I’m standing by the kitchen window, looking out at the trees and the pure blue sky, drinking hot chocolate and eating challah smeared with Smart Balance. My daughter’s voice drifts in from the living room, where she is reading a book to my grandson, who is sprawled on the couch nursing a fever and a cold. The book is one I bought her when she was a child — “Grandma and Machek,” about a Polish grandmother who tells her granchildren the story of her living in Poland as a little girl and how her friend Machek (who became their grandfather) outwitted a wolf. They are doing a home school unit on making a family tree, and we have just finished looking at two fading photograpsh of my 1940s extended family — one that includes more than 50 people. I showed him the ones who came over through Ellis Island. He is interested in every detail.
Such is my life without care(giving).
But in a few minutes, I will be leaving to go back to the turmoil of the other part of my family, where my mom, who is in her nightgown day and night, needs better care than she is getting when I’m not there.
I visited a nursing home yesterday that’s located 1.3 miles from my daughter’s house and has a secure dementia unit with an enclosed outdoor courtyard. The bedrooms are big and sunny, with room for personal furniture etc. Unless my brother hires someone to come in and help with my mom during both this transition of my leaving and my actual departure, I will fight him for her guardianship and power of attorney. She deserves better than she gets from him; and I just can’t give any more. I could see myself volunteering at the nursing home a couple of mornings a week and visiting her several days a week, at least until she gets acclimated.
My brother wants her, but doesn’t know how to give her the kind, patient, consistent care that she needs. I just want to see her get good care. And I need to take care of myself for a change.
And that’s how it is, as I go from this place of peace to that place of war. It never had to be this way, but that’s how it is.