Monday, September 13

Today I am grateful for:

A beautiful sunny fall day.

Getting re-acquainted with the routines of my normal life, after being at my Mom's for a week.

We went to town for a few things, mainly so my sweetie could get his voter registration so he could vote early.

Then he went to vote, and I'm glad he did.

I picked MORE beans while he went to vote.

We went to the dump and it's always a nice drive there. It's all back roads and pretty yards, fields and marshes, a pretty white church and horses here and there.

My sweetie got lots done while I was away, so that was good to see.

We watched "The Counterfeiters", which is a VERY good film.

Our new cat, yet to be named, has been quarantined for two weeks and shows no sign of illness, so we introduced him to Fatty (we'll introduce him to one cat at a time for a while). There was no sign of aggression from either of them, so that's nice.

Overview of the past week-ish:

I went home to see family, which is a long, long drive. I have to do it alone, since my sweetie has to stay here to look after the animals. When I get home, it's his turn to go see family, who live not that far from mine. We have gone together sometimes, but if we go for a week, then that means we spend half of it with my family, half with his, instead of us seeing our own family for a whole week.

It was hard to experience my Mom, and how life is for her now. When I last saw her before Covid, she did have the normal physical limitations for someone her age (now 91) but she was still very sharp mentally. After a severe incident about a year and a few months ago with a sodium balance that was nearly fatal and she spent a long time recovering from, (I wasn't sure she could come home again) her short term memory is gone.

She knows who we are, and seems to remember more or less things like where we live and who we're married to and so on. She remembers things like my nephew is in college now, that kind of thing. What she doesn't seem to keep track of, is things like whether or not someone visited her today, or if you take your shoes off and leave the room, she won't know whose shoes those are.

She doesn't seem that interested in having conversations anymore. I'm not sure she does have great recall about the past, because she seems done talking about that. So, for the whole week our exchanges were very much in the absolute present tense, such as "I think it's raining" or mostly about whether she needed water, or food, or anything. Short comments and a lot of questions like "why is it so hot in here?".

She probably should be in a care home now, because she does have a lot of difficulty walking, and getting up from her chair. She doesn't need to do much more than that, because between home care and my family, the bases are covered for everything else. Home care gives her her medication on time, and heats up food for her, and small cleaning tasks like taking out garbage or making the bed. My family does everything else. Yet, she is barely able to get from her chair to the bathroom, or to her bed.

My brother has taken it upon himself to be "in charge" of Mom, and everything has to go past him first. It makes sense that someone takes this role, or you'd have ten people all trying to do their version of "what's best". I've talked to him about things I saw, because I was there every night for a week, and most of the days. I told him about that she is up many times during the night, sometimes needing to eat because of low blood sugar. I told him she shouldn't be left alone with bottles of Tylenol, because of her memory loss. She has no idea when she's taking them, but she's also in pain a lot.

He and my sister (who has co-power of attorney) both say she's "almost" ready to be placed, but I am worried that they are waiting too long. I'm worried that the only thing that will finally make them do it is something very scary. She is alone in the house for about 12 hours every night, and that scares the crap out of me, and I don't know why it doesn't scare them. She isn't just going to bed and not doing anything. She's getting up several times to pee, and then gets something to eat if her blood sugar is low, and sometimes walks out to her chair in the living room for a while if she can't sleep.

Aside from that, I saw other family too, and some of THEM are really not doing well either. I won't go into great detail, but there's one sister with a lot of health issues who SHE almost seems ready to live in an assisted living situation, and my Trainwreck sister who has issues with drinking, smoking, and so on.

It makes for a pretty depressing trip, when one of my sisters recently lost her husband, and others are in such bad shape.

From a positive side of things, I brought my sister with all the health issues some clothes and a nice winter jacket because I know she is living on pension and needed a few nice things. She seemed to perk up a bit.

My family really made an effort to come see me at Mom's, which was great. Normally only the family that lived pretty much right in town would make an effort to see me while I was home, but this time people from much further away came. I truly wasn't expecting this, and it was very touching. I think it is finally sinking in what an incredible effort it is for me to make this trip (and I've always had huge distances to come home for the last 20 years, first it was from Wyoming, and now from Alberta), and that for them to come see me so I don't have to try to also drive to see them is only fair.

I saw my sister E, who is the one who also still has horses, and sister S who has been making the effort to see more of Mom in person. I saw some nephews and their family who came out for the day.

I saw my Aunt and Uncle (Mom's brother) a few times, and convinced sister E to visit them, and we had a very good visit together. She hadn't seen them for years, even though they live in the same town as Mom. I'm always surprised when people in my family say they don't visit them, because they were a big part of our family growing up.

I even saw my cousin N, who I kind of quit trying to visit because it seemed like such an inconvenience to her. She lives close to town, but only used to come in to town once a week, and always seemed rushed, so I stopped letting her know when I was coming. This time she called me, and we met up and had a good visit. She has really been working on being more independent in the last ten years, she got a good job and earns good money, so her marriage is changing because she used to be a farm wife raising kids, and he kind of told her what to do because it was "his" money (which is a joke, because her work on the farm should have been considered equal to his).

I got to walk around the farm where I grew up with my nephew, and while he always seems to enjoy doing this when I'm home, seems to have no real interest in the farm or walking around on it the rest of the time.

My Trainwreck sister took me to a lovely spot by the river to sit and talk. We also went to the cemetery where several members of our family are buried, including most recently our brother in law.

I took the last few month's worth of paintings to show everyone, which is a big leap for me. I don't normally show people my art, because up until fairly recently I didn't feel like it was good enough to show anyone. One good thing came of Covid, and that was me having LOTS of time alone at home to really push hard on the painting for the last two winters. Everyone was very complimentary, so that gives me some positive feed back. I am doing this so that I can get used to the idea of having people see my work.

I did a lot of walking around town. It's a lovely small town, with nice, safe streets. There are usually a core group of residents who can be seen every evening out walking, sometimes with dogs. When I'm visiting Mom, I am one of them.

I talk sometimes to people and it's funny to know that they were here when I was a kid, but as a kid you don't really know these people. I only knew the kids in school, not their parents. I have to remember that every person you talk to will know who you are if you mention your Mom, and that everyone is connected in some way, so every word out of your mouth better be nice.

I went to see a movie in the same theater we went to as kids. I remember going to see Star Wars, the very first one, for the first time, in that theater. It's been renovated, but it feels the same.

Overall, it was a good trip.