Memories and visions

Today was a marginally less difficult caregiving day than yesterday was--from a caregivee perspective. My mom had a smidge more energy today. Also, she was determined to overcome her disorientation about day/time of day. We brainstormed on this, and came to the conclusion that leaving her bedroom window blind up (with the sheers closed) would clue her in: If she wakes and there's light outside, she might get the idea it's daytime. We talked about the fact that her pain meds are making her brain the weensiest bit addled (she's been hallucinating), and that this may be contributing to her penchant for getting up at night and being certain it's morning. Still, it frustrates her no end. Tonight she insisted on having her bedroom lamp on until at least 10 p.m., because before she got sick, her normal bedtime was between 10 and 11 p.m.. She figures if she tries to keep her old schedule, she'll get back on track.

I found a big box full of slides a while back. It was tucked into a shelf in the laundry room. We don't have a slide projector, but we do have a handheld slide viewer. Today we went through a few carriages of slides (the really old, straight kind of carriages), and Mom told me everything about everyone she remembered. There were a lot of photos of her as a girl, as a teen (she graduated high school in 1955), and as a young mother (she married my older sister and brother's father immediately after graduating, and got pregnant immediately after getting married). There were also photos of her mom, my grandmother (or, as Mom called her, "My dramatic and fabulous mother"--very long story that I ought to put into a damn novel). Both my grandmother and my mother were stunningly gorgeous as young women. Real lookers. As soon as I get these slides converted to soft files, I'll post some photos and then you'll understand that I'm being objective about this point. Anyway, it was wonderful seeing these images I'd never seen before. Watching my 70-year-old, cancer-ridden mom looking at such vibrant Kodachromes of her younger self just filled my heart to the aching point. I loaded up one, of her in a spring dress with hat and gloves, standing in a garden for a portrait before church, and mom said "Oh, who is that little girl? Nobody we know now..." and shook her head. "My mom made that dress for me." I hope we get to go through the rest of them before she gets too weak to be up for it.

Also in the slides that showed scenes of my mother's girlhood homes were many of the pieces of furniture that are in her home today: the oak coffee tables, our dining table and chairs, the big upholstered wing chair her mother got at a garage sale. Mom said her mother told her the chair had been custom-made for a very large man. There are photos of the following members of my family sitting in this chair, in its many different upholstery fabrics through the years, and as it transitioned from my grandmother's house to my mother's: my grandmother; her first husband (my grandfather); her second husband (my aunt's father); my grandfather with my mom on his knee; my aunt; my mom; my dad; my dad with my olders sister, older brother, and me on his lap; my older sister; my older brother; me; my younger brother; my younger sister. And this old chair, though it does need yet another re-upholstering, is still solid. My mother sits in it every day. We sit at the same dining table she sat at before she was out of high school.

Today my mother admitted to me that she has been hallucinating. I told her I thought so, as she'd told me the night before that she saw the wind in the curtains and thought I'd flown out the window. She said "Oh yeah," and laughed. She said she keeps seeing little tiny people peeping out at her from around corners. We chuckled at that as we napped on her wide bed. I reminded her that the oxycodone was probably doing that, and she said "Yes, but I can't get along without that," and the topic was settled. This afternoon as we were looking at slides, my mom stared off into the distance for a moment, and then she said, "I wonder why I never played in the cemetery." I answered, "Which cemetery," thinking maybe when she was a kid she'd lived close to a graveyard. "You know, the one down by the bird refuge," she said, indicating our cemetery here in Santa Barbara. "I always wanted to play there--it's so beautiful there. And I always thought it was so romantic." Now, our cemetery is one of the world's more gorgeous ones--it's on a graceful hill that ends in a cliff that overlooks the ocean. As I've grown up, we've often driven through there just for the view and to look at old headstones. I taught my brother how to drive stick shift there, figuring he couldn't do much damage to other vehicles on those wide, curving lanes. So, I just replied "Well, Mom, you're right. It is awfully pretty there," and left it at that.