Can You Hear Me Now?

My father-in-law called, excited about the free cell phone and service plan he was going to get. He's on Medicaid, lives in a nursing home,and can barely move most of the time due to advanced Parkinson's. It turned out that Medicaid was offering all its enrollees free cell phone service, regardless of their age and medical condition. I reminded Aaron that he had trouble dialing a normal sized phone. I explained that cell phones are small and difficult to use. 

"It's free!" 

There was no point in arguing. "Free" is to Aaron what a red cape is to a charging bull... irresistible and bound to lead to disaster.

So he immediately cancelled his land line, got the cell phone, and discovered it was...yes... small and difficult to use. David, Sami, and I tried to read the manual, but this was the tiniest, cheapest piece of crap I'd ever seen. Even Mikey had trouble with the itty bitty buttons. Aaron's hands shake like mad, when he can use them at all. 

David tried to show him how to use it, but it was no use. He had to wheel himself down to the office to make phone calls, and it was virtually impossible to call him back. 

David's brother and I talked--if I would get him a regular phone and arrange for it to be hooked up, Steven would pay the bill. I got that done this week, and was even able to get him his old phone number. He'll get a discount, too, and unlimited long distance so that he can call his family out in Arizona.  Aaron called the next morning. 

"My new phone works," he said. 

"That's great," I said. 

"I just got a brochure in the mail today," he said. "It says I can get free phone service with a computer. Can you find out about that?" 

I didn't hang up on him, but I came very close.

The Train from Phoenix

My mother, 92, is the oldest of 5. Leo Cutler, the next in line and the oldest son of Israel and Libby Mishkovsky, died last week at the age of 91. I flew with my mom to Leo's funeral in California. She did very well on the trip, and her sisters and remaining brother and their spouses were surprised at how alert and engaged she was. They last saw her a year ago, at a family reunion, and she was a bit overwhelmed by the crowds and noise, which makes her withdraw.  At the funeral-related functions, there were individuals to talk to, and Mom stayed in the moment and talked to anybody who would start a conversation with her.

On the way home, we changed planes in Phoenix. It was getting late, at least on Eastern time, and Mom was more and more disoriented, but cooperative, as always.  She looked out the bank of airplane windows as the rest of the passengers were boarding, and talked to me about the excitement of riding the train from her home in Indiana to Chicago when she was a girl.

Our plane spent a long time taxiing into position for take-off, and I closed my eyes. I had been "Mom" on this trip, handling the reservations of airplanes, hotel, and car rental for me, mom and my sister, figuring out navigation and meals, and doing all the driving. I was tired.

An anxious voice from the next seat woke me. "What if you sleep through our stop?" asked Mom. "What if we don't get off at the right place?"  I looked out the window. We were still taxiing, and I had to admit, it did look like the view from a train window. "There's only one stop," I said. "And everybody will have to get off, so you don't need to worry about that."

Of course, she did worry about that, and about the metal basket from her walker, which we were carrying. She asked me about 50 times what it was and whether we needed to take it with us when we left. She should have worried about USAirways losing the rest of her walker, which they did. She should have worried about me shaking the baggage agent into unconsciousness, which I wanted to.

"I didn't forget like this when I was younger," said Mom, about two hours into our flight. "I guess I'm getting old." She smiled, and I smiled back. "You're doing really well, actually," I said. I'm not sure she heard me.

"I'm 92," she continued. "I guess I am old."

She was still smiling, and so was I.

Betty is REALLY MAD

I turned 55 in May, and had one of those moments of clarity that make you a little dizzy. It occurred to me that I don't want to spend the second half of my 5th decade taking care of my mother-in-law. She's crabby, ungrateful, and annoying. So am I, but on me, it's charming.

She and Mikey had also been fighting like twelve year olds. He actually IS twelve, but she's 87. Plus he knows more swear words than she does, so he's been winning. Still, it's unpleasant, and it occurred to me that my primary duty was to him, not to her. So I started looking at assisted living centers, found two, realized one had a huge waiting list because it's cheap, and found out that the other one could take Betty in 5 days but it was barely affordable.

You don't have to ask which one I chose, right?

Betty vacillates between liking the place and hating all of us for sending her there, but me and the kids are over the moon with happiness.  Here's the short list of why:

1. We don't have to hide the honey and sugar.

2. We don't have to hide the snacks.

3. We don't have to maintain separate jars of peanut butter and pray that she only sticks her fingers in the
    one marked "Betty."

4. We don't come downstairs in the morning and find bowls of margarine, plates covered with cornmeal
    (she thought it was sugar and spread it on bread), empty cans of cake frosting, etc.

5. We don't grit our teeth and wonder if she washed her hands before she got into the bread, ice, fruit,
     ice cream, and other foods we all have to share. (She didn't)

6. We don't have to listen to her clicking dentures, watch as she yanks them out of her mouth while we're
    eating, find them when she accidentally throws them in the trash, or see them in the bathroom floating
    in their plastic container.

I could go on and on, but I'm saving it for an essay I'm going to write, or possibly a novel. Suffice it to say that every day is peaceful now. I don't have to badger Betty to eat three times a day and take her pills, I don't have to hide food she shouldn't eat, and I don't dread the sight of her coming out of her room toward the kitchen to complain about something, ask for something, or tell me about her most recent "dissociative state."  (That's a nightmare to you and me.)  My mother is still with us, but she is generally in a pleasant, agreeable fog.

Betty has been at Riverwalk Commons for just under 2 weeks, and yesterday when David went to hook up her phone, she yelled at him, threatened to report him to the VA for abandoning her, etc. Apparently she had some choice names for me, too, for kicking her out of "her home." He said he's not going back to see her. So tomorrow, Betty and I are going to have a chat about how she treats my husband, whose home she was living in, and whose idea it was to move her out. I can't say I'm looking forward to it.