It's Friday night, and as you will soon see, nobody parties like me! Yes, I'm here taking care of my 92 year old client, Mrs. M, for the night. There's food in the fridge, and, hallelujiah, Mrs. M's very cool computer geek grandson fixed the speakers on the computer so I can listen to music while I'm here. Sitting in front of the TV at night tends to put me to sleep. The old speakers would crackle and then one would go out, then the other would come back on and the first would go out. It was extremely annoying.
I guess "fixed the speakers" is not exactly correct. He cannibalized the speakers from an old computer and tweaked the settings so they'd work on this one. Recession innovation at its finest!
Mrs. M is deaf as a post, so it doesn't bother her that I have music or the TV on, and her daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter live in the basement. I just have to check on her every 2-3 hours. Sort of like having a baby. Sadly, some of us revert to an infantile state in our twilight years. For me, the idea of that happening is pretty terrifying.
Mrs. M is end-stage Alzheimer's. She's nonverbal. She isn't hostile--she really doesn't respond much at all. I wonder how much she's even aware of.
It's sad that some caregivers take advantage of frail people like this to use them as a punching bag. Sometimes it seems to me that employers, whether a facility or an agency, are more concerned with checking people's pee to see if they've smoked a little grass than they are with checking backgrounds to see if they're employing someone potentially violent.
I tend to listen to fairly mellow music when I'm here anyway. Even if Mrs. M is fairly well deaf, I like to have a calm vibe going. Maybe that sounds lame and new age to some of you, but that's what I feel is right. And if it works for me, that's what I'm going to roll with. For a while after my accident my cynicism took over and I was pretty much an atheist, but that didn't work for me any more than the dogma of the church did. It left me feeling empty and angry. So I decided to look into Buddhism and at this point I'm an agnostic with a Buddhist philosophy who believes there's something more than just being alive or being dead and rotting, but I'm not entirely sure what it is.
At any rate I sometimes think that Mrs. M's house is haunted. I feel a presence besides me and her daughter or her granddaughter and great-granddaughter. I'm pretty sure the spirits, if there are spirits, are Mrs. M's late husband and her late parents, all of whom died in this house. I think they're hanging around watching over her, possibly. It isn't scary but sometimes I'll feel something that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. So if anyone was to ask me, "Opal, do you believe in ghosts?" I'd have to say, yes, I pretty much do, since I spend weekends with several of them. I'd like to try setting up a tape recorder to see if I can get an EVP sometime.
Mrs. M's husband died 40 years ago from heart failure. He was only 51, which is pretty sad. Her father was in his 90's when he died and her mother was 89. She inherited the house from them.
I wish I'd have a house to leave my kids, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Most of the time I figure I'm lucky to have a roof over my head. Anyway, beggars can't be choosers. I've had a 3 bedroom apartment in the basement of a private home for 11 years, since my divorce. My kids are both in college now. My daughter comes back at holidays. She's still in-state but about 300 miles away. My son still lives here as he's going to school in town. It's not fancy and we aren't too keen on the tendency for spiders and such to get in, but the house owner is cool, she lets me have my cats.
I tend not to write much about myself online because I figure nobody really wants to hear about my boring life or my health problems. But I'm also pretty sure that nobody reads this lame-o blog, so I guess I should feel free to write what I want.
What I should be writing is my novel for NaNoWriMo so I'm going to get to that now. It's a lot more interesting than I am!
Oh yes, and I should do Mrs. M's laundry. Her daughter won't be too happy with me if I leave her mom without any clean clothes!
Recent Comments