Mom blog gets heavy

Dad and I crossed paths this morning, just as we both got up.

Dad: Oh, I forgot to move the car. It may have gotten fined.

Dad stayed upstairs; I came downstairs and checked the car. I heard steps coming down the stairs.

A.: There's no ticket on the car.
Mom: Why would there be a ticket on the car?
A.: Dad left it on the street.
Mom: Oh. What, you went outside in your pajamas?
A.: Yeah, so?
Mom: Where's dad?
A.: Upstairs.

A few minutes elapse. I read the paper (oil sands pipeline may came back to rear its ugly head).

Mom: Where's dad?
A.: Up. Stairs.
Mom: I don't understand. You went outside in your pajamas.
A.: Yes.

Mom: You went outside in your pajamas? Where's dad?

Mom went away. I continued to read the paper. I heard footsteps from one part of the house, then another.

A. (to dad): There's no ticket on the car.
Dad: Oh, good.
A. (to mom): There, dad's downstairs.
Mom: Where? Where is he?
A.: In the living room!

Where else could he be?

***
Dad's been saying for a year now that mom's memory is going. Mom has been noticing signs of age that had eluded her up to a year or two ago. She says the trip to China a few years ago--preceded by a very bad cold--threw her, and she's still feeling the effects of her knee replacement in March and the associated drugs.

I've been in denial about mom's purported memory issues because she's always had memory issues. Partly, she just has a selective memory, and she's never been a good listener. The above conversation, where she asked me the same two questions three times (each) in the span of ten minutes, could have happened twenty years ago. So I thought maybe dad was just starting to notice, because it occurs to us to notice poor memory performance when one is older, but dad suspects that mom's memory has gotten substantively worse.

Mom's sense that she's actually getting older surfaced yesterday in a tragicomic, quintessential-Jewish-mom conversation that I'm not sure how to interpret.

Mom: If you do go to grad school, you're on your own. We not really in a position to help you financially.
A.: I know that. I'm not asking you too.
Mom: I mean, we're going to have to think about elder care. I don't want to end up in a nursing home. I remember when my mother was in a nursing home--and she was in a very good one--but she hated it. Her eyes would glaze over, and when we came to see her, she would beg to be taken out of there. But we didn't have the resources then for in-home care. We did that for a while, until we just couldn't do it. And in the nursing home, they wouldn't let her die in dignity. They kept shoving tubes up her nose. They weren't helping, they just added to the pain, but they wouldn't stop. She asked them to stop, we asked them to stop, but they said they needed the doctor's permission to stop. The doctor had already left for the weekend. I don't want that for myself. If it gets to that point, I'll just eat a [poisonous mushroom] and be done with it.
A.: Mom, you don't have to go to a nursing home... there are a lot more options now than there were then, and if it comes down to it, we'll figure out the best thing--
Mom: I don't want any of that. I'll just eat a [poisonous mushroom].
A.: Mom!
Mom: I think this is an important conversation to have.
A.: What's your point? That if I go to grad school, I won't be able to afford in-home care?
Mom: That's not what I'm saying.
A.: What are you saying?
Mom: I don't want to be kept alive artificially.
A.: That is an important conversation to have.

I did not say, "too bad your dear Sarah Palin led a campaign to make that conversation more difficult for millions of families."

Mom: I've been living, ever since, with the guilt of how my mother spent her final days, and I don't want you to be in the same situation.
A.: We're not even close--
Mom: You never know.
A.: None of us ever know.
Mom: That's not what I want for me.
A.: Well, when it becomes an issue, we'll figure out what you do want for you.