I’m sure, even as I write this, there are additional dead and wounded out there across the world from where I sit after a day watching my world as through a camera lens.
She walks. Dead woman walking. She hurts, all over. She needs to drink, but she gives us a hard time. She needs to sit or lie down, but she refuses. It’s as though if she stops, she thinks will die. Or maybe she thinks that if she stops, she won’t die.
The doctor says we need to consider taking her to the emergency room, getting her hydrated, getting a CAT scan to see if she’s got blockage in her intestines somewhere. The last time we took her to the hospital she got worse and worse until we signed her out “against medical advice.” We had her feeling better in a day.
Her bones are so fragile that any mishandling (which happened last time) might likely cause even more little fractures than she has. If she needs surgery, we wouldn’t risk it; she doesn’t want it. At her age, the anesthesia would probably kill her.
And this morning I had one of my front teeth pulled. The crown was loose (all the clenching, grinding, clenching), and apparently I shattered the root, which had a root canal anyway. So, I get home with a wad of gauze in my mouth, take three Advil, and sleep for two hours until my mother wakes up.
She can’t seem to communicate; I don’t want to. We both hurt, want it all to end.
She is sleeping, finally. She ate a little, drank some orange juice, took her meds.
I am not sleeping. When I sleep, I grind my teeth, wake up wounded. But not as wounded as she
And we not as wounded as they.

This has not been a good week. In addition to my mother losing fluids all week and becoming enraged when we try to get her to drink Pedialite, and my sib and I totally disagreeing on how to handle her and what to give her to ingest, I couldn’t figure out how to get into the chat room for Mandarin Meg’s memorial yesterday (so I missed the whole thing, and, while I finally got into the BlogHer Conference chat room, I found I had nothing to add to the conversation.
My mother has insisted on constant attention all week. I know that she’s not feeling well, but after putting up with sib’s disagreeing personality while at the same time taking care of my mother’s sanitation needs (which have been constant) I have nothing left to give her — not even the tenderness and compassion that she needs very much. I can’t be both her daughter and her home health aide.
We’re taking her to the doctor’s on Monday to get the results of some lab tests. I’m going to ask him for a referral to a local medicare-approved long term health care agency that provides nurse’s aides and home health care. It’s certainly not going t get any better. If we had been a part of that system already, she probably could have been getting intravenous hydration right here at home. And someone else could have been on call all day to help her into the bathroom and help her clean up. Then I would have had the psychic energy to do the hand holding and quiet talking, and maybe I could have smiled at her instead of frowning all day. I looked in the mirror and, I swear, the frown lines are now there permanently.
I’m hoping for August to bring some new energy into my life. We will be getting a visit from cousins coming by this way from Florida on their way upstate. I’m supposed to meet one of the college buddies (male) for lunch while he’s down this way visiting a buddy of his who has been ill.
I need things to look forward to. I certainly am not looking forward to getting up in the morning.

There are lots of those perspectives being shared over across the country at the BlogHer conference, and among them are Beth Kanter’s photos of some of the best feet being put forward. While I’m not at the conference (being committed to helping my mom through a very bad bout of loosing fluids), I actually figured out how to do IRC and hope to participate virtually tomorrow. Hopefully, when the time comes, I will be able to fall in behind Jeneane Sessum (as I have often done before). Of course, that all depends on how near I have to stay by my mom and her bathroom.
However, in keeping with the notion that one doesn’t have to be there to be there, I figure I’ll add my self-pedicured feet, in my much-too-expensive sandals, to Beth’s gallery.

And meanwhile, it’s almost like being there looking at these accumulating photos, referred to by Jeneane: Betsy Devine has started a Flickr photo pool for BlogHer pix. Watch the ladies strut their stuff. And schwag!

This idea did not begin with me; I got it from Molly Ivins, in her open letter to Dear Desperate Democrats, posted on Common Dreams. I quote it all below to make sure you read it:

This morning I have a little gem of time, as I listen to the thunder roll over the mountain and wait for rain and my mother to waken. The last two days have been a grueling example of how no good deed goes unpunished, as my mother recuperates from the family picinic with bi-polar bouts of crying and fits of terrifying anger.
So, while I have a few minutes, I sit here at my computer and take the time to actually read through a document to which I linked in my previous post, finding it full of gems of information I didn’t know,.
And among those gems is a rare one, indeed — reference to Marietta Holley, a little-known 19th century writer from Ellisburgh, New York:

What a blogger Marietta Holley woul have made in today’s culture! No doubt she would be a part of the BlogHer conference, to which Jeneane Sessum of Allied should be going this year, but — as life sometimes goes — can’t.
Wait until next year Jeneane. Maybe we can both make it.

At the family picnic last Sunday, one of my cousins told me about a book he was reading called The Mayflower, about which story the Washington Post said this in its review (as posted on Amazon.com):

I took a chance. Pillowed her up in the front seat and took her for an hour’s ride to the old family farm, where cousins and such were gathering for their first introduction to the toddler on her first visit from Poland (accompanied by her family, of course; oh boy, do we have cousins).

It was the perfect scenario for my mother, who, as the last remaining relative of her generation, got all the attention she craves. I was there to serve her, in all senses of the word. “You’re a saint,” they would whisper, as they walked by, patting my arm, nodding their heads solemnly. I want to scream “I hate my life!!” but instead I go about the business of filling my mother’s plate, and mine, with all of the golabki, kielbasa, kapusta, and various apple and blueberry cakes — all homemade and all to drool for. I made sure I got some doggie bags to bring home.
Over the course of the afternoon (the best weather of the summer, so far) each relative stopped to pay hommage to the nonagenarian, even though she really didn’t remember who anyone really was. She can’t hear well, can’t remember worth a damn, and the conversations with her all had a tinge of the old “who’s on first.” But they all humored her, winked at me, and then went back to enjoying interactions with those with whom they could actually have an intelligent conversation.
At least the rides back and forth went smoothly (which isn’t always the case because she starts panicking when she realizes that the seat belt is constraining her; she started in on the way home, so I just unbuckled her seat belt, figuring that if we had an accident, with her fragile bones, she’d be better off not surviving it). Frank Sinatra crooned from a CD compilation sent to my by a college buddy, John S., and that set just the right tone for the long (for her) drive.
You would think that she’d be tired from the long day with no nap, but nooooo. Bugging, bugging, bugging me.!! In my frustration, as I brush her teeth I mutter that taking care of her is like taking care of a baby. “I don’t want another baby,” she misreplies. (Surprise, surprise.) “Neither do I,” I sigh. She doesn’t get it. I’ve had it.
And so I go up to my space and check my email — which includes a long catch-up from someone with whom I went to grade school who found my weblog when she Googled “Yonkers,” and another long catch-up from one of my former colleagues, recently retired, who just got back from a week of doing Chinese brush painting at the Omega Institute.
My “real” life pretty much sucks. And I thank the oddities of fate and the miracles of tecnology for a virtual life that keeps me interested enough to get up in the morning.
Oh, and, of course, there’s always him:

Maxine is my alter ego.

All of this news of what is amounting the WWIII is not funny. Coming home to my mother in the middle of a dementia episode is not funny. It’s not funny that theVatican announced that, while it paid $9 million for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, it still made a $12.4 million profit in 2005. It’s not funny that Red Buttons died. Except for the statement about my mother, the above “not funnies” are from Harper’s Weekly.
I don’t know if it’s funny, but it sure is interesteing that:
— Scientists in Maryland found that two thirds of people who consumed the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin had extremely meaningful experiences.
— scientists in Massachusetts implanted sensors in a paralyzed man’s brain that allowed the man to check email.
— Jack Kevorkian, who is dying, said that he would not choose suicide
The above interesting facts are also from Harper’s Weekly.
What was really funny was watching my grandson in his airline pilot uniform, and his chef’s uniform, and his astronaut uniform (with talking space helmet), and his Red Sox uniform — all of which he got for his birthday. In addiition to trucks, of course. And watching him hit a ball with a one-handed bat-swing and then run around invisible bases, only to roll around the grass in his version of a slide into third.
And now I’m back to what’s not fun in my life, and it’s not just a matter of my mother’s self-centered needs sucking up all my time and energy; it’s also dealing with a sibling who wants everything done his way. We are as unlike as two siblings can be. I am almost at a point at which I can pack up and leave all of this behind and feel not a shred of guilt.
But then I get a comment left on one of my posts from someone who found my weblog and is in the midst of a situation even more exhausting than mine. Her weblog is part of her strategy for dealing with the tragic death of her daughter, a victim road rage, and with the challenge she now faces of raising her daughter’s twins — in addition to her own young son. I read this post of hers and I have such admiration for what she is so lovingly and valiantly doing. She does have family nearby, and they are becoming that “village” that it takes to raise a child.
Unfortunately for me, there is no “village” here to share what it takes to help at the other end of life’s line.
So, I will get up early tomorrow morning and plant the colorful annuals I bought on the way back from Masschusetts today, and I will weed and water and try to create a little more color and beauty in my own life before she wakes up and I lose sight of the sun and the memory of fun.