COMING TOGETHER--72

Now Wednesday has come. I took Mom to get her hair done. This is a lot of trouble for me but it gives her the feeling of independence. However, some things happened.

Mom got lost in the store in which the salon is located. This upset her, as she likes to think she can get around on her own. It cut into her independence and pride.

Then she wanted to spend the day running around stores, but I couldn't do that. I had to get back to the apartment to get some sleep to work tonight. So I said she should get my brother's wife to take her around so they could spend all day doing whatever they wanted. Mom tried to exaggerate that by saying she could take a taxi, why I didn't even have to know when she takes the taxi and when she gets home. She was trying to get her independence back by separating herself from me.

I took her to the Cheesecake Factory, a good restaurant. Mom goes there because of the huge desserts. She eats a few bites of real food, then says she can't eat anymore. That's a lie. She just wants sweets, so she ordered a huge strawberry shortcake and after saying she can't eat any more, she downed the entire shortcake in easy fashion.

She said she depends on me too much. That is true, but not because she can be independent.

When we got back to the apartment, one of her lady friends called about the fact that Mom had completely forgotten a lunch she was supposed to lead and host today. This upset her.

She admitted she was losing her memory and that frightened her. I took that as the first time in a long time she admitted the truth about her age and her condition. I liked what she said. I told her eating all the sweets she does just takes any nutrition out of her blood, so it affects her mind and body. I think she got the point, but it doesn't matter. It's too late to matter. I expect her to forget what happened today.

This makes me wonder what is going on with her body and why she coughs so much. I wonder how much longer this situation with Mom is going to last.

COMING TOGETHER--71

It is Tuesday afternoon. As I am typing this, Mom is pretending to be asleep on the sofa next to me. I think she is lonely, and is there to be where I am.

I don't always want to be with her, I get tired of having to worry about her eating and health every day, every moment. I like getting away from her, but she has no one else. She is a dependant type who often uses arrogance to mask her dependency.

She badgers me with questions, as a way of talking to me since she really doesn't know how to communicate with me otherwise. I get mad at her constant questions, so I have to remind myself this is her only way to hear a voice in a world she is leaving.

She is like the image of the only person in the universe, standing on the earth shouting out to heaven hoping a voice would only come back. Without me to badger with questions, she is that person hearing nothing coming back.

If you don't believe in God, old age can be frightening to your memories.

So she lies there, just behind me at my right. It imposes on me. I wish she weren't there, I wish she were in her tv room, watching some stupid show. I've never enjoyed being around her, even as a small boy. I think I always knew we were as distant as strangers can be.

I always wished I could live with someone who did understand me, who could communicate with me, and I have known two women like that. They married someone else, so here I am.

COMING TOGETHER--70

Now it is Memorial Day Weekend. We have had a good time. No conflicts, Mom and I have been eating well, doing our duties and relating much better. I have been reading to Mom, she likes that because it is so hard for her to read herself.

I've been reading a novel called Princess Elizabeth's Spy, a spy novel set in WWII, about a young female spy. I've started reading to Mom, The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. He used to live in LaJolla CA where Mom and Dad lived 30 years ago. I even read her part of my novel about Dad's life in WWII. She didn't know I wrote that. I think she was favorably impressed.

This is a sign that she is able and willing to do less than before, but it also means she has accepted she can do less than 6 months ago. I have to accept that, too. I can't push her beyond the limits of a 92 year old woman who can barely walk. I'm grateful she can feed herself and dress herself, so I have to remember to not be too impatient about how slow she is.

Mom's daughter Nancy and her husband Lamar have grandchildren. They sent me a video through the email, which I showed Mom. She smiled through the whole 4 minute video, in fact, she wanted to see it 3 times.

I am working more than I have in two months, maybe that's good but my job of working all night--8pm to 4am--is boring and drudgery. I'd like to do something better but the job fits my life with Mom so well I won't give up the job just for money.

Anyway, we go on. We don't have any answers to life, they are not coming. We just go on living, more out of default than anything else. The alternative to living is just a nothing. Not a black hole sucking us in, not a destination out there, not a fear scaring us into retreating into the past, just a nothing.

COMING TOGETHER--69

Today Mom and I went to our favorite place, The Egg and I. Mom stuffed herself so much I asked the waitress for a wheelbarrow to get her into the car. The waitress laughed, Mom did, too.

Now we are home. She is in her chair, about to hit dreamland full of food. I told her she is at the point that her taste exceeds her body. She wants to taste more than she can handle. She agreed, which was gratifying. She knows what I have to tell her, that it's better to eat good food than food that just tastes good.

I once heard a nutritional doctor say, If it tastes good, it's not good for you. Maybe an exaggeration but still it's true.

So I called my brother to ask him to call Mom, 'Tubby.' I hope he does!

I have to go to work overnight for the next 5 days. This is a first step toward spending less time with Mom than I have. We may be heading toward a different arrangement than the dependency she's had toward me. I hope this is the case, as I'd like to have a girlfriend.

Now it is Thursday morning, Mom is still asleep. She has had to sleep in her easy chair because she has little bladder control. This may be a bad sign, or it may not. I'll just have to ask the doctor or his head nurse, Amanda.

COMING TOGETHER --68

It is Monday afternoon. I don't work today, so I bought a couple of videos to watch. We did and then Mom wanted steak so I went for Steak and Shake. I wonder if all this meat is helping or not, but she eats all of it. I had a big chicken salad, a lot of food for me.

Now we are spending the afternoon doing a certain amount of nothing. It is warm and windy outside with predictions of storms and hail. Both of us have slept this afternoon.

Mom panicked, injecting fear into her mind more and more. She was getting out of control, even putting blankets in the bathroom. She tried to tell me that one bathroom was safer than the other in case of a tornado. I got mad at her, telling her if a tornado hit I was taking her out of the apartment. It didn't matter about any bathroom, we would leave. She got confronted by that. I think she hated me for that. I was disgusted with her and these infantile fears she manufactures.

Then she started watching the weather on the tv, over and over, until her level of fear disgusted me. I went into her tv room to get a book I had been reading to her. She thought I was going to read to her, so I refused to read to her unless she turned off the tv.

She did that. So I read, and by the time I finished she had forgotten about the storms outside. The book was about WWII and a fictional female character who becomes a spy, so I think it enabled her to escape the present weather and live in the past, which she likes. She really likes England.

Then, when I stopped reading she had forgotten any weather. I checked the Ranger score, then we watched a special on tv about Mel Brooks. She didn't really laugh, even though Mel was funny. I think she was too full of water and dinner to really laugh but I knew she was no longer scared of the weather.

Now Mom is watching a tv special about the early days of television and comediennes. She is now laughing at Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. It is nearly 10pm, time for Mom to slosh her way to bed.

COMING TOGETHER--67

This afternoon Mom was telling me about her father. He was a banker in rural Missouri during the depression and later. He worked all day at the bank, then came home to take care of his invalid mother, my grandmother. He would do everything for her, after a full day at the bank. He had no life of his own. My mother grew up with that as the example for her.

I have wondered about the effect of that on her and in our family.

It does make me resent her. I wonder if she is using me to do what her father was willing to do. I have no desire to be that kind of man for her, as her father was.

I am realizing what a nothing life I have had. I never had a career, never had a family or a real wife--although I was married for 4 years--never had a household of children.

If I take after my grandfather, I have had no family to give me any kind of satisfaction in exchange for the labor, the social slavery he went through. I hope to God I have not passed that along to my daughters.

My life is fragile in the sense that it depends so much on my mother being alive, living as well as she does. I often think about what it would be like if my mother were not alive or not living on her own with me. I don't have a good enough job to live by myself, unless she dies and I have my inheritance. I am trapped by her, by the life she has with me, by these family patterns. It feels like a curse has been sent down from my

grandfather through my mother to me.

I'd like to get out of it but I have no life to go to then. It's like having a bad relationship is the only thing better than having none at all. So I stay in this prison I'm in because I would have no life outside of it.

COMING TOGETHER--66

We have come back from Kovoor's blood tests, and they look good. Mom's white and red blood count was good. Kovoor did not say her blood was anemic--good sign.

But Mom has lost 8 pounds since her last visit, 4 months ago. I discussed this with Kovoor, and he did not seem alarmed. That's probably good. I told him about her collapse and gradual recovery. That seemed to match up with what he has observed; he told me that twice.

The full blood test results will not come in until tomorrow. I will call his nurse Amanda at noon. I expect good results.

We went to Steak and Shake, which is becoming Mom's place of taste. It's good she likes steak but I wish she had eaten the lettuce and tomato. Still it's better than greasy fast food. Anyway, a good day overall if the weight loss is not indicative of anything.

I can tell she is doing better because she usually sleeps with her mouth wide open, like a flounder on the beach napping till the tide comes in. Now she is sleeping with her mouth closed because she has plenty of oxygen in her blood.

Now it is Friday. Mom has eaten well, she is eating on schedule by herself. I am getting away from her in the early morning and Mom is getting up and getting into breakfast by herself. This is a good sign, if I want to get a better job or a day job. I am waiting for word from Dr. Kovoor's nurse about Mom's blood.

Things seem to be going well all around. Rangers won, the bad weather has gone, Mom is all right. She is losing weight, she doesn't have the energy she once did, but she is aging at 92 1/2 years old. So maybe this is the way it is.

Mom wanted to go to Steak and Shake for the steak burger because she likes the taste. I tried to get her to eat just a bite or two of lettuce, which she refused. She knows I don't like it when she refuses to eat what's good for her. We are not speaking this afternoon. She is in her room, on her chair, doing nothing in particular. I am in this room, typing away, waiting to go to work. I have to wait until around 5 or 6 pm to leave. I'd like to leave right now, just to get away from her but that is not possible. So we have this stiff-necked truce, kind of like Lucy and Desi putting a clothesline down the middle of the living room because they are not speaking.

This will not go on forever, we live together so we cannot keep this up. I have lost the battle over food, she has won.