Man, these days.
When I had babies and they'd get up all night there was solace because they nursed and we laid there together half awake. And they weighed 8-12 pounds. All new and everything ahead.
Now it's reverse.
I'm not sure why I'm surprised at how downhill it's going. I think because as the daughter you just think well it has to get better. It's always gotten better. There's never been loss, quite like this at this amplified level. Ever in my life. I've been getting up to change diapers at 11, 1, 3 and 5. She's forgetting how to sit on the toilet. She's forgetting how to talk at all. Yesterday I thought she had something in her mouth because she wasn't talking and it turns out she had forgetting in her mouth. Her mouth was full of forget.
The last two days she gets up, we eat breakfast, and then she sleeps until 2. Then she's kind of coherent but wobbly. She will still sweep if you hand her the broom. The weather turning colder makes it harder to be outside but I try to get out with her for as long as possible each day. The last two days she hasn't been worried about her dog. She might mention the dog twice or three times. She's not trying to hang on to it all.
I feel like I'm not doing enough. At night I feel like quitting, I feel the opposite, but in the day I feel like the daily care of someone outweighs the ability to enjoy them and support their spirit. You're so busy supporting the body. Also she stopped reaching to touch. She has been more aloof. We're checking to see if she has a uti which can cause worsening dementia symptoms so I have to figure out how to put a pee specimen cup under her butt which seems impossible just technically.
I don't feel like there's a way to feel like you're doing a good job. Because you're obsessed with the ending of something and every little bit of shutting down flares up your anxiety that these are your last moments to grab. I also have kids. I also have to make food for them. I also have a kindergarten class and a farm. But this week we are off, for the weirdest pandemic Thanksgiving ever.
Today I sat with her. If you're crying during "Twister" because they got their machine to go up into the tornado - if you're crying at anything with Helen Hunt you know it's bad.
I don't mind the feeling everything and crying at everything. I crawled in bed with her at 6 because that's bedtime now and watched a little of a Robert Redford movie about old people. My old people fell asleep in no time and it was just me with old people watching old people. I'm 54 and squeezing out of that little bed once I had to get out made me remember that I'm 54. When I'm laying in bed with mom I'm just a kid, wanting to be close to my mom. Even the broken one.
She's always been there. What happens when she's not there?
I was distraught the other night and I said to my friend Rebecca why do people have to go in this slow and horrible way. She said it was her only way to see me on her way out. She came as she was, and it was the only way for us to have time together. Before she packed her bags full of air and floated off.
That has comforted me.
I don't want to be left behind.
There are beautiful things. The dog who comes to scratch at the door of my mom's and checks on me. He comes and lays with me. My family who fills in the gaps.
That fall in the closet changed her. She is still feeling that pain.
I will sleep in the attic, and help her figure out why she's up when she gets up at night. She doesn't remember why. If she is just emptying out like the wind is blowing through her curtains on a prairie evening, then I have to be there to just hold her up and try and look out the window with her and feel the breeze. Right? Breathe her in, and help her go through.
Weirdly, because she worked a dementia ward, she talked easily about the stages of death, and how she would know when people were going. They'd give away their plants. She'd tell family members to get in bed with their people. She'd say be there. She'd say sometimes you could see the spirit leave the room. Her work is helping me prepare for her own escalator out.
It's hard when the person who built the winding staircase of dna that makes you up inside, their laugh and their fingers and their whimsy and their tacos and their toes, how dare they go and leave you. We were just getting to know each other.
