Off To The Home

My sister Gill arrived somewhere between 10 and 10.30 and we went to visit mum. Now that my sister doesn’t seem to have one of her daughters accompanying her on her “mother” visits, I seem to be her permanent Alzheimer’s wingman. 

And ever since I ceased my twice, to three times, a week visits to mum, I have accepted this. But now I am realising that this has become the norm for both of us.

I must come home and apply for some jobs… you know I can’t seem to stop thinking about it lately, which is a very good reason to do something about it now…

… this was the thought that was going through my mind as I stepped out into the bright daylight with my sister, as we crossed the street and headed towards her, quite ugly really, brand new Subaru.

Mum looked frail and old as she got up from her seat in the communal dining room and headed towards Gill and I. I guess that sounds like a strange thing to say, as she is old and living with Alzheimer’s disease, but somehow, she looked thinner and more frail as she got up from her seat, amongst the sea of tilt, immobile heads, and moved towards us. She stood in front of us with the expression of an expectant child. I'm sure she had shrunk some more.

We took her across the road to the usual café for a cup of tea and a chocolate muffin, something she remembered having and enjoying from the last week when I took her across the road to the same establishment.

The shop was busy so we sat outside at the tables on the footpath. It was quite a nice day, certainly warm enough for alfresco dining and then we didn't have to negotiate tables, chairs, steps, people.

Mum didn’t complain too much about her lot. She only made a few comments about the state of the food at the home, one was that she was being given a toffee for lunch. Hands in the air. She didn’t mention going home to her house too much either, thankfully. A little, but we managed to change the subject successfully each time. She sat there obediently in her thick cardigan and now brimless hat, smearing chocolate muffin on the tea cup, the table, her face and me, as she reached out for my hand, like a five year old.

Back at the home, Gill and I wanted to pee before we left. Mum said she has to go too. I head off to find the visitors toilets but they all seem to be occupied, all three doors seemed to be locked. Ah! Ah! AH! 

Mum took Gill to the doctor’s rooms, saying there was a toilet there. Something’s she does remember. This was where I found them, outside the doctor’s rooms. Gill said mum has just gone and that the toilet was now free. I head in, but there was shit all over the edge of the toilet, the safety scaffolding around the toilet and all down the front of the white porcelain and all over the floor. I come out retching. 

“Oh my god,” I said still holding my hand to my face.

I met an articulate inmate, as opposed to the usual mostly catatonic zombies, in the lift as I was heading up to try the upstairs visitor’s toilet for the second time.

“I think it must be time for a nap,” she said. “I guess it is a little early.” She smiled and adjusted her fringe.

“Oh, I always think a nap is good,” I replied. “Sleep, it is the thing I say I do best.”

“Yes, I’d have to agree,” she said. “It means you have a clear conscience.”

I kind of liked that. I thought about all the people I know who have trouble sleeping.

Gill sets off to find a toilet of her own, as one of the, what are they called, attendants takes mum by the arm and leads her off to the dining table.

I observe the inmates gathered around each and every table. I’m watching the husks of human beings struggling to cope with the simplest tasks of sitting at a table and holding cutlery.

Gill and I kiss mum good bye after that, as she sits at the lunch table, noting that she smells strongly of shit. I wonder if she has even wiped her arse?

I guess I should have said something to one of the attendants, it seems obvious now, but really it sent me into a spiral of sadness as the last thought is strongly of just getting away from my mother... who sits there with an idiot look on her face waving a white serviette in my direction.

Oh, it is just too cruel this disease. Really! Just cruel! What would mum think if she was in her right mind? She’d laugh and look embarrassed and she’d say, “Oh goodness.” I think. I smiled at the recollection of her being normal.

Gill and I discussed euthanasia in the car on the way home. What would mum say? She would say and has said in the past, “What is the point of keeping them alive when they are off their heads?” That’s what she would say.

I can’t see any good reason why we don’t have Euthanasia laws in place, other than staunch opposition from Christian lobby groups in Canberra. I would suspect, it is another area where the religious right has inflicted their beliefs on the rest of society.

Leaving my mother aside, one of my sister’s best friend’s mother, and one of my friends’ grandmother, have both been in, what are essentially, comas for quite a number of years. There is no hope of any improvement from this condition. Why would both these women not be given drugs to end their lives just as a matter of medical course, is quiet beyond my thinking?

There is absolutely no reason other than an illogical, bible/Christian based, belief that all life is sacred, no matter what?

And you know, that particular Christian belief doesn’t even hold up to scrutiny when, let’s just say in the case of America, you take a state like Texas, which executes a huge number of people for the crimes they have committed. 

And just taking a wild guess, I bet the support for anti terrorism wars is very high in the so called conservative Christian states of America.