Mom & Me Five Archive

...now, from Vanderbilt Press to quote from Dementia Caregivers Share Their Stories and permission from the author to quote from Kinflicks. Since receiving both permissions, I started reading backward and forward from the Kinflicks passage, which is smack dab in the middle of the book, and have decided, since, to reread the book. I'm not completely sure of the quote's context in my own life, although I know it's significant. I think rereading the story will give me a better (although altered, I'm sure) idea of how Ginny relates to this quote. It will, I think, give me some space to clarify its importance to me. I know, at this point, that I take, and believe it, verbatim. I did the first time I read the book about thirty years ago, long before I was to become so involved in the life maintenance of someone whose path toward death can no longer be diverted. I remember worrying my recollection of this quote over and over as I confronted her recalcitrant anemia and wondered, out loud, somewhere in the journal, something about what was the existential significance of her battle with iron. I also wonder if any of her doctors looked into her physical profile and saw her future, up to and including her death. Not that I'd want to know (although I probably would) how her death will play out, but I'd be curious to see if what is really happening is what a thoughtful physician, here and there, casually calculated...and what that physician considered within the calculation.
    I've got an early errand to run, which I'd better do right now, after refilling the portable evap. Then, if I'm lucky, I'll have an hour or two to read before Mom arises. She was up pretty late, last night. At one point she turned to me, unbidden, and said, "I'm staying up because I know you don't like to be up alone."
    I was so shocked I could not hide my reaction. I laughed. "Mom," I assured her, "you can go to bed anytime. I have no problem with being up alone. Lately, I usually am."
    She sneered at the light dig about her ever more prodigious sleeping habits, of late. I'm a little bit calmer about them, now, as I've found, from experimentation, if she doesn't get the sleep her body apparently needs (and maybe her psyche, too) it's visible to me. She has been making up for some of that sleep by staying up extra late, though.
    Back to the conversation. She responded: "Well, maybe I'm staying up because I don't like being up alone!"
    I laughed again. "Well, then, I'm your man! Anytime you want to be up, I'll be up."
    I hear her coughing. May have to put the errand off till this afternoon.
    Later.