I can’t help but feel a bit like I’ve traveled into the future here, these past couple days taking care of my mom.
She continues to do well, which is great. But she’s pretty helpless overall. Needs her food prepared, needs to be woken up to get up and move around. Held steady as we walk around. Her medications figured out.
It’s not lost on me that this situation will 100% come around again in the distant future (let it be distant). It’s a guarantee. Except at that point, the recovery goals won’t be so high.
Look, I realize that seems suuuuper morbid, or depressing, or fatalistic. And perhaps it is. But, it’s also reality, and in a weird way, I feel kind of grateful to be here right now, feeling what it’s like to take care of someone who can’t fully take care of themselves. It’s actually not that bad. For reals.
But, it is time consuming. That’s for sure. I thought I was going to have a lot more time to get work done, but alas, that is not meant to be. So, we adjust expectations. I think I can get half of my daily work in each day from here on out. I really do. Three two-hour increments each day. Should leave all the necessary time to take care of the madre, and put us on the right schedule for when she should be getting up to move around.
And then, if all goes well, I might even have an hour at night to get some writing done. OR, in the morning, if I can ever figure out how to get to sleep early enough. That’s a hard habit to break, the bed time. My Dad is a perfect example of that. He crashes at 10pm. Full stop. He can’t help it. Out like a lightbulb. And he always has aspirations of doing stuff past 10pm, but they never ever happen. He literally has time to come home, take a shower, spend about an hour or so going over his work stuff for the next day, make dinner, and then crash. Eat, and then sleep comes almost immediately after.
He works hard, that guy. He really does. And he’s very, very good at what he does.
Anywho, it’s nice to have more of a full blog posting tonight. It was weird just doing the iPhone version last night and no photo. But, man, yesterday was a pretty major, exhausting day.
Hopefully, tomorrow, mom is even better. She had great fluid intake today. The caption for today’s photo is “What dinner looks like if you’ve had surgery.” Taken by yours truly, for posterity. I doubt my mom will want to remember these two weeks, but I will.
They’re both snoring in the back…but for the first time *ever*, in the history of time, my dad is snoring louder than my mom is. That’s pretty amazing.
Goodnight!