The Stuff That's Missing

When my mother first arrives as a resident in the Memory Unit, there are no open rooms.  We needed a place for her to go, and since she had been a “day care” attendee, the staff knew her and wanted her to stay.  To accommodate the extra person (my mother), they set up a cot in the little sunroom in the facility.  This is public space during the day, so we store her clothes in a Rubbermaid crate behind one of the chairs.  The residents’ rooms have bathrooms of their own, and since she does not have a room, she is escorted to the public restroom for everything.  Her personal toiletries are therefore locked in the beauty shop most of the time. 

My mother does not sleep in the sunroom on the cot.  For the last several years, we prop her up with pillows when she sleeps because her brain refuses to let her body lay flat.  The cot has a nearly two-dimensional pillow, and I tell Nurse that is part of the problem.  No changes are made.  Even when the staff gets Mother to the cot, in the strange, lonely room, she winds up in the living room, where night Nurse inevitably finds her sleeping sitting up in a chair.  Thus, my mother exists almost completely in the public space and has virtually no privacy.  The few possessions we brought with her are spread around the building, and as Nurse’s shift switches from one person to another, the knowledge of where her shoes, or blanket, or kitty scarf are located leaves, too.

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When my mother visited the Memory Unit through the day care program, she was particularly attached to Hums, an elderly woman who lived in the unit.  Hums did not speak much, but she sang to herself almost constantly.  My mother followed her around and paid special attention to her, even though Hums did not really acknowledge her existence.  Hums hummed as she sat in the living room recliner all day, and she hummed at the dinner table with her eyes closed, and she hummed while resting on her bed in the room she shared with the newest resident, MultiMother, who believed she was being held hostage.

After my mother takes the “bad turn” and starts staying at the Memory Unit full-time, Hums is put on hospice.  The facility director tells my father that Mother’s stay in the sun room will be temporary, as Hums is not doing well.  As my mother wanders the facility with her swollen feet and crooked neck, I think about how nice some privacy of a room would be, especially when LadiesMan relentlessly pursues her attention.  Reality sets in quickly because the cost of securing a room seems much too high, as it is at the expense of Hums’ passing. 

In the meantime, we help Mother go to sleep in the reclining chair in the living room every night.

Hums hangs onto life for two more months before her music stops one summer evening. 

My mother is moved into the room a week later.  She inherits a twin bed, a nightstand, a closet, and a roommate with a penchant for flushing things down the toilet (like gloves, magazines, and various items she hopes will reach the police and save her from the “kidnappers”/nurses). 

My sisters and I bring framed photos to decorate my mother’s side of the room.  All of the photos are of family members smiling into the camera, and all are less than five years old.  We set up her homemade 2010 calendar; it has been sitting on her dresser for the last few years, always turned to the current month.  To make her feel especially at home, we place her favorite Husker football photo holder on the nightstand, accompanied with a photograph of Mother with a giant s’mores sundae she ordered one afternoon at a favorite ice cream shop.  We bring a blanket, made by my sister, that she regularly curled up with on the couch at home.  We show her the birthday and anniversary cards that had gone unopened since her hospital stay.  My father and I decide to let her carry one around at a time so they last longer.  We store the rest in the drawer of her nightstand, along with a few college alumni magazines for her to “read” later.

Mother’s clothes reappear in her new closet, along with several shirts, sweaters, and slacks that are not hers.  Each article of clothing bears its owner’s initials, written in marker, for sorting purposes in the laundry room.  The extra clothing has several sets of letters crossed out and includes my mother’s added at the end.  I have no problem recycling clothing, but seeing my mother wearing the outfits of dead elderly women does change my outlook on the situation.

I sit with my mother in the living room one evening while she holds onto a magazine.  Several residents are half-watching yet another Golden Girls marathon on TV Land, and MultiMother tries to convince me that her 63 children will be worried about her if she cannot get home to help them. 

Gatherer, a woman in her nineties, strolls around in her socks, one of which has a hole so big two of her toes protrude.  Gatherer does not say much, but she is strong and stubborn.  She tries to yank leaves from the fake fern in the corner of the room.  Unable to free any with a slight tug, she pulls until they come unglued or the fabric tears.  She then deposits the leaves back with the rest of the plant and shuffles toward my mother.  Gatherer leans in close to Mother’s face, as if transferring thoughts through the molecules separating their foreheads.  She slowly slips the magazine from my mother’s fingers and straightens. 

“Gatherer,” I say, slowly and clearly.  “That is my mom’s, you need to give it back.”

Gatherer looks at me over her shoulder as she turns away.  She smiles slightly and nods before continuing her retreat.  I do not go after her, as I’ve seen her when she is upset.  She finds a chair, sits, and holds onto whatever seems important, whether it is the front doorknob, the television, or the handle to the oven filled with food.  She has a steel grip.

Mother watches her go also.  She pouts slightly, as if knowing an injustice has taken place but unsure quite how or what to do about it.  

“Come on, Mom,” I reassure her, “let’s go get you something else to read.”

The next weekend, I visit my mother and notice right away that her things are missing.  Not just the magazine, but everything from her nightstand, her blanket, her calendar, and, most confusing, all of her cards. 

This revelation bothers me, especially the missing cards.  Of course, none of these possessions are worth any monetary value, and they are just “stuff,” but they are my mother’s, and with so much of her life now belonging to other people, I want something to stay just hers.  I am so upset about the missing items that dwelling on where they went (was it Gatherer?  Did MultiMother flush them?  Is LadiesMan hoarding them as souvenirs of his lucky lady?) keeps me awake at night and infiltrates my dreams for a week. 

I ask several of the nurses if they have seen my mother’s things, and none of them have any answers.  Most just look at me with exhausted eyes and say they will try to watch for them.  This makes me feel like a jerk, but I complain to my father anyway and write a list of missing items.  He takes the list to the director and lets her know what happened.  She says she will look into it.

Still, I don’t like the idea that someone (or multiple people) is victimizing my mother by taking her possessions.  If she doesn’t have those things, how else will she remember us?

Weeks will pass before I will be able to identify that this question is the source of my irritation, and it is a hard realization to come to terms with. 

A week later, most of the items from the list are back in my mother’s room, though no one says where they came from.  My father thinks Mother is the biggest factor.  He says she takes things out of the room all the time.  This makes me feel a little better because in this scenario, Mother is the active agent.

We bring the cards back to the house and lock everything else in my mother’s closet.  The kitty scarf never resurfaces, and Nurse postulates that it probably got thrown away somewhere along the line.  With this news, I think, Goodbye kitty, you have been well-loved.

As we all adjust to the new living arrangements, I realize that I am most upset about Mother’s missing family (us).  For most of the first few months, she does not seem to care if we are there or not, and often she walks away when we visit.  Thankfully this changes a bit as the summer ends, but our definition and dynamics as a family shift in the process.  My mother becomes part of the “family” of the Memory Unit, and the residents and nurses become part of ours.