Tag: relationships

Ma has an active social life, in her sleep. The line between sleep and waking is porous; she can spend a day waiting on someone that can never show up, like an eight-year-old waiting up for Santa.

Q: What do alcoholics and addicts say all the time? / A: Leave me alone, I’m not hurting anyone but myself.

Even after thirty years of twelve steps, I’d been underestimating the impact I had on her life. Then our lives were thrown against a wall of dementia like a handful of spaghetti, and I got to see what stuck.

Object Permanence is the why in why Peek-A-Boo is such a blast, why babies are surprised AF every time you appear again. The other end of the spectrum I call Object Impermanence in adults with dementia. That rock solid knowledge that when something or someone is out of sight or sound, that thing or person is simply…gone for good and for ever.

There is no aide today, only Big E & me. Tomorrow is our anniversary, Ma and me living together for the last two years. Both still alive, older and tireder than when we started. Outside, there’s a raging pandemic & it’s 90-hell-degrees. Inside, we have each other.

Today is Day 7 of working from home (WFH), of  online meetings, of no one else to be there for her other than me. Social distancing is the new normal. I’d always considered myself her sole caregiver, but it’s become very apparent that that was not exactly accurate. There were aides, therapists, social workers, random alter kakers. Now, it’s all me. And the occasional phone call from someone she loves but cannot remember.

I’d lived alone—and happy—for forty years. Then,in July 2018, my mother moved in. We knew there’d be an adjustment period, but figured any friction would come from 60 years of mother/daughter emotional baggage having to share a single bathroom. That was the easy stuff.

I spent a good part of dinner talking about a person who irritated me, who…

I say I want to live in a small town. No, he says, you don’t….

Fifteen years ago I was on the phone when he said, “Hold on, I think the boiler just exploded,” and put the phone down. After a few moments, “I gotta go. There’s body parts and plane parts all over. I gotta go.” He worked at the Marriott Hotel opposite the World Trade Center and it was early and the story hadn’t hit the news yet.

Myra, turning to Sylvia: Sugar?
translation: You want the boy should put sugar in your tea?

A friend of mine died this week. The older I get, the more often I’m…

Early. It can be later than you think.

Big Edie, Bruce Springsteen, and Killer Joe.

What is the sound of two Edie’s talking?

Back when Big Edie was still Lainie from the Bronx.

Big Edie: Can I tell you something?
Me: Can I stop you? Seriously, is there anyway to stop you?

Big Edie: I feel sorry for the men in your life. You take the nice ones and twist their minds, and you take the crazy ones and push them right over the edge.

Big Edie, Lyle Lovett, Bruce Springsteen and the battle between Valium and Ativan

what’s the sound of two edies talking? Scene: Big Edie’s 91-year-old beau’s birthday dinner. With…

what’s the sound of two edies talking? Scene: The park near her house, getting some…

what’s the sound of two edies talking?   Me: Ma, I just think it’s time to…

I don’t want to think it is, but it is. it’s us. on the inside,…

Ma: You’re hair looks good, did you do something?

To this day, you point a camera in her direction and my mother’s shoulders go…