Something That Happened.

Another phonecall from the nursing home, the third call this week informing me that my mother is a maniac, tearing up and down the halls day and night, scratching and hitting and screaming, smacking eyeglasses off faces, sweeping paperwork off desks - disturbing everything and throwing the facility off balance, more Yang than Yin in the Tao of the place now because of this one reckless new tenant.

With each incident the staff consults a psychiatrist and more medication is inevitably prescribed; then, as required, a voice on the phone informs me of the changes in mom's behavior and medication, emphasizing the necessity of the meds by describing the new scratches on mom's face, battle scars from her latest combat. Mom's so doped up now she's probably dizzy, the voice on the phone says, yet she stills waltzes the halls, her will never completely vanquished. It is difficult for me to imagine, mom in this state, because she's never been quite so violent around me - a little touchy at times but never outright terrorizing. Not that I don't believe the nursing home; I believe that mom's capable of terror when I'm not around, but it's still difficult to accept: my 54-year-old mom, demented and furious in a nursing home, Jack Torrance without a baseball bat but with boobs.

The voice on the phone says mom is milling about the nurse's station a few feet from the phone, so I ask to speak with her. Hi mom, I say, I love you and she replies Oh! I love you too and I ask How are you getting along? (and I feel cruel and ridiculous for asking this) and mom begins to reply, but something violent happens on her end of the line, some disruption that steals her away from me. I hear a scuffle, followed by an Oh my God! and several other voices in conflict and shouting and trying to restore order, the sounds of objects or bodies crashing to the floor and a nursing staff momentarily in disarray. Eventually a voice returns to the phone, this time a different voice than before, quietly announcing that mom has struck, with the phone, the nurse-on-charge. Now they will place mom in (what sounds to be) a Jerry Bed, and I have no idea what that is.

Three homes in three months. Four hospitals in three months. My poor mother has been tossed about, a displaced leaf manipulated by the forces of a seemingly uncaring God or Nature, unnoticed and soon on the pavement, stomped upon and lamented for by family and friends. Too many new beds, too many unfamiliar faces, and now she's tired, too tired to notice the light that's still visible in her world. She still recognizes faces, but she speaks far less often these days, for when she speaks she is shocked by what she says, not understanding the words she utters though she understands their intended meaning, words that are clear in her mind but are obfuscated once spoken, meanings once light grown tenebruous through utterance. So she rages, she screams, she strikes and lashes out at the world, a world which has betrayed her with its illusion of permanence, however fleeting.

Mom tied down, Jesus-posed in the hospital bed, a new hospital, the third in two months. Two weeks she's harnessed while we search for a new home, this time a nursing home, the most frightening kind of place for a young man to admit his young mother - yet the Board & Care won't take her back, she's too aggressive, and another B & C will probably say the same after a few weeks of mom, so now it's the dreaded final resting place, that horror of horrors, the nursing home. Hoping against hope that it won't be the final stop, that there will be another, some miracle dwelling, an abode with a hearth and a garden and real dancing and music (not just feet-tapping snooze-muzak), a place mom can really call home again. In the meantime, we say, she'll have to check in to the horrible place (but we don't tell her that, of course), the only place in the county that will take her right now.

Phonecalls from the social worker, under stress from trying to locate an available bed for a Medicaid recipient, and we have no other money, no savings, no house, no car, no assets and hospital records seeming to indicate an aggressive person (and of course mom's lashing out from all the confusion and turmoil from moving from place to place!), and now the social worker, growing steadily impatient and inappropriate in manner, indicating the hospital has no reason to be retaining mom, indicating that the hospital is not getting paid for its services, now telling us that we are to accept a facility near the outskirts of L.A. county (or perhaps not even in the county) or else...or else what? Take mom home, to our dormitory-style abode, which we tried for six months with disastrous results, so it's really no choice, it's the facility on the edge of the county, which may as well be out-of-state.