COMING TOGETHER--53

Today is Tuesday. Mom has eaten well for the last few days. She has gotten herself up in the morning, which is a relief to me. Her disposition has been good but she has become clingy and self-pitying lately. She has to be in the room with me, wherever I go. So I have had to leave the apartment more often to get things done.

I have learned to sleep more at the apartment duirng the day. The job shift, being 8pm to 4am, is getting boring. I am finding fewer and fewer ways to keep myself occupied all through the night.

Mom is reading better because she has been eating better. The quality of the blood is everything when you get older. Money-wise we are in good shape. We just need to keep improving.

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Things turned out different than I hoped. Mom wanted to go to WalMart with me to get her own kind of food. She seems to resent being under my influence a little more each day. So she got what she wanted, including alcohol, not what I would have bought her.

When she feels better, she gets independent. Then she refuses to do what she did to feel better. Then she eats less because she only eats what tastes sugary to her. Right now, I resent this, feeling like--okay, do what you want. It's really a disappointment, as much as I'd like to wish she would keep doing what made her feel good. But my mother never does. But then I know I often don't follow through on that attitude.

Today Mom has eated cereal and one slice of bread with a few peanuts. Tomorrow I will have to get her to eat real food. We will see how much she objects to what I want. I expect the worst.

Mom is watching a tv show about the Depression and the dust bowl that came west with it. My mother was part of that, as was her mother. Her mother had severe arthritis because of breathing the dust, and depression. My mother inherited the depression but not the arthritis. My mother cannot get away from this show; she loves the crying and emotional pain it causes.

I could not go along with her desire for emotional sympathy. I won't feed her self-pity and selfish emotions. I would not stand there and agree or be sympathetic. I've seen the show before and I've read works by Willa Cather, so I won't go along with her depression.