moving day. she has a very nice room with a bathroom, in an upscale facility. we moved her bed and some furniture to her room and put photos of the family and some chinese paintings that she painted on the walls. it looked really nice and also familiar.
we knew it wouldn’t be easy. i thought i’d stay with her for the first couple of days to ease the transition. i wanted to be like a spy and observe. to go undercover. the manager let me know that it might be shocking. “hmm. like what?”, i asked. my sister sort of giggled. “well”, he said, “you’ll see things you’re not used to.” “like what?” “well, like this morning there was an accident involving one of the residents and feces”. “ooooh...” ok. this was going to be interesting. but then i got the word through my sister that they discouraged family from staying over. just that first couple of hours with my mother, i decided i agreed with them. my mother needed to adapt to this new place and it was not going to be easy. she had not made this decision.
we figured that if she didn’t even recognize her own home, she wouldn’t notice the difference if she was moved. of course, we were wrong. she was NOT happy.
she was really mad at us. what’s worse is that, unfortunately, i have to agree with everything she says. “you people have been going around behind my back arranging this without asking me. why couldn’t you show me this place before?” we knew that if we had asked her, she would say “no”. no point in arguing... we were basically committing her. this sounds terrible but, in a way it’s like leaving your child in day care the first time. you just have to leave and let them get on with it. as long as you are there they think they have a way out.
we left and stopped in later in the day. she did everything she could to get us to take her home. it’s hard to see your mother helpless, and know that you are making her do something she doesn’t want to.
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on a different note, dsk returned to paris today. wonder what the doggy people in the champs de mars are saying about it.
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