I am going to write yet another daylog about my mom. Couldn't care less? Here are a few choice nodes for you to entertain yourself with instead...
So I went to see my Mom the other day.
She's in hospital now. After a period of getting progressively worse, memory wise, she started hearing voices and music noone else could hear. So she was committed to a psychiatric ward for the elderly in a hospital in Helsinborg, Sweden. The doctors say she is not going to be fit to come home again. Ever.
And this is where it gets weird. Because how do you tell someone "hey, your life is over now. You are never going home to the life you've known for the last... 25 years. You are not fit to care for yourself any longer. You are, in fact, on your last leg towards the final destination."?
And how does it feel to get told?
I don't know if the doctors told her yet. When we were there she seemed happy enough. It was a very nice place; she flirted with the young (male) nurses, and they flirted back in the sweetest way, and the overall atmosphere was calm and friendly. She, my mom, seemed to be completely nonplussed by the situation. She let us understand that she was there to "rest up a bit", and she mentioned things she needed to do when she got back home. My sister and I looked at each other but we didn't say anything.
She seem a lot more together and coherent than she has done for a long time, but I think that the stress of being at home and perhaps knowing - or sensing, in her confused state - that things weren't right, and that she was out of her depths... Well, the stress is removed now. She no longer needs to concentrate. Nothing to worry abut, really. Yes, she is indeed resting.
She doesn't know how long she's been in the hospital. "A long time", she said. "It's a nice place". She's staying in the hospital until they find a place for her in a nursing home or somesuch place. I wonder if it's a bit like living a dream where every weird thing that happens seems perfectly normal. If so, I hope it's a nice dream.
We made her laugh a lot. I think that is important. But it was so weird to leave her there, being let out through the two sets of locked doors, while she stayed inside. I gave her a very soft cuddly toy to make up for the many cuddlies she had to leave at home. We called it "Spiger" because it looked like a spotted tiger. And we gave her lots of chocolate and candy because we know she loves that.
I'd like to be eigthteen again. Back then she could always make my newly acquired grown up problems - like getting insurance, and talking to authorities about this and that - go away by telling me who to call and what to say.
I'd like to be five again.
I hope fate allows her to go gracefully.
Thank you for your time.