Every time I reread the last post (no matter which post happens to be last these days)  I think: Fuckit in a Bucket, next post I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL HAVE MY SENSE OF HUMOR BACK.  I will post Kim Kardashian Peeps (bunny body, duckface made from a an actual chick peep’s face, halved jellybeans around the corner for perfectly globular ass) Peezus West as sidekick… or something otherwise ridiculous.*

Instead, the steamroller of my parents’ lives comes right on through and I get flattened.  And you get this bullshit instead.  Enjoy.

Mom DID call me first this time.  “Sorry I’ve been absent,” she said, which set me nervous immediately, because she hadn’t been absent – we’d talked a few days ago.  “I’ve been low, but I told you I’d call, so I did.”

I knew (since we’d talked earlier that week) Dad and Mom both have had a chest cold-type illness.  Dad’s ‘level’ goes down when he’s sick, which I’ve read/heard is typical of dementia patients. Mom was stressed because they’ve both gotten over the illness, and Dad hasn’t ‘come back’ yet.

She whittled down all the reasons he hasn’t recovered mentally. He might still be physically recovering, even though he appears well.  Could be he hasn’t gotten enough exercise, or the medication hasn’t been properly processed since he’s been sick, but will build up again in his system.  He’s not sleeping anymore, but that could be part of the problem, or cause.  If she could only get him exercising, he’d sleep – but he won’t bike in the rain.  If the doctor would call back, she could get information about Dad’s medications.

Dad’s forgotten who she is again.  He doesn’t trust her.  She forgot to pick up his favorite soap (they don’t sell it at Costco anymore, so she has to go to a new store.)

Mom paused mid-story to doggedly remind me, “Really, he’s right to be angry at me. Lots of people let their hygiene go, but he combs his hair every morning, and he likes his certain soap. You know, he’s fastidious. I’m really grateful.  And he did ask me twice to pick it up. I just forgot.”

Anyway, he called her selfish, and accused her of taking care of herself and not him.  Which is so Opposite Day it’s practically the catch phrase for a tragedy. “It’s hard that he treats me like a store clerk. You know, if he remembered it was me, he’d say, ‘Well come on, let’s get in the car and go pick it up together.’

“He remembers you, Natalie, and he even remembered you were 40,” she says, surprised. “So I asked him who your mother was. He knew after a moment I was your mother.  When I put it all together – that his child was 40, and I was his child’s mother, so he must know me  – he got angry and accused me of leaving him.”  That part really broke my mom up.  When I pressed her, she said, “He used to respond to logic. Now it’s like his mind is making up a story that fits the deficit.”  And then, “I shouldn’t have confronted him.”

He wouldn’t let her open the house blinds. She thinks the trees in the yard, with their spring leaves swaying in the wind and casting shadows, gives him hallucinations. He sits in the dark.  He can’t tolerate the TV on.  He won’t let her go to new stores – even as they are driving, he gets disoriented by unfamiliar roads and wants to go home. He will still go to the grocery store, so she can get him out of the house once every day.

“It’s gone back to the worst it was, like how he was when we first moved here,” she said.
Hopeful, I said, “Well what happened that fixed it last time?”
She sighed. “He got on the medication he’s taking now.”

“Maybe he’ll get better,” she said about five times.  “He could still come back.”  It’s been a week. But he’s always had a fall-off-a-cliff style of decomposition. And holding out hope someone with dementia will get better feels like it’s own craziness, or at least deep and abiding denial.  He may come back for some amount of time, but this is where it’s headed.

She is so exhausted/dithered/perhaps dealing with her own slips, that she asked me twice if she’d told me a story she’d recounted earlier in the conversation.  She talks the way a bird with a broken wing tries to fly.

“Do you want to come down here, maybe stay in the beach house for a while?” I asked.
“He won’t tolerate that.”
“Do you want me to come up there? Maybe having a familiar face….”
”You know how when kids get sick and they are bored, having a distraction helps?” she said.  “He’s not like that. He’s like a kid who’s so sick they stare at the wall.  He’s just very fragile right now.”

PS:  To tack on to the horror show (so whee, perhaps I will finally get it out of my system and next time talk of Peeps), I forgot to put this in earlier, but recently she commented, “They say the grace of dementia is that at least the person doesn’t know what’s happening.  Not true with your father. He knows what’s happening to him.”

*The only benefit of Peep Diorama Failure is I don’t have those cursed peeps around the house.  They taste like ass made with ass juice and dingleberry filling.  Also, eating one makes my body feel like it’s instantly leveling up to Type II DIABEEEEETUS. ETA:  Just watched 15 Wilford Brimley Diabeetus clips to find something funny for you, and dear God, I’ll never get those twenty minutes of my life back.

PPS:  Some kind. lovely, thoughtful readers were concerned I had inadvertently left my real name in paragraph 9.  It’s there on purpose, helping me inch my way toward being out in the open.