Building A Life, Continued

 

Up, down, up, down. This starting a new life outside of my house, away from my books and TV, beyond my computer, and despite chronic pain has become a bit of a roller coaster ride, and I have never ridden a roller coaster I didn't hate. The only thing keeping me going is that I do like to be taller than the trees once in a while.

 

Now I'm not talking stuck in Stygian depths here, with Hecate as my only companion, nor bounding joyfully through the forest with Artemis, chasing deer and young men with a bevy of beautiful maidens. I'm talking just the regular ups and downs of normal life, but it's been so long since I've had a "normal life" that I can hardly remember what it was like. But I do know when I let go of worrying, life flows much smoother.

 

My present normal life includes volunteering at a local hospital with the Guided Imagery/Gentle Touch Program, a modified yoga class, going to my trainer for an hated hour at the gym, spending a bit of time with Meg and Myla, and trying to do a bit of housework now and then. I have also bought a (cheap) sewing machine, and am learning to sew. For an enjoyable couple of months I spent one afternoon a week "eldersitting" the mother of a friend of a friend in a the retirement center of a convalescent center. Camille was funny and interesting and unable to talk, but her Alzheimer's worsened quite suddenly and she had to be moved. I'll still drop by to see her, but less frequently, and for briefer periods, once she is settled in her new nursing home.

 

This morning I went to a fund raiser walk for cancer to do gentle touch on the volunteer walkers as they took breaks from soldering on in the pouring rain. It is interesting to do gentle touch without the guided imagery part (it was too noisy to be heard easily, and it's tough to be screaming something like, "Now take a slow deep breath and let go of tension on the exhale" when the noise level is beyond belief because all activities had to happen in the gym due to the rain). It was also nice to be able to offer a small gift to the walkers, many of whom are survivors themselves, of course.

 

Sometimes I still wish. I wish I had my old job back. I wish I still had a partner (although perhaps not Rene). I wish the pain would ease off enough so I could live without narcotics, no matter how carefully prescribed and taken. I wish I had a retirement fund. I wish I had some of my old friends back, and had the energy and extroversion to attract new ones. I wish I didn't need a cane or walker to cover ground. If wishes were horses, I would ride saddleless across green fields with my hair streaming out behind me in the wind.

 

I am finding building a new life strenuous stuff, but I'm not sorry that I am who I am today-which is a direct result of my Big Fall on August 7. 2003. I go back to my early writings in July and August of '04 and find I was a different person then, more innocent about a lot of things, secretly thinking I would go back to work at the prison, that somehow I would pull some rabbit out of my a** and have my old life back in some recognizable form.

 

Who knew that four years later I would-finally!- be working on an outside life again. Not I. There were times when I was not sure I would live long enough to have a new life, or care enough to consider it, and now I see this working on new life as a gift, a privilege, a challenge, a mountain I am somehow equipped to deal with, valuing the good days, accepting the bad, allowing for the occasional misery that seeps over me and the loneliness that shows me that I am not yet ready for intimate relationships (and I don't mean sexual here) but still knowing that I will be ready eventually. (Aside: boy, it's nice to let a run on sentence run on out sometimes!)

 

On to a less introspective item of intense interest to me and not too many others. Now you may not care, but today Yale beat Harvard in the JV and Varsity races at the annual Harvard/Yale Regatta (also known as the Yale/Harvard Regatta), which is the longest running intercollegiate sporting event in the country. Going on 127 years. Or something like that. I forget. But Yale won!!!!!!!!!!

 

Why should I, a graduate of Connecticut College who never rowed so much as a rowboat in her whole life, care about such a win? You may well ask. It's because I live across the street from the Yale Rowing "Camp" where the boys come to train for the event (Harvard's boathouse is a half a mile down river.)They started racing on the Thames over 100 years ago, both colleges renting rooms from the Yankee neighbors, always happy for a few bucks, of course. Eventually the colleges brought property on the Thames, in Yale's case a couple of old houses, which have been added onto as the years have passed.

 

Now this is not a regular Regatta, where several colleges compete over a 1000 or 2000 meter course. No, this is just Harvard and Yale on a ball buster of a course (please excuse my language, but it is meant fairly literally). The freshmen race two miles, the JV race three miles and the Varsity race four interminable miles, a lung crushing, leg cramping, arm burning, stomach clenching distance which is unheard of in this day and age. And it is the four mile Varsity race that really matters. In the last 30 years, Yale has won the Varsity only six or seven times. Harvard's coach Harry Parker has had a real monopoly on this race for so long that some Yale alumnae have considered putting a hit out on him-or at least considered Voodoo (a religion I know a bit about, but not enough to assay such a curse)

 

And finally, finally Yale came through this year and won two out of the three. The Varsity came from way behind in the last half mile to win by three-tenths of a second. We cannot actually see the race from here, but listen to it on the radio, screaming across the river like they could hear us, scaring Myla no end in the process. Then we waited for them to exchange shirts with Harvard and row that last half mile back to the Yale dock, where they threw first the coxswain into the river, followed by the whole team jumping in, then the coach, followed by the whole team jumping in, while we-neighbors and parents of rowers and alumnae-all clapped and cheered and hooted.

 

So a good part of today was quite up, and all I can say is I am grateful.

 

Blessings, Margo

Tags: Building a New Life, Up and Down, Yale won the Regatta!

Road Trips, Past and Future

Last weekend I went on a Quilt Shop Hop with my longtime friend Peggy. A Quilt Shop Hop like this is an opportunity for quilt shops to lure obsessed, addicted quilters into their stores to spend a lot of money they don't have on (sometimes) gorgeous material they may never use.

 

Should you not be a quilter, it works like this: a group of shops in a general area sell "passports" which need to be stamped at each and every shop in order to qualify for prizes which range from a super duper sewing machine, to "fat quarters" of fabric. (A fat quarter is a certain amount of material, the exact size of which I have yet to learn.) Along with the stamp, each shop gives out one part of quilt pattern. If one hits all stores, one has the whole quilt pattern to do, for free.

 

After one gets stamped, one then wanders around ooohing and ahhhing at material and quilting books and the amazing quilts most shops hang on their walls, often with the pattern and already chosen and cut fabric to make the quilt top.At a large extra cost, because all the choosing and cutting of fabric lengths has already been done.

 

I don't sew, therefore I don't quilt. At all. Never. And am highly unlikely to learn at this point in my life, what with my permanently injured right hand and all.

Peggy learned to sew at her mother's knees and makes wonderful quilts. (My mother had one arm and never sewed, either) Peg has enough spare fabric to make seven to ten huge quilts, all stored in her sewing room, and she has a small stash, compared to "real" quilters, she tells me.

 

So why was I along on a three day weekend to seven quilt stores in New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts, you ask. Well, because it was a road trip, of course, with three nights in hotels, and an opportunity to go to the ocean. Plus, as Peggy is quick to add, I have a good eye for color. This is a rather startling fact we discovered three years ago when she made me a quilt for which I picked all the fabric. She has dragged me along to quilt shops with her ever since.

 

Now Peggy and I met when I was four and she was five. This August will mark 54 years of friendship. The last road trip we had been on together, however, was over 35 years ago, with our then-husbands along in tow. It was also the last time we had a major blow out that almost came to blows. ( Long story short, we wanted to set up camp in different spots, ended up screaming at each other, and stomped off in different directions, leaving out frightened husbands behind. They tentatively set up in a third spot and were both surprised and relieved when we turned up happily together, several hours later. Our mothers could have told them this was a normal occurrence, reverting back to five year olds.)

 

This was our first road trip since then, and while we knew blow outs were unlikely, we did wonder how well we'd travel together now, in our late 50's.

It was great! We had a wonderful time, even though I got tired of fabric stores, and took to reading while she bought still more fabric. I even bought a passport to have stamped, though it turned out neither of us won anything, alas. 

 

After we finished the Shop Hop, we hit Newburyport, MA, like the tourists we were, going into the wonderful selection of clothing. furniture, art, junque, and second hand stores the city offers. Peggy is always helpful in dragging my walker up and down steps, so I could hit as many stores as I liked. Our big purchases? Peg bought a pair of denim "I dream of Jeannie" pants, and I bought a cheap ring, both in a small head shop, which was affordable. We also had dinner with two of her old friends who now live in the area.

 

We spent a couple of early morning hours at the beach in Newbury, MA, too. These were perhaps the best hours of the whole trip.

 

This trip has hardened my desire to take my own Road Trip this fall, in late September or early October. I have never take a road trip alone. I have always gone with my mother and/or daughter or one spouse or the other, and have always pretty nicely compromised over the route or the speed or the accommodations or the tourist traps, or all these together. This next trip will be mine, all mine. Never mind that I can probably only drive a few hours a day, and will need to rest a lot and walk around a lot, and deal with pain a lot. Never mind that I will be low budgeting it, and will miss my daughter and granddaughter and dog. Never mind that I won't be able to go as far as I'd like, and visit all my J-Land friends, I am going to do it, anyway!

 

My tentative route will be from CT to DC through WV to KY (near Cincinnati) to Pittsburgh, PA, then home to CT. Do any of my readers live roughly along that route? I would be happy to take an extra day or two to swing by to meet you, just let me know! (Mort, do you want a visit from an odd lesbian from New England?) I will be staying in motels in some places, and hope to bunk down on a sofa in others. I don't care how neat or messy anyone's house is, I just want whatever adventure the trip can offer me. And I have to be as frugal as possible.

 

And I want to meet and talk to people, flirt with babies, exchange hellos with strangers. This will be the most difficult part, I think. Rene is very good at striking up conversations with anyone, I am shyer. I just hope that between scheduled visits I can have hello-where-are-you-from? kind of interactions, no big thing, but still tough for me. We'll see what happens. Now I am going to get my maps out and start daydreaming.

 

Blessings, Margo

 

 

Tags: Quilt Shop Hop, Road Trips Past, Road Trip Planning Ahead

Still Alive and Wondering-Me & Mom, too.

 

Amazingly enough, my mother is home and doing well. She never even had to go to rehab, though her balance is still off a bit because her left eye is still blurry. She has a physical therapist coming in twice a week to help her walk more steadily, and she has now lived to see her 82nd birthday, which was Wednesday.

 

I am so appreciative of the prayers, energy, thoughts everybody sent her way-her recovery is a response to such kindness that poured out of all my readers, and I am so beyond grateful I have no words beyond: Thank You All. Your support truly got me through in a way I could not have otherwise.

 

I am still processing the aftermath of the experience, however, and have been meditating in my own way about family dynamics. What has come to mind is the myth of Demeter and Persephone. (For a brief synopsis of the myth go here: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/persephone.html) In one view, psychologically, Demeter and Persephone are almost too entwined, and Demeter's response to Persephone's abduction is so strong that she withdraws from the world completely. I have been wondering how Persephone would have responded if Demeter had been abducted. And how intertwined I am with my own mother. And why.

 

 "I did think briefly about letting go, but I couldn't go yet," she told me, "you are not ready for that yet. Me, either." She told me when she was finally compos mentis (sp?) again.

 

My own response to the inevitability of my mother's death brings up such a rush of sorrow and desolation that it is scary. I told her later that when it is her time to let go, I will be all right-and I know I will be able to work through the pain-but it made me wonder a bit about what kind of bond we have. Two years ago, when she was so sick that Luke called me to come quick because the doctordid not believe she would live, she turned the corner as soon as she realized I was there. Everyone was amazed, but she told me the same thing, in different words, as soon as we were alone.

 

Careful, subtle questioning has lead me to believe she has not said anything similar to my siblings or father. I don't quite get it yet, and maybe I never will, but I have been pondering it a lot lately. Demeter was(is) immortal, so Persephone really never had to face her mother's death. But I believe she would have been able to move on if her mother had been mortal. Death of our parents is something we all have to mourn, move through and keep living with wholeness.

 

I think I am afraid that my mother doesn't want to let go because she fears for me, and I don't want her to do that. But I cannot change her, I can only continue to work on my own changes. And, of course, I do want her to keep living as long as she has quality of life. We still have to go to Taos next May.

 

Perhaps I am not making much sense, but it doesn't matter. I will continue to meditate on it, and am very grateful she is still with us.

 

Meanwhile, my "real life" is taking off at what is (for me) warp speed. (Part of me wants to laugh at this, for it is snail slow compared to my last life.) I finish my orientation at the hospital this week, so will be able to start doing real Gentle Touch/Guided Imagery the following week. I will be working on the Ortho Floor-the same one on which I had such a terrible, enraging experience four years ago. I still hold some anger, but am pleased that I can help change to culture of the floor even a little bit.

 

One afternoon a week I am also elder-sitting a friend of a friend's mother who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. And I am spending an hour a week with Glenn, my trainer. And going to at least one or two DR's appointments a week. And, six months after anesthesia and surgery, I can finally concentrate enough to read books again, and am having a small orgy of catching up. And I have discovered clothes shopping. Almost all my life I've shopped in Large Women's Stores, or online. Suddenly I fit into clothes from regular stores! I must be careful not to turn this new hobby into an expensive ongoing orgy, though I really need everything from undies to jeans and tops.

 

I am still trying to figure out how to do all this, and still get enough rest, but like everything else, I'll work it through, and get stronger in the process.

 

Blessings, Margo

 

Tags: Mother & Daughter entwined, Demeter & Persephone, busy life

Brain Surgery, Day Seven

This will be my last post from Denver on Mother's Brain Bleed. One week later she is doing amazingly well. She was happy this morning because she had finally gotten her hair washed, and could begin to see the magnitude of her scar-starting on her forehead, above her left temple, then all the way around in a loop that ends behind her left ear. She is amazed, and rather proud of the head scar. She was less happy to discover that she has stitches beside, and below her left eye, but came 'round to a more philosophical point of view shortly. "At least I can see out of it, though it's still rather blurry."

She blows me away.

She will be going from the hospital to a rehab place where my sister-in-law's sister-in-law. Glenda, is an administrator. She will look after Mom well, I know. Mom is not happy about this, but is resigned to going. She knows that the schedule in rehab is a good deal more rigorous than her schedule would have been if she came right home. On the other hand, her depth perception and balance are off, not to mention her double vision, so she's also scared to come right home from the hospital. (Thank Goodness!)

 

Dad seems to be into denial about how close a call this was, and resentful that I can understand what the doctors are saying better than him (he's pretty deaf, too). It makes me sad that we don't know each other well enough to discuss what's going on, but I see that he, quite literally, does not have the understanding of how to discuss painful stuff, and has no interest in trying. It's too scary for him.

 

I recognize control issues on both sides-his and mine-and know that I have to let go tomorrow, and pack up and leave early Saturday. I know that he-and my brother Luke who lives nearby-will do fine without me, but letting go will be painful. I'll do it, of course, cheerfully and with great love to Mom, then go out to the car to cry.

 

I know that in my own way I am as strong as my mother, just more in touch with my feelings. And I know that my parents lean on each other, after 58 years of marriage, and am glad they have each other, no matter what their past may have held.

 

I won't write again until I get home and resettled, but must add once again how much I have appreciated your prayers and support during this painful time, and how much they have meant to my mother, as well.

 

Blessings, Margo

Tags: Brain Surgery Day Seven, Last Entry from Denver

Brain Surgery, Day Four

It's very late, and I have the "first shift" at the hospital tomorrow, so I should be long asleep, but I wanted to say that my mother is doing much, much better today. Her bad eye has opened a crack, and she can see out of it some-thanks to the best eye surgeon the hospital has, who just happened to be passing through, 20 minutes before she was rolled into surgery. He made it joint surgery immediately.

She had her glasses on and hearing aide in when I got there, mid-afternoon-Allison had the first shift today. Luke and Mary arrived shortly afterwards, so I left to give them some time alone with her. When I returned an hour later she was up and sitting in her chair, having walked around her room with one of the physical therapists.

Tomorrow, if she continues to improve, the powers that be will take out at least one of her IV's, and her catheter, and maybe even move her off the floor to a regular med/surge hall. She still gets confused a bit-a while after the nurse told her that tomorrow shed would be able to use the toilet, heavily stressing only with a nurse helping. Twenty minutes later she told me she could go to the bathroom alone tomorrow, only to have all of us, Luke, Mary, and me leap down her throat with a chorus of NO's. Oh yes, she said, now I remember.

But she was joking about what hair style she'd have to have for Catherine's wedding two minutes later, as I carefully combed some of the blood out of her hair. We had her laughing uproariously with a bunch of silly suggestions.

It is almost impossible to believe this is happening so fast when four days ago we thought she would die of a brain clot or the surgery to relieve it.

As for my father, I recognize how scared he is of strong women who stand up for themselves against him. It doesn't happen often to him, and he was quite shaken by my strong and immediate response. Today he has reverted to type, acting as if the whole thing never happened. I can guarantee that I will not ostrich it away in my life, but I need time and space to look at the whole experience-and the dynamics which still can engulf me all too quickly if I do not work to stay focused, clear and open to Spirit.

My mother love him, without really understanding what she has missed by staying with him, and she has grown more slowly than Catherine and I have, but she has changed and is more able to take him on when it is important to her. (Margo and I are going to Taos: you'll be on your own for four days. She allowed him no comment and gave no explanation, and he said nothing back to her, though he hates to have be alone to cook for himself.

I am so tired I am rambling, but wanted to let you who have become such a support system for me with your comments and concern, know how things are progressing.

Blessings, Margo

Tags: Brain Surgery Recovery,

Brain Surgery,Day Three, but one day late

 

I want to thank everybody again for prayers, good thoughts, energy sent across the county and the Pond for my mother, who continues-much too slowly for all of us-to recover. Her personality is there-stubborn, complaining, but wanting to do stuff for herself until she tires. And her sense of humor is intact. She will catch up, I think, to her old self eventually. Thank all Holy Deities, male and female, and all else the is out there for healing.

 

She has always seen herself as "not much more than a housewife" and as not doing so great with her kids. Luke and I gave her problems in our teens, and she has been worried a lot about Catherine more recently. And to be blunt, it was not a happy home to grow up in, nor a happy marriage for many years (though after 59 years they have worked out a way of living together, with no intimacy of any sort, but acceptable companionship). But I see her a a woman as strong as an ox, an amazing example. 

 

In the last 4 years she has survived cancer, radiation, chemo, obstructed bowel(twice!)-both of which nearly killed her, and now this fall and brain surgery. All this with her personality and odd sense of humor intact. So what if she's still confused about where she is at times, and looks like she went 10 rounds with Mohammed Ali in his prime. She is quite incredible, and is obviously where I got what ever it is that keeps me crawling back from depression, abandonment, and ten surgeries in fourteen years!

 

She even called this morning with a request for a sweater, books, a pad and pencil, and a hearing aide battery. Considering one eye is so swollen shut the doctor cannot pry it open, and the other is a barely a slit, and wearing her hearing aide on her swollen left side-just under her surgical scar-is painful, I'd say she is plugging along quite well, all things considered. She's my hero.

 

Of course, now that the crisis has abated a bit, family dynamics has raised its ugly head. Both Luke and my father want control of her medical situation- a repeat of two years ago which climaxed in a shouting match in her hospital room. The doctor sided with my father, after which Luke stayed away for over six months (and remember, he's the one who lives out here) I don't care who controls her medical info, I just want to make sure no errors are made in her medical care-which I have painfully come to see as wanting a kind of control myself.

 

Where I need to be is willing to help where ever I can, even though she tells me she does not want Mary and Luke to visit at all, and Allison (my dad) only for an hour or so a day. And when she begs me to stay with her, to tell them that, I have to tell her gently that I cannot do that-they love her, too, and are worried and want to be with her. She hurrumphs, and calls me a disobedient daughter, then smiles a bit. When they are there she keeps urging then to go, and I bite my tongue to say nothing-because they do love her and want to see her as much as I do. She has never told me to leave, and I think it's because I have a nurses aide background (two or three lifetimes ago) and am used to dealing with most anything (except my family) due to my HIV testing and counseling background, working in prison.  I can anticipate her needs and advocate. gently, to her nurses.

 

Last night we were all there when my father and I had a big go around. Apparently he felt I was not moving away from her fast enough when she needed to sleep (my suggestion in the first place). I was murmuring to her about taking slow deep breaths and relaxing, and was completely surprised when he jumped up, marched across the room and hit me-hard-on the shoulder, ordering me away from her. I moved away all right, enraged, right over to him.  I had completely lost it. "You will never hit me again, " I hissed at him.  He leapt up balling his fist, obviously afraid I would hit him back. I would never do so, and the fact that he was afraid of me tells me how little he knows me. "You will never hit me again, I said loudly. He refused, just as loudly, to go into the hall so I could tell him why I had lingered for no more that 30 extra seconds at her side (She and I had worked out a way that I helped her relax into sleep, a 30 second relaxation technique, that she liked) and I was so furious I found myself wanting to hit him back out of sheer frustration. My brother helpfully chimed in that I should have moved sooner, and this was not to place to argue it out. Flames to the fire. I wanted to slug him hard enough to knock him out (something I learned, by the way, in boot camp before I worked at the prison, and wasn't half bad at).

 

Instead, of course, I took several deep breaths and moved my walker to the far side of the room, where I sat flashing on the three times I saw him hit her, and the time he pushed her so hard that she  cracked her ribs so badly she spent a week in the hospital, something Mom told me about quite graphically later. And the number of times I'd been hit, too.

 

On the other side of the room he was yelling at me that it was my fault she fell (she had insisted on giving me her bedroom and was sleeping on an expensive blowup bed in the living room when she fell on her way to the bathroom) and I was to get o ut right nowand be on the next fight out of Denver because I was not welcome in his house.

 

I took several slow deep breaths and looked across at this frail old man with emphysema, so totally unable to do anything with his anger that he had to hit and threaten and could not even look me in the eye, or consent to go into the hall so I could explain why I had not moved away from his wife in his time frame. I struggled, somewhat successfully, to let go of the anger, to see his fear at her illness and his feeling of loss of control, and his lifelong unwillingness and inability to deal with feelings, happy or angry or sad. For whom intimidation, withdrawal into his own head, and occasionally hitting, literally and figuratively, was the only way he has to express what he feels, and I felt unbelievably sad for him.

 

I said, quietly, but so that he could hear me, that I was not going home on the next plane, that Mom had invited me to stay, and I would, and he must never hit me again. He did not respond, though I knew he heard me. At that point Mary, the eternally chipper one, chimed in that we were all invited to her brother and sister-in-law's for dinner, and she would not take no for an answer, so we kissed Mom good night, one by one and put on our happy family faces as we trooped off to Scott and Glenda's for a very nice dinner, most of which I could not eat. Dad and I had separate cars (remember, I will not drive with him) and came home and went to bed without speaking.

 

This morning, as he was leaving for the hospital, I said we had to talk. As he looked away, I calmly and quietly apologized for my anger and ill behavior the night before, explained what I had been doing with Mom-something we has worked out together before the surgery while he was not there (he left at 2:00PM the day of the fall, and did not return until I called at 8:00 PM to tell him about the surgery. He was already in bed at the time) and that I needed him to know he was never to hit me again. He kept looking away, silent, until I told him I needed to hear it from him, and -finally- he muttered that he would never hit me again. And I could let go of a good big knot of my anger, finally. But not all of it, of course.

 

Reading this makes him look like a constant abuser, and he wasn't. It usually happened when he'd had too much to drink, and (I believe) the abuse tapered off as we left home, and he began to drink much less. I do not know this for sure, and of course, we did not call it abuse 25 or 30 years ago. Mom truly believes that she provoked him, and, though we have talked about abuse as adults, she still only half believes that how ever she provoked him, hitting her was abusive. She has told me he hasn't touched her in over 20 years, and it's all in the past, when we didn't know about abuse anyway, and it is a subject I am not to bring up in front of him, ever. I will respect her request, but smolder because it is just one more secret we keep as a family full of secrets and disconnection.

 

I do really feel badly for both of them, caught in a dance of 59 years, unable to do much more than hold on, each wishing for a life the other cannot give. And I know I can give him nothing, and my mother only my occasional presence and laughter and maybe-someday-before she dies, onelast trip to Taos.

 

Now I am off to the hospital for my shift, and will stay in a waiting room during the 2 hour rest period, while Dad comes home to rest, and we'll all be there until Luke and Mary arrive, after a day of skiing. Then back here, to our bedrooms, and again tomorrow, when I have the early shift...

 

And I just hope to Goddess she continues to return to us, to heal from the fall, and we can all help her in some small was, despite out very different out looks.

 

Blessings-and I need them- Margo

Tags: My Mother, Frail & Strong as an Ox, My Hero, Family Dynamics,  I Will Not Be Hit.

Brain Surgery, Day Two

 

My mother is alive and reasonably compos mentis in Littleton Hospital today. Thank Goddesses. God, The Light of the Universe, Allah, and anything else out there with positive powers. And thanks to all who prayed or send thoughts and energy or whatever spiritual practice anyone does. Today was also long and difficult, but so much better than yesterday that I am not complaining at all.

 

She actually looked worse when I got there around noon, eyes blacker, bruises running down her left cheek, occasional bloody "tears" running down her face from her swollen shut eye and neck and a "turban" of gauze which has all sorts of fluids leaking through. But she was propped up in bed complaining about all of this, sounding very much herself.

 

Dad had been there in the morning, Luke and Mary were there when I arrived, trying to "cheer her up" with lame jokes (Luke) and optimistic chatter (Mary.) I know how much Mom hates both kinds of attempted diversions, because she told me so yesterday morning after the possibility of surgery came up. She said it took too much energy to be polite to them, even though she loves them dearly. They finally left about 12:45 PM, and Mom slept.

 

It was clear she'd had a bad night, for she had long gauze strips tied to her hand and feet, and a wrap around her chest securing her gently to the bed. Luckily Allison (my father) didn't notice, and I learned later from her nurse she had been very agitated during the night, trying to yank out her catheter, and climb out of bed. After she kicked a nurse in the face, they had to restrain her. She would be so horrified by her actions that I'll never tell her this.

 

I spent the afternoon getting her off to sleep, so that as soon as she started snoring, some nurse or tech could arrive bedside to do something to wake her up again. Sometimes hospitals make no sense to me at all. Actually most of the time. She has the added burden of being profoundly deaf, and was unable to use her hearing aides. For her to understand people they had to lean close to her left cheek (the one blood was trickling down from the smashed, sutured eye) and speak slowly and clearly into her (still bloody) left ear. Nobody really did that except her nurse and I.

 

So I spent my afternoon hanging over her bed, translating what the doctors and nurses and dietitians were asking or telling her. At one quiet moment she asked me why she was so tired, and I leaned down to reminder her that she had just had major emergency brain surgery last night and was entitled to feel a bit spacey. It came like a revelation to both of us. She had not taken in all the explanations about surgery during the day, and I couldn't figure out why she had seemed so confused about it all afternoon.

Her co\mment? Gee, I am so glad to know it's over, I've been worrying when it was going to be done! She asked pertinent questions-who did the surgery, what was done, why didn't she remember (I told her it was because she was so heavily medicated, not that she disintegrated in front of my eyes over a terrifying 40 minutes), and no wonder her head and eye hurt so much last night. No wonder indeed!

 

So for most of the day her personality and sense of humor was intact, though she did have trouble understanding what other were saying to her, mostly because of her hearing, or lack there of, I think. Around 5:00 PM, however, she began to go down hill again, getting agitated and trying to climb out of bed. I began to experience the anxiety and fear of déjà vu. Luckily the neurosurgeon (who we all like a lot) arrived and said this happened to many elderly surgical patients. As the day ends they seem to recede or lose ground, just like Mom was doing, Then perk up again in the morning, with no memories of having had a bad evening or night. They sometimes refer to it as Sundowner's Syndrome.

 

After a shockingly brief debate with myself about staying to make sure she ate dinner, I decided to spare myself a second ordeal (though I could tell she was less confused than the night before) and bugged out. I do believe I am finally living out the recognition that taking care of me take precedence over taking care of others now and then. It's a healthy step which I took with no second guessing myself, and I am pleased.

 

Tomorrow still unknown. We seem to be living hour by hour at this point; at some point we'll move to day by day. She is still in critical condition, and quite unaware of the struggles which may lie ahead. But we had her for several hours today, loving us as we do her, and I am grateful.

 

Blessing on all of us, Margo