Writer in the Forest

Chapter 13

“Can you come?”

I arrived to find Mom sitting on the floor in the bedroom doorway. She had her big plastic pillbox in her hand, and several bottles of pills on the floor. I triaged Mom’s condition and saw that she couldn’t get up. What was she doing with her pills these days? I should have helped sooner.

“Let me see if these are right,” I said, taking the box from her. Up until now, they had always taken care of the complicated ordering of the medicines from out of state, and the filling of all the little compartments in the pill box. Harry took twenty-nine pills a day; Mom fourteen for blood pressure, thinner blood, arthritis, anxiety, pain. She told me it took her half a day to fill the 7-day pillbox.

I sat down on the floor by Mom and started reading labels on the prescription bottles and counting the pills already in the box. It wasn’t right.  A little heavy on the narcotics.

“I might have to go to a nursing home.”

I called the ambulance for the third time this week.

Thanks Mom, for being so brave and making it easy on me. A few weeks later I would understand that she only meant temporarily, to “get on her feet”. But for me, sitting on the floor with Mom, I knew it was the beginning of a very big heartbreaking change for my parents. We cried,  Mom and I. Harry sat helplessly on the bed, weak and slightly confused. While Mom and I sat in the doorway together, I mentally tabulated the reasons for taking Mom out of the home she loved so much. Neither one of them could clean, cook, shop, or wash clothes. They could no longer mow, trim, rake or haul the garbage cans out. In spite of the safety bars we installed on the tub, I worried they’d fall. Mom told me Harry was having “bathroom problems”. She was unable to clean  it up.

I made  my head fit against the doorjamb. The black clouds over Bremerton were spitting rain down on the house. There was a storm coming all right, and we all knew it. A week ago, out of the blue, they told me they wanted to change their will and make me, the younger child, the executor. The lawyer quickly came to the house, and a new will was drawn. Bill out, Vickie in. I hoped he wouldn’t think I asked for this. No one would ask for this.

I went to the door and waited for the ride that changed our lives. On that visit to the Emergency room, I slipped a note to the doctor, requesting a nursing home for Mom. She was right again. I knew when it was time.