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.
***
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.
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