Noah! Build Mom An Ark

My mother was temporarily in a new room at the Willows, a dry room on the first floor. That’s because her apartment was flooded when the faucet in her kitchen galley was turned on but not turned off.

Water must have been running for a long time because it spilled out and over the sink, made everything on the floor so wet they had to move her and all her stuff (oxygen, shiny red scooter, blankets, etc.) to another room for that night and the next day so they could extract water, run dryers on the carpets, and check everything out for safety. Even the room on the floor below her apartment was dripping wet. The staff told us she seemed unaware and very surprised that the water was running and didn’t even notice that everything was wet. We wondered if she’d had another of those minor transient ischemic attack (TIA) things.

So when Scott and I went over to make sure she was okay we found her thrilled with her new room. “Do you know why they moved you to this room?” we asked. There was “some sort of a problem” with her apartment, she said, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “Isn’t this room nice, really, really nice? They brought me some new clothes, too!” They were hers, of course, she just didn’t recognize them. She slept like a baby and the next day she was in a cheerful mood, oblivious to the ruckus that had occurred the night before.

What’s with my mom and faucets? Scott and I thought this incident was eerily similar to the problem she’d had at her house in Florida when she couldn’t figure out how to turn off the faucet and had to call her neighbor for help. She told me that she was not responsible for the flood. She said that someone she didn’t know, and had never seen before, came into her apartment, turned on the water, and left. According to her this person must have stopped in to get a drink and then forgot to turn off the water. She did not think this person worked or lived there and they did not speak to each other.

Nights had always been difficult for her and when she was alone she’d sometimes become very nervous and upset. It became much worse after my father died, and then again when my step-father, Walt, died. Now she was ill and the night terrors seemed to be returning. The difference this time was that she had an explanation for the incident, farfetched as it seemed.

Her calls began to come every hour or less while I was at work. “This is your mother. It’s very, very, very urgent that you come here right now.” “Why?” I would ask. “Because I’m all alone.” “Because I’m in jail.” “Because I need you.” “Because I need a cup of coffee.” “Because I cannot find my mind.” Sometimes she only wanted to hear me breathe. At times it seemed as though she was almost herself mentally, but never physically. Her body continued its downward spiral.

It had become a very frightening, tense, and dark time for her and I was not able to cope very well. Intellectually I knew she was not herself, physically or mentally, and that she was dying. I couldn’t change anything, couldn’t resolve my fears and overwhelming sadness, couldn’t imagine life without my mother. She’d always been quick witted and very funny, and some of her behavior now was pretty amusing if I searched for the humor, but most of it was just a sad downhill slide into the inevitable. My fear was that she’d become as incapacitated as her sisters had been at the end of their lives; one had very advanced Alzheimer’s disease and the other two had physical illnesses complicated with varying degrees of dementia. Two of her nieces had died of Alzheimers. By this comparison my mom’s mind was still pretty good. Physically she was more and more frail every day. She told me she knew she was dying. She said she was ready. I was not.

You hear how hard it is to take care of someone who is fading away physically and mentally, someone who is very ill and at the end of life. But no one can tell you how to take care of them, yourself, the other people you love, your home, your work. Life for me became one of getting out of bed and going through the motions of the day until I could see my mom and maybe find her miraculously back to the person that I knew as my mother. Her hospice didn’t have a support group, as some do, and we couldn’t find one in our area. I wrote whiny e-mails to our family and friends and journaled my feelings and her days. I barely functioned as my mother began to leave me.

Of course, I couldn’t fix her and the inevitable happened; her diseases took over and her descent accelerated. And as that all happened my heart was slowly breaking.