#2
If you missed last week’s issue, these are the Chronicles of my current life with my almost 90 year old Mother who has dementia. It’s a source of therapy for me, and hopefully some insight or comfort for others who may be dealing with this dreadful disease that is sometimes as funny as it is heartbreaking.
Mother is convinced that the home which she has lived in for over fifty years is not hers, but is an exact replica of her home that is somewhere else. She finds it quite interesting and a great topic of conversation. She would like to return to the original home but is afraid of the slick roads, so she’ll wait for better weather. An added twist to the conversation this week was her pondering why someone would give her such a nice house to live in when she didn’t need it; and who exactly that person was?
These are questions I can’t possibly answer with any honesty because the truth just brings further confusion. And so I just play dumb (not a hard stretch) and blame my sister Shelia for not letting us know.
In the front of my Mother’s house are two French doors that she looks out from her chair. There is a small deck lined with her prized roses that are a show piece each summer and multiple bird feeders. The deck is currently covered with snow, ice and bird seed, which is causing her great anxiety because it needs cleaned off.
Between her desire to “go home” and the need to clean off the porch, cabin fever has set in. Yes, I would clean it off for her, but it’s basically an eight foot block of ice right now. And so we wait, and talk a lot about the state of her porch.
As we turned the page to February, this is the month of all things Violet. Her birthday is February 18th, when she will turn 90 years old! After she got so excited over the trash man’s Christmas card, I thought it might be fun if she got a few Birthday cards this month to break up the monotony of cabin fever.
If you’d be interested in blessing her with a Birthday card, please send it to: Violet Hardway, 6378 S. Calhoun Highway, Mt. Zion, WV 26151.
Blessings! Shari Johnson, Ridgeview News Publisher
