I haven't been writing because here is my day.
I've sort of just chucked it all to sit on the couch and watch ER next to my mom.
I can't stop thinking about Abby. Maura Tierney.
My mom is changing. I don't know if it's because I don't spend all my time looking directly at her and giving her engaging conversation. I sit next to her and listen to her hum. Today I picked dry skin off of her scalp because it was there and sort of like you can't stop peeling a sunburn, you know. My day is morning if she's up at 6:30 she used to greet me when I walked over to her bed. Now she looks at me only. I tell her good morning it's time to get up. I like morning because each day I think things might get better. It is human, to not think this but to just keep expecting it. So each day I think look at this day. We have this day, and it's brand new. So I feel happy. She hasn't moved her position from bedtime 10 hours ago. She sometimes says words that don't make a sentence but they are earnest and kind. I have to unpeel her diaper and she says waitwaitwait but I ignore that and try and shove it under her leg so when I lift her it will not go with us but stay on the bed. I heft her legs over like an anchor and her torso comes up and then I heft her in one motion over to the plastic toilet. This is why I've realized I can't lift a bag of dog food or anything with my right forearm right now.
I wrap her in blankets and give her her pills and a drink of ensure. She usually chews the straw, sometimes she drinks. She tells me something but it is a mystery. I brush her hair and give her another chance to drink a little, then tell her I'll be back, I put on Alexa music, and go feed and muck the horses and barn animals. I waste an hour doing that because it's the beginning of the day and I like everyone in the barn clean, neatened up, eating and dressed. The sky lightens and sun is coming up.
I go back in and get mom wiped and spread out a clean diaper made for an enormous man onto her wheelchair and then I heft her over to her chair right onto the diaper. We try to get it right on the bullseye center but no one is checking except me. I have to move her flailing arms and shirt to try and hook the diaper tabs onto the belly part, this is like diapering an octopus. I can't see, the diaper is annoying. Hard part done, I wash out the toilet if there's anything in there and then tip her back in the chair since she won't keep her feet on the footrests (I think it hurts her knees to bend) and we go into the house. I abandon her in the living room where there's sun and so I can have a few minutes before school with Bess without listening to the humming or groaning. I do that for Bess. I make breakfast and lunch for Bess, and she eats while looking at her phone. We spend fifteen minutes and this is our morning together. She will kiss me goodbye at least, even if it's weirdly to the side. I'll take it.
Then I take the tea and the eggs and toast and fruit and go in and sit with mom and lately since it's becoming winter-ish (it is LA, so.. not really) but the warm winter morning sun comes in that window onto the "thinking couch" as Kurt calls it, and I turn on ER or Little House on the Prairie and I have to get right in her eyeline or she doesn't know what I'm doing when I'm feeding her. It's like her mouth is the train depot and it's closed for the night. Once I get her attention we can get finished with eating. I put a dog pee pad onto the couch and lift her onto the couch so she has a comfier chair and watch a little of the show but she usually gets calm and zoned out and so I go and ride the horses for an hour. If I'm sweaty I swim my laps after, if she's dozing or if she's awake I give her an apple and this keeps her busy for my laps. I used to move her out into the sun to be near me but lately my arms hurt and she hasn't minded staying put.
She stopped wondering where I am. She stopped looking outwards, really. It's easier, really, when she isn't as needy. She's just incrementally becoming less.
She always notices the dogs. Aren't they beautiful. Or sometimes weirdly hears a line on TV like when one character called Abby a whore she said "She should get rid of that guy." So her brain has levels and sometimes it fires right.
The last few days that I have just sat watching ER all day (I get up to make food, check animals, laundry, clean, etc) she has calmed down her terrible anxiety. If I sit next to her on the couch instead of putting her apart from me across the room in the big chair, she seems comforted.
I give her lunch and then we sit some more. I don't mind her weird humming or her sort of groaning. It starts to get worse as the day gets later, and if she seems horrible I give her anxiety medication. Or we eat ice cream, or both. If she makes too much noise I say MOM. Are you okay? and she stops making the noise and says what? She doesn't know it sounds so bad, I think it's just a vibration in her chest or in her brain or for her brain. At some point we do the toilet routine again. Right before bed we change her one more time. We eat dinner. I put her out in the afternoon sun if she didn't go out in the morning. I do the barn chores while she sits in the sun. I always say I'm right here. I'll be there in a second. Really only yesterday I realized she doesn't have the outward part that is worried. She might inwardly be worried in there, but I think she is forgetting insecurity. Maybe having our routine and knowing she is safe, warm, dry, fed, she can just be and collapse slowly.
At night I snuggle in her bed a few minutes or try and talk as we listen to Woody Allen movie soundtracks. Whimsy and sweet 30's music sounds. Tonight when I got in her eyeline she said she loved me. She has stopped looking for me like she did.
She has somewhere to go and I know I'm not allowed to go for now. I'm trying to help her pack what she needs. I want her to go with a full heart.
So I sit on the couch and when she's in bed I drive to Costco with Nathan and tell him all my worries and he says yes to everything. Yes, you're right, he says. That's all I can do, is listen to this boy who shops with me and is here for me doing dumb stuff while my mom is dying. I keep standing in front of clips at Blowes and feeling so happy because I like to clip stuff onto my saddles like saddle bags, and clips are cheap and he doesn't mind going here. Today we got big viney plants to put outside her window so she can see green out the ugly side instead of scraggly fence.
I wish things were different. I told him in the car. I don't understand why people get erased. She's already dead, I said out loud. She isn't really aware that she's in there, that she had that whole life as a nurse, as a mom, as a daughter, as a frolicker. I keep wanting her to know because I'm still here, but she doesn't need to pack all that I guess. She's flinging it out and laying it on the couch like she does with her food sometimes. She doesn't need that.
She's taking what I give her because I'm giving it. She wouldn't miss it if I stopped giving it. Sometimes something will worry her and she'll say a nonsense sentence with a worried look at me and I'll say we don't have to do that. We're just gonna sit here. Then she looks greatly relieved and says okay. Good. And pats my hand.
I'm just sitting next to her for now. Like the nurse said, it's a big thing to just sit with someone.
