I am at my perents house. christi is sleeping on the sofa. margie is in a nother room praying or watching soap operas. my mom is sleeping, waking up just to try to remove the oxygen line from her nose or reach for invisible things overhead. my dad is at work. when i showed up here this morning, he was gone already. the chaplain of hospice called and said she wanted to talk to dad today. he came home for lunch and ate some meat (he seems to be on the atkins diet – maybe not on purpose) and i said the chaplian was coming. my dad said he could only skip work for things that were really important. um… like now? no, like really important. i wonder what could be more imporant than now. i don’t really want to find out. it would be bad. i told him about the family medical leave act and he said he had his coworkers to think of. i bet they really love having him come into every day. as fun as he normally is (note: irony) he must be extra great to hang around now. i bet they’re all scared of him.
Mom is more alert than yesturday. She’s getting 50% more oxygen streamed in her nose. the hospice people tell us not to give her water, so she’s drying out like a piece of dried fruit with out the sun. She’s talking a bit today. the hospice people tell us to talk to her, but i don’t know what to say. finally, i said, “you did a good job raising your daughter.” and she said, “thank you.” she answers yes or no questions when margie asks them.
My dad still wants to move her. he was upset when his mother was relocated. she was at el camino hospital and was clearly going to die and they decided she had to leave. so we had to find a place for her to go. she got moved to a convalescent hospital and died later the same day. Nobody dying wants to bounce around in the back of an ambulence. Actually, really very few people want to bounce around in the back of an ambulence at all. But my dad is as frightened as a bunny rabbit and wants to send her away. he said he didn’t want her sleeping (or dying) in their bedroom, so we moved her to the living room. it was a massive pain. she can’t stand at all on her own. margie halted to get her lifting belt, but my dad was intent and was going to do it alone. lifting from the back and not the knees. he’s going to destroy his back and for what? the whole moving experience was uncomfortable for her and now he wants to repeat it on a much larger scale. but it’s his call, not mine.
My mom is on the board of directors of a convalescent hospital. the one my grandma went to. it makes it hard to make an argument that she would opposed to moving there. when mom first came home from the hospital, she asked what was going on so i told her everything. she was upset. “my life is ruined. it’s over.” she kept repeating and it got very irritating very quickly. and iw as irritated at her, but i had to follow her everywhere, because her balance was poor and she might have fallen or wandered off or had some other calamity befall her. She was irrated at being followed. Her mantra changed from “everything is ruined.” to “you ruined everything.” because she was forgetting stuff and was unhappy and couldn’t remember why and certainly didn’t want her daughter telling her what to do. She told my dad that day that she wanted to move to fatima for the rest of her life rather than have me follow her around. so maybe she would rather be there. but we’d go to all the trouble of arranging an ambulence ride and she’s die when? the next day? later that day? on the ride over?
My dad has decided not to cremate my mom. This wouldn’t bother me except he made that descision when i told him that christi’s dad (a potter) could make an urn for my mom. The prospect of a handmade urn by a friend i guess is threatening somehow. both my grandmothers were creamated. he creamted his own mom, why not his wife? it’s got to be the urn. i told him he could say no and pick something else, but he’s been set on burial. he beleives that he is fully rational. his being an engineer makes him fully left brained and thus completely able to deal with any cirsis without becoming an emotional wreck. right.
I had opera tickets for tonight. i couldn’t switch them on such short notice, so i’m getting a tax write-off instead. but last night my dad irritated me and i went to esperanto class. it was stupid. they’re doing the lesson on affixes. i know almost all the affixes, becaise it was the fourth time i’ve had that lesson. everytime somebody new comes along, we do affixes again. anyway, i feel like someone should be at my mother’s side, but i went to class to avoid my dad. so maybe i’ll regret sacrificing my tickets to the irs.
No sign of my brother or my uncle. My uncle’s phone was off the hook all day yesturday. One day all of these males i’m related to will die. But first they will spend their last days being transported by ambulence from low-budget nursing home to low-budjet nursing home with noone to visit them and then they will neither be buried or creamated but simply tossed in the bay. These bad vibes i’m projecting are disturbing my mom. puppies and kittens. puppies and kittens. puppies and kittens.