This morning, Mom and I called Mark and sang Happy Birthday to him. Thank you to all of you who sent birthday greetings for him too!
Mom told me this morning that she wanted to get batteries for a flashlight she showed me. I went to my room to get my coat, and when I came back out, she couldn’t find the flashlight that she had just shown me a couple of minutes before. Both of us looked all over the house, she checked her purse, and we looked in the car in case she had put it there to get ready, but it was nowhere to be found. She had another flashlight that she needed batteries for too, so we went to get that at Ace Hardware. The women at the cash registers talked about how sunny Mom’s smile was. Then we went to Dollar Tree for some things I wanted to get and finally went home. It was close to 11:00, so I made myself a sandwich and headed over to Dad’s house.
When I walked in, Dad and Elaine were in their bedroom getting Dad changed, and Elaine wheeled him back to the family room in his wheelchair. We asked Dad if he wanted to stay in the wheelchair or sit in his usual spot on the couch. He said he wanted to be on the couch, but we couldn’t get him to wake up for a few minutes so that he could help us move him. While he was dozing, Elaine explained to me what happened. Dad had been on the couch this morning and asked Elaine for his walker. She thought he just wanted to get across the living room to look for something, so she brought it to him and left the room. When she went back to check on him, he had walked himself back to the bathroom but hadn’t quite made it. He was exhausted from the walk. We finally got him to wake up enough to help us get him to the couch. Once there, he fell into a deep sleep.
Elaine and I talked about maybe getting rid of his walker or at least hiding it from him. She said she’s not ready for this and I said that ready or not, it’s here. It’s difficult for her to contemplate life without Dad and this is all going too quickly for her. Two hours later, Dad was still deep asleep.
Dad was scheduled to have a massage from a hospice masseuse at 2:00, so we tried to wake Dad up to eat some lunch. Most of the time he was eating, his eyes were still closed. Elaine had gone to the store for a few minutes, and while I was making sure that Dad didn’t drop his soup bowl or spoon, I asked him why he had tried to walk down the hall. He said that if he uses the wheelchair, someone has to go with him, but if he uses the walker, he can go by himself. I said, “Not anymore, Dad!” I said, “You have spent so many years helping others. Now you have to ask for help!”
The masseuse was a few minutes late and Elaine hadn’t returned by the time she arrived. The masseuse asked Dad if he wanted a sitting massage or if he wanted to be lying down. Dad said he could just lay on the floor and she and I both said, “We’d never be able to get you up again!” We finally helped Dad stretch out on the long couch right next to his favorite spot. When Elaine got home, the masseuse was starting on Dad’s upper body and it looked like he had gone back to sleep. I left at that point and went back to Mom’s place.
She told me she wanted to go get some food because she had nothing for lunch. We went out again. She got some food and then we kept thinking of other places to go and things to do. She found a beautiful orchid and I found a beautiful fuschia in a small pot that needed to be transplanted into a larger pot. When we got home, Mom helped me transplant the fuschia and she put her orchid on her coffee table and we enjoyed the beauty. I went into the bathroom for a minute and she went out to check the mail and I heard her say, “There it is!” When I came out, she had found the missing flashlight. I asked her where she had found it and she had already forgotten. Physically, she’s in perfect health, but her memory is becoming worrisome.
We had dinner and then she was ready for another Scrabble marathon. We play Scrabble a little differently. We draw 9 letters instead of 7, but we still get 50 extra points if we use 7 letters. I did something Mom said she’d never seen before. I was able to use the word “Featuring”. It landed on 2 double-word scores so I got to quadruple the word, and then because I had used 8 letters, I also got 50 extra points! She was no slouch though. She got an extra 50 points for a word in that game too, but I won. In the second game, she won. She may be losing her memory, but she’s still as sharp as a tack when it comes to Scrabble.
After 2 games, we went to our rooms. I called Mark and asked how he’d spent his birthday. He started out going to the laundromat. Not a very auspicious start, but when he was done, he took himself to lunch at a Chinese buffet we like and then went around to various thrift stores and pawn shops. Just before I called, he had baked himself a cake and frosted it and as we were talking, he ate a piece. He said it was pretty good! When I get back, we’re planning to go to Tombstone and celebrate together belatedly. I can hardly wait!