(Originally posted in Facebook on May 2, 2019)
Yesterday evening started badly, and went steadily downhill. Went I walked in the door, M came in the kitchen and said, “Where have you been?” It was 5:40. I left the office at my usual time and had come straight home.
I looked at the clock and then looked at him and asked him what he meant. He said he had been looking for me to be home at 5 o’clock. That was my clue – right there – that things were not as they should be, but I missed it (I’ll never be a detective) so I stupidly and naively told him there was no way I could be home at 5 and went on with my evening.
I should have gone back to the car and driven away.
We went to the grocery store for a few items then I started making cookies for a family get together that’s coming up this weekend. Of course, right in the middle of the mixing, I realized I didn’t have enough oatmeal for the recipe. So I asked M to run back to the shopping center, go to the ATM and get $160 (some money for our graduating niece, some for this weekend and some to buy the oatmeal) and then get the oatmeal. I even took a picture of the oatmeal canister with his phone so he would know exactly what to get.
As I’m telling him this, he gets a piece of paper, says “one hundred sixty” and writes 100 . . .
I see what he’s written and I say to him “one – six – zero.”
It takes him a minute, but he gets it.
He’s gone for the longest time, but when he comes back, he tells me he couldn’t figure out the ATM, but he got the oatmeal.
At first, I thought I would take him back to the ATM and have a lesson in how it works. But then, I thought better of that. What’s the point?
Later in the evening, cookies are baking in the oven and I’m on the front porch, watering flowers. M comes outside to help, so I asked him to water the flowers around the mailbox and on the other side of the driveway while I go back inside to get the cookies out of the oven. This will involve attaching a second garden hose to the first to be able to reach the street.
When I come back outside, the hose reel box, which the first garden hose is connected to, has been disconnected from the spigot. The first (green) garden hose has also been disconnected from the hose reel box and M is standing in the yard holding the end of the green garden hose which has a sprayer attached to it and the wrong end of the second (gray) garden hose. Eerily reminiscent of the Christmas 2017 incident with the candles for the windows (see “The Beginning”.)
I didn’t lose my cool. I calmly told him to disconnect the sprayer and get the other end of the gray hose. Then connect the gray and green hoses together. While he did that, I reconnected the hose reel box to the green hose and to the spigot again and by then we were ready to water.
Finally we were back in the house and he opened the refrigerator and saw a package of strawberries that had gotten moldy (yes, we are one of those families that had let their strawberries go bad, just like that commercial!) and he asked if I had seen it. Yes, I had, I just hadn’t had a moment to do anything about it.
Then he asked if I wanted to throw them away.
I don’t know why that question was the one that set me off. It really shouldn’t have. All I had to say was “yes.” But, it was as though there was a red haze on the edge of my vision and I lost it!
No – I don’t want to throw them away. I’m going to start making moldy strawberry jam and moldy strawberry shortcake.
As you can imagine, that set him off and he threw them in the trash WITH A BANG, so I picked them out and sent the strawberries down the disposal and put the plastic container in the recycling (because that’s SO important!!)
Deep breath.
I went outside and called one of my brothers. No answer. Thank goodness I have four to choose from. So I went down the list and called the next one. He answered (I imagine he’s sorry now that he did.) and I just unloaded all of this on him.
I cried and told him (brother A) that I needed him to talk me off the ledge, but he told me it’s only one foot down, so I might as well go ahead and jump. Which made me laugh – as intended. As we talked about everything that had happened this evening, he pointed out that I had really done all of this to myself.
What?
Except for the time coming home, I’ve got to stop depending on M to do anything – he can’t do it. And that’s on me to change my expectations. And as A said, I have to look at all these things that we currently do and decide:
delegate it
do it myself
dump it – just forget about it
In this day and time, there are too many services out there ready, willing and able to help me with things that need to be done. I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks now that I needed to get by Petsmart to get some things for the dogs. Duh – Petsmart has an online purchase option and they deliver. Even if it costs a little bit, it would be worth it to have it off my mind and done.
And I’m going to have to delegate. My dad has been nagging me for two weeks to get a flower arrangement put on the headstone at his parents’ (my grandparents’) graves. It’s important to him, but not important enough for him to do himself – he wants me to do it. I had an arrangement from a previous year in my garage and I had planned to get to the store to get new silk flowers for it. This morning I called my mom and asked her to take it (the current one with the faded flowers from the previous year) out to the cemetery and put it on the headstone. Now it’s done, I can get new flowers if I find the time, but no one will be nagging me about it.
This isn’t easy – and it’s only going to get harder. I thought this dementia progression was going to slow down or stabilize, but it sure hasn’t. I thought I was ready to handle things on my own, but I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m not there yet.
A did say, and this is also very true, that I need to stop worrying about things like watering flowers and baking cookies and I need to spend this time with M doing things like taking walks and going to ball games. I don’t think A understands how much joy both M and I get from my cookie baking – me in the baking and M in the eating – but I get the general idea. This is the time for making good memories. That’s what is important and what I need to be concentrating on. This having to work everyday is REALLY keeping me from living my best life. HA!