"Hi," she said, as she smiled and shifted a bit, moving the blanket aside.
"Mom, hi! Wow, you look very nice today," noticing that she was dressed in jeans, shirt and peach cardigan. "You're wearing lipstick...and makeup!"
"Well," she drawled. "I have all of this makeup...I just feel like I should wear it."
"Yes, you should." I replied.
She rose up from the couch for a hug.
Mom wanted me to go back into her closet. "I have some things back there that I'd like your advice on," she said.
Back in the closet, she took a seat. "I want you to go through those dresses over there and help me decide which ones I need to get rid of."
As I held up each one, she pretty much told me what she wanted to do with each of them.
We created a section for dresses that would be donated.
She pointed to a pile of folded clothes on the floor. "The aide folds these pajamas, but I guess she doesn't know where they go, so she just leaves the pile right here," she said.
"Do you want to go through these?" I asked.
"No, no I don't. I feel like I wore those things the whole time I was sick...and I'm just tired of them." She paused. "How long was I sick?"
"About a month, mom," I answered.
"A month?" she exclaimed. "I can't believe it. I don't remember anything at all."
"I know. That's OK. There's not much to remember."
"I guess I was in bed sleeping the whole time," she said.
"Yep, pretty much," I replied. "I've been coming up every weekend for the past month or so. Do you remember me coming up?"
"No, I sure don't, but thank you. I'm glad you were here anyway."
"Now, back to the pajamas," I said. What do you want to do with them?"
She tilted her head up, like she was rejecting the pile of clothes. "Get rid of them. They have bad memories."
"So, the pajamas have memories. Are you thinking the pajamas absorbed all the memories of the past month for you?" I joked.
"Yes, I think they must have," she laughed.
"I'll run to the outlet mall and pick up some new pjs for you," I said.
"Good. Your dad wouldn't understand."
"He wouldn't understand that the pajamas absorbed your bad memories, or that you want to get rid of them?" I asked.
"Both."
Dad came home from the store with some donuts for breakfast the next morning. Mom's eyes followed the donuts as he put them the counter.
She pointed at the bag. "I want one of those," she said.
"Mom, those are for breakfast tomorrow."
"I don't care. I want one."
"Let's wait," I suggested.
"OK, but I've got my eye on those donuts," she replied.
At dinner, as dad lit the grill for steaks, mom opened a bag of Fritos and a can of bean dip. Though Florence and I were snacking on them too, I'd have to say mom ate quite a bit of them on her own. As in the basket of chips and new can of bean dip were all gone well before the steaks were on the table.
She ate an 8-oz. steak, baked potato and french bread and had a margarita and ice cream for dessert. No surprise the next morning when her blood sugar was at 251.
At breakfast, she ate more scrambled eggs than I did, ate a cherry turnover, and, as the meal was winding down, pointed to a lone turnover left on the serving plate.
"Is anyone going to eat this?" she asked.
"You are," I said.
"Good. It's just sitting there looking at me, and I couldn't stand it any more," she said, as she bit the corner.
I reminded her that there was still a donut left on the table. "You wanted one of those so badly yesterday I thought I was going to have to lock them up in a vault," I said.
"Well, I've changed my mind. I want this now."
I'm glad we don't have to measure and monitor every bite she's taking now. She laughs in disbelief when we tell her that we had to struggle to get her to take a single bite, and remind her to swallow after she'd been chewing for 20 minutes. Now she's thinking about food all of the time. I remind dad to be mindful of her intake, as her blood sugar is edging up again.
I think that right now, he's thinking that he wants her to eat whatever she wants to eat, blood sugar be damned. I get it. Her body is craving the food because it's trying to rebuild strength. I tell him her appetite should even out in a week or so.
I had mentioned to ear earlier on Sunday that I wanted to take a few pictures with her and the kids. I ran to the store and when I returned, she had put her wig on. I smiled and leaned forward to smooth out one of several stray spikes of hair .
"Mom, where have you been keeping that wig? The hair looks pretty crazy, like you've been sleeping in it."
"Oh, I know. This isn't my good wig," she said. "I need to get this one styled, I guess."
I told her I thought she looked very nice without the wig, and that she shouldn't worry about her hair for the pictures I mentioned earlier.
She insisted on keeping her hair on for pictures. The wig doesn't look at all natural. It's not the hair - though the wig has so much more hair than she does naturally that it just looks weird -- it's more like a fit thing, like the cap sits too high on her skull or something. "She looks like Benny Hill," I thought to myself, as I got everyone together for the picture.
As I stood there with the camera, mom was very in the moment. Taking a picture is such a small thing - not a big deal at all, really, but she realizes that she feels good enough to participate in the activity, so she puts on the hair and smiles a happy smile. A big change from just a couple of weeks ago.
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