Wonders In Dementialand: Dementialand by Suzka Collins

Author:Suzka Collins [Collins, Suzka]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2017-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

We finished the butter pecan, got up and placed the sticky bowls on the counter. I decided to make coffee as Violet calmly walked back to the sofa. She sat down on its edge and pointed the remote control to the television while pressing down on the red button. The room filled with a bright iridescent light, the kind of light you would expect from a tiny space ship if it landed in your living room.

"Oh good, MetLife is on."

"Matlock, Mom. It's Matlock not MetLife." I tried to never correct my mother or the dementias but the MetLife-Matlock thing was making me crazy.

31.

BILLY THE VISITING NURSE

A nurse's aide came to the house twice a week. She took the vitals, chatted a bit and wrote long cursive messages on a thick yellow pad. Her notes curled their edges.

P O I N T O F R E F E R E N C E [ Visiting Nurses provide services to homed patients. They monitor vital signs, such as blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and report

to the doctor the patient’s status and any health changes.] "How yaw doin' today Miss Violet? Do you 'member who I am and why I'm heah?"

The aide was a woman in her mid-thirties who recently moved to Chicago from Dallas. She had a heavy accent and a heavy smile to match, both overdone like a full bottle of cheap cologne on a used car salesman, cologne that tickled Violet's nose and made her squish her nostrils shut. The aide's eyes jumped from place to place looking for land mines to extinguish. She appeared professionally plump and armed. An official identification badge with the name 'Billy' was clipped to the collar of her white coat. Under the coat Billy wore a cotton blue surgical top with matching pressed blue pants. Her shoes were whitewashed of all color. She carried with her a black case stuffed with papers ripe to escape from their folders. Violet's folder was in there someplace.

My mother was nervous that day. She had the full jitters. Her feet were particularly loud and unruly. They moved around like rowdy hooligans arguing on the front porch of her wheelchair. And her fingers pounded out the William Tell Overture around her legs as if there was an ivory keyboard sitting on her lap and tucked under her thighs. Her purse bounced in the back row. Memories that were jammed loosely in the side pouches, slid out of their order.

"Miss Violet...Miss Violet, How yaw doin' today? Do you 'member who I am and why I'm vis'tin yaw?"

I hated when people who knew my mother, who visited often, started their conversations with fixed smiles and a 'who-am-I' series of questions. I thought it condescending. Those were questions clinically reserved for halfwits walking around the cuckoo-nests in bleak institutions.

“I second that.” said Kitty. All the airheads waved in agreement. Seven or maybe there were eight that day in full view behind my mother. A reasonable amount I thought to validate some attention. Look up for God’s sake.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.