, that you have had in months. You consider staying in that hotel room for another couple of days, just to sleep. Just to sleep and not dream and be quiet. Just to be quiet and have time to think. Or not think, because the thinking makes you sad and you then think that you do NOT want this to happen to you but what control over all of this do we have. So you want to stay in that hotel, it feels safe and far away from those thoughts.
But you don't. You go back to the New Place, see Mom again in the morning, again with just a banana as breakfast, and then you drive home.
And do it all over again soon.
I must thank my siblings, especially Kate, for what she has done so far. All siblings are coming up to the plate ready to swing and at least get a base hit or a bunt. No one is sitting on the bench. But it isn't enough, of course. It's wait and see right now, to see what happens with Mom.
If you read this far, thank you.
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