Part 4

So, we waited. 

In the meantime Kevin carried on by himself in Florida. He admits that mum was watching a lot of television and he'd had limited verbal interaction. She also had lost her appetite. Cocktail hour was still part of their routine, but there was no longer any vodka in her tonic. Truth? Kevin had omitted that ingredient a while ago . However, tonic water, ice, and a quarter of a lime squeezed into a frosty glass could fool just about anyone. 

March passed quietly. She was content and, most importantly, she wasn't hallucinating. During this calm period, she'd had a succesful Facetime interview with the Senior Living facility we had chosen, had her final doctor appointment with her Florida physician, and all the paperwork was completed.

Then, in early April, I got a panicky telephone call from mum. She told me that her friend couldn't breathe and she needed to get her to the doctor. I asked her to put Kevin on the phone. Sure enough the manic phase was starting.  At bedtime, Kevin pushed chairs up against the front door so he could hear if she tried to escape. And she did : 3 times. But, Kevin successfully coaxed her back to bed each time.

The next morning she called me again, but this time to say that Kevin was sick.  Kevin took the phone from her and told me that he would watch her like a hawk. She spiralled all day, eventually packing her beach bag with various items and leaving through the beach patio door. Kevin intercepted. All the while she was having incoherent conversations with non-existent people. This was bad. Even with the anti-anxiety meds it was hard to calm her down. 

That day, I reached out to my contact at the Memory Care facililty in Buffalo. 

"Any chance of an opening",  I asked. 

A pause...

"YES!  I was going to call you this morning", she replied.

"WOO HOO! How soon?"

"Anytime this month!"

I flew down to Florida that week. Since her manic episode, mum had gone back to bed for a couple of days.  Kevin and I figured that inhabiting 2 realms (the real world and her demented world) was pretty damn exhausting. Those 2 worlds did overlap and navigating between them would surely dissipate anyone's energy. 

When I next saw mum she was still in bed. But, she was alert and her imaginary friends had left. I seized the moment.  

Let's have a shower. 

Apparently, she's not alone with this aversion to showers. She was always so fastitidious, but now she had convinced herself that sponge baths would do just fine. I scrubbed her down and she finally relaxed enough to start to enjoy the warm water beating on her wee body. My god! She was so tiny. Not a smidgen of fat. 

I mean - how cute is she???

The next two days I dressed and undressed her a million times. I had to pack up her clothes and there was no sense bringing home things that didn't fit. She's always been a clothes horse so there was a lot to go through. By the end of it, we had filled 3 large garbage bags of clothes to donate. And that's not counting shoes and purses. That was another 2 bags.  

Unfortunatley, I had also exhausted her with the process. We ended up with 2 enormous suitcases filled with clothes.  I filled a smaller bag with photos, knicknacks... I even snuck in a painting. I wanted her to have some reminders of her Florida condo in her new apartment.

Each day we talked about the moving process as I reminded her of why we were packing her bags. She was fully onboard but I had to keep reminding her of the purpose of my trip. 

I was on the look out for any abherrent behavior, and sure enough, on Day 3 of my visit, mum told me a whopper of a story. It involved a baby, her best friend's father (who had died at least 75 years ago) and an illegal adoption. The trouble with the story was that it was happening real time.  And then, the floodgates opened. She was on a roll with all kinds of tales of people from  the 40s and 50s. Mind you, they were fascintating, but she was wound up like a top. I decided to sleep in her room to keep an eye on her and to allow Kevin to get some rest. 

Strangely the weather was mimicking the atmosphere in the condo. Extremely unpredictable. We were scheduled to fly back to Buffalo at the end of the week but I was prepared to cancel if she was too crazy.  

I was dreading the plane trip home.