😄😫 a game of telephone

a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help

19 March 2025:

If you’ve been reading The Right To Folly, then you know my hard path. I’m really feeling I could use an Aging Parent Coach about now. It seems like a great career path considering all the aging boomers. Advice to you: Be certain your aging parent has a power of attorney drawn up. Also find out how often it must be updated/re-signed. It seems my mother’s PoA is ‘dusty.’ It’s causing a giant roadblock to her care.

…

In the chaos following my mother’s accident and trying to arrange her new life at warp speed, there have been a few funny (mis)communications:

1. Five years ago, when we began trying to get my mother to make sound decisions regarding her future, her GP (yes, the one that looks like the bongo player) said to me, “I too had a difficult mother. Mine did me the favor of dying early.” How does one respond? “Uh, okay. Thanks.”

2. Her clothes: In a long conversation with a nurse regarding transferring my mother from the hospital to acute care/rehabilitation. I said, “What about clothing?” The nurse paused for a long moment and then said, not without confusion, “Umm, her clothes have been trashed?” My mother arrived at the hospital in terribly soiled clothing. Yes, please. Burn them! She seemed to think I wanted them salvaged. I was talking about clothes in which to leave the hospital… awkward.

3. Long and protracted: Another long chat with a doctor regarding wellbeing, diagnosis, power of attorney, competency, etc… he said to me, “This process is long and protracted.” Confused, I said, “My mother’s demise and death?” And he burst out laughing! “No no. Getting out of the hospital! But probably her death and demise as well.”

4. Renters: In a diary post I wrote about my worry for the young family to whom my mother had rented the tiny house in front of her tiny house. We will have to sell her property to finance her future in assisted living. We can’t have people living in the house. After making certain there was no $ exchanged, that there were no boxes in the house, trying to find if my mother had managed to sign a rental agreement, etc… we had the locks changed. Two days later, my mother’s friend, the one who told us about the family moving in, called to say, “I owe you an apology. There is no family. I realized today it was a vivid dream.” WTF?!

5. The infectious disease conversation: I was talking to a lovely nurse at the acute care/rehabilitation center about vaccination records for my mom. In the middle of our call the nurse basically had a bout of whopping cough! She coughed and coughed, and hacked, and blew her nose. “Are you okay?” I asked. Catching her breath, she said, “Whew. I gotta see a doctor!”

All I can say is, THANK GOODNESS for absurd moments in a really dark and difficult time.

And, thanks for reading. I am happy for company on this bump strewn road.