The Last Thanksgiving?

They called at 5 a.m.  She had fallen, but had gotten herself back into bed.  They wanted to call the EMTs but she said no and that she would only go to the hospital if I wanted her to.  I told them to leave her alone.  She was angry the last time they sent her to the hospital and asked me why I didn't tell them to forget it.  She is a DNR and she is not happy in her life right now, so as I write this, she is at her apartment in bed and I don't know what is going to happen.

Every year, I refuse offers to go to Marta's family for holiday dinners because I want to spend the holiday with my mother because I don't know when it is going to be her last holiday.  Will this be the year?

I don't know if she will be alive next Thanksgiving, but we won't try to do any celebration.  This was not a good day.

It started in the morning, trying to clean up a bit.  I got myself in a snit when I couldn't get the hand-held vacuum cleaner to work.  Lizzie knew I was upset and, being a wonderful comfort dog, just stood by me.  Wherever I went.  I appreciated her concern, but I wanted to kick her out of the way.  I did not.  Good me.

Ned and Marta picked my mother up around 1 and brought her over here.  The dogs were locked outside, but I finally let them in and amazingly. Ned has finally won Polly over.  She barked and barked but once he picked her up, she was fine.

My mother has always been a dog person and once she started feeding peanuts to the dogs, they both loved her.

In fact Polly became her best friend.

I was, however, concerned about how many nuts my mother ate.  I thought she would not have an appetite for dinner.

Things went downhill when Ned and Marta left.  I had planned to give her the job of taking the ends off the green beans, but it was so late and the turkey cooked too soon (from Facebook comments, it seems that everyone had that problem this year!) so I just got them into the oven myself while my mother wandered around the family room commenting that I "had a lot of stuff" (no kidding!).

She kind of just wandered, opening anything she found -- mail, a jewelry box, a pouch with toiletries in it.  When I got up to get dishes on the table, she picked up a banana and started eating it.  When I told her we were about to eat dinner, she closed up the banana, then opened it again and said someone had been eating it, and then sat there while I put food on the table and munched the banana.

I was convinced she wasn't going to eat anything after all the nuts and the banana, but she ate everything and even had seconds on turkey.

When dinner was over, she said she had to lie down and complained of chest pains, which she says she's had all week, but when she got up, it was her back that was killing her and she tried lying down but was still uncomfortable.  She was also too warm and got up to open the door to the back yard (which is very tricky) and would not let me help her even though she could barely move because her back was hurting so much.

She hobbled down the hall to the bathroom, locked the door and couldn't figure out how to get out so had to knock on the door to get us to help her.  She could barely move but insisted on "doing the dishes" but I told her we were going to take her home and said "OK, but leave the dishes and I'll do them tomorrow."

Mostly she looked miserable all evening and didn't know why she was there.  When she first arrived she said she was just going to sit down until she figured out what was going on.  I'm not sure she ever understood, but except for interacting with Ned an the dogs she looked (and acted) miserable all evening.  I decided I'd done the dinner more for me than for her and I'm now not quite sure how to handle Christmas.

We got her into the car and got someone from the memory unit to bring a wheelchair to take her to her room.  I had gone inside to arrange for the wheelchair while Walt waited in the car for her.  When she came through the door and saw me she was THRILLED.  She wondered where I'd been and why she hadn't seen me in such a long time

Sigh.