catsaway, again: A
Different Residential Care Facility
MORNING:
Mrs. Harold B. (“M”): widowed with children,
grandchildren, great grandchildren;
Miss “M”; my Alzheimer-afflicted roommate
had, at 8:45 this morning, just flushed her
diaper.
She then exited our bathroom in a fancy
"wrap-around” dress. She had fashioned the “dress” out of two snapless hospital gowns tied at rakish
angles: her 80+ years’ old flesh exposed down one side
(reminiscent of an Oscar dress
that provoked scandal for its sideless
cut’s ample dependence on fashion tape)
from arm pit (and barest of dangling side-boob) to
ankle.
Her shoes: black patent little girl dress-up pumps
adorned with dainty black plastic bows fixed to the exterior of the pumps at
the very spot in the interior of which the corns on her This little piggy had none toes (both feet) were abraded by her glossy white
polyester ankle socks.
Her jewellery: a diamond and white gold bangle and single
strand of pearls (with an overlay of jangling costume gold chains and
tropical-tourist-ware carved coconut bracelets).
As I struggled, in vain, just one last time to draw
closed and tie Miss M's "gown", I was flashbacked to November 8th 2009:
The Sunday morning, when my mother got up; baked an
apple pie; put a whole chicken in the oven to roast; went into her bedroom to
dress for Sunday Mass;
And died: sitting beside me on her bed… Sensing
her decreasing strength and stamina the previous few days, a month after her
release from the ICU where she had been treated for bi-lateral pneumonia, I,
who generally avoided her noisy morning kitchen,
had been shadowing her movements:
had been shadowing her movements:
breathing shallowed; rhythmed to her failing respiration…
In that moment, I cursed my newly diagnosed
Parkinson's, as I struggled, in vain, to realign the bodice of my mother’s
nightgown
(made
of a dusky fleshtone polyester,
splattered with floweresque medallions of faux-chiffon wafting across the approaching
opaque much-washed gown and lined by a simple sleeveless-shift in the same
shade of flesh)
her nightgown (or its kin) had swaddled her widowhood:
as with her nightly Waterford crystal vodka dose dangling from her sleeping
fist, she had snored, alone, through 16 years of CBC’s nightly newscast, The
National.
As I struggled, in vain,
to cover her startlingly youthful-looking left breast; to pull the gown up
to its proper place, now weighed down by her 95-pound, 83-year old body; I was
yelling despairing unheard assurances of the imminent arrival of the
ambulance into my mother's deaf dying ears.
-
Meanwhile, Miss M continued to fuss over final
embellishments to her gown(s).
-
Though reluctant to leave her (a hesitance that
shadowed me, as I did her, throughout the morning) my failure to resolve the
lapse of her gaping ensemble necessitated the intervention of a Registered Care
Aid (no one would answer the call bell, especially at busy breakfast time,
especially my call bell during my self-proclaimed hours of independence.)
So I went in search of aid...
and returned:
The bathroom was flooded.
Half the room was flooded.
Miss M’s gown: discarded and soaking up toilet water in the middle of the room.
Miss. M. (disrobed)
had,
it would seem, just exited our room:
Naked.
Naked.
