For those who don't know, I left town on July 15th to attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Sewanee, TN. (www.sewaneewriters.org) The trip was a big deal to me, and I figured I'd be blogging all about it by now, but other matters have eclipsed the conference.
Within a day or two of my arrival on the Sewanee campus, my husband reported that my mother had left a completely unintelligible message on our home phone. He and my daughter had each listened to it several times and still had no idea what she was saying. I called my mom's house but although it was 10 PM or so (Eastern time--I was on Central), nobody answered. Fearing the worst, I called the hospital and learned she had been admitted.
Just before I left for TN, Mama had come down with shingles. (www.shinglesinfo.com) I understood that this wasn't a pleasant condition to be in, but it hardly seemed critical so I left for my trip as planned. But when I located her at the hospital, I learned she had fallen and broken her foot as well. Nobody realized at first that it was actually broken, but my stepfather observed that Mama got increasingly disoriented over the next few days and he decided she should go to the hospital. By then she couldn't make it to the car so he called an ambulance.
Again, the condition didn't sound life-threatening. Worrisome, maybe, but I was calling from TN every day, and nobody ever said, "You ought to come home." Doctors said my mother's confusion and disorientation was due to some swelling of the brain membrane, brought on by the shingles, but it'd soon be back to normal. I talked to her, sometimes, and sometimes to other family members who kept me updated. Sewanee is a long conference, and as I overheard one participant saying, "It's a tough conference. Not for the faint of heart." Still, I tried to hang in there. But when I got the news on Friday the 25th that Mama was being moved to a nursing home--and especially, when I spoke to her and she was childlike and sobbing and asking when I would be back--I went to my dorm and started packing.
Before Sewanee, I had called on the phone and said Bye, see ya later, to my Mama--the same mama I'd always known. I returned less than two weeks later to a sick, injured, terrified woman huddled in a nursing home bed, a woman who cried and couldn't understand how I had known where to find her, when she herself did not know where she was.
She's still in the nursing home, and we--that is, my stepfather and I, not the medical staff--are still working on the mystery of what has happened to her mind. A stroke? Head injury? Problematic medicine for the shingles? Is the nursing home now keeping her doped up so she'll be less trouble to them? That would be another story in itself, and it's not the one I'm writing tonight.
I really said all of the above just to tell you this: I miss my mother. I've lost count of the times that it has run through my mind to give her a call at home and see what she's up to. She'd tell me what she was cooking for supper and whether her Braves were winning. She'd tell me all the news of her friends and neighbors that, by and large, I've never even met. She'd ask what her "babies" were doing.
Within a day or two of my arrival on the Sewanee campus, my husband reported that my mother had left a completely unintelligible message on our home phone. He and my daughter had each listened to it several times and still had no idea what she was saying. I called my mom's house but although it was 10 PM or so (Eastern time--I was on Central), nobody answered. Fearing the worst, I called the hospital and learned she had been admitted.
Just before I left for TN, Mama had come down with shingles. (www.shinglesinfo.com) I understood that this wasn't a pleasant condition to be in, but it hardly seemed critical so I left for my trip as planned. But when I located her at the hospital, I learned she had fallen and broken her foot as well. Nobody realized at first that it was actually broken, but my stepfather observed that Mama got increasingly disoriented over the next few days and he decided she should go to the hospital. By then she couldn't make it to the car so he called an ambulance.
Again, the condition didn't sound life-threatening. Worrisome, maybe, but I was calling from TN every day, and nobody ever said, "You ought to come home." Doctors said my mother's confusion and disorientation was due to some swelling of the brain membrane, brought on by the shingles, but it'd soon be back to normal. I talked to her, sometimes, and sometimes to other family members who kept me updated. Sewanee is a long conference, and as I overheard one participant saying, "It's a tough conference. Not for the faint of heart." Still, I tried to hang in there. But when I got the news on Friday the 25th that Mama was being moved to a nursing home--and especially, when I spoke to her and she was childlike and sobbing and asking when I would be back--I went to my dorm and started packing.
Before Sewanee, I had called on the phone and said Bye, see ya later, to my Mama--the same mama I'd always known. I returned less than two weeks later to a sick, injured, terrified woman huddled in a nursing home bed, a woman who cried and couldn't understand how I had known where to find her, when she herself did not know where she was.
She's still in the nursing home, and we--that is, my stepfather and I, not the medical staff--are still working on the mystery of what has happened to her mind. A stroke? Head injury? Problematic medicine for the shingles? Is the nursing home now keeping her doped up so she'll be less trouble to them? That would be another story in itself, and it's not the one I'm writing tonight.
I really said all of the above just to tell you this: I miss my mother. I've lost count of the times that it has run through my mind to give her a call at home and see what she's up to. She'd tell me what she was cooking for supper and whether her Braves were winning. She'd tell me all the news of her friends and neighbors that, by and large, I've never even met. She'd ask what her "babies" were doing.
I prefer to keep in touch with most people by email, but Mama is the one person I frequently call. Nowadays, even though I may have just left the nursing home, I find I still have that same impulse to call Mama... my regular old Mama... but she's not there.
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