Thursday, 28/08/2008

As arranged yesterday, I am up at around 6 am, and being a good son (such as I am), I start making salad for my mum's breakfast. I will be gone till noon possibly, and God knows she's not going to make any breakfast for herself. Mum appears, shuffling half asleep to the kitchen. "What are you making a salad for, and so early yet?" It's for your breakfast mum, I reply. I leave early enough to reach my sister's place at 7 am, she is already outside, waiting.
We arrive early at the hospital, so Lea goes up, and I go on to fill-up the car and put it through the car wash. Then the hand-finish. My guy is a chatty Russian immigratnt. "I have 5 kids", he boasts. His chat goes on to the mystery that is gripping Israel at the moment (and is relished by the sensation-hungry tabloids): the disappearance of a little tot called Rose. Now, you pay for the hand-finish in advance, and I am not familiar with this particular rite of passage. I later find out that the dirty look I got from the guy was for not leaving a tip. I'll know next time.
The transfer of dad to his own car goes smoothly, and before you know it we are at the home. Not to the 2nd floor apartment, but to the support clinic, where he must stay for a (short?) while. We arrive around 11:00 to find the old folk in the clinic sitting around the dining area, an accordion player, a man of some 50 years, with protruding front teeth, frozen in a permanent smile, sporting a rich auburn rug on top of his head, belting out old Israeli folk songs, while one of the nurses, a solid, broad shouldered lass with long, wavy dark hair skips around the audience constantly banging a little tambour. We sit at a slightly more remote corner, but it seems to adt like a vox box, intensifying the shrill sounds so we cannot hear one another. The jolly nurse comes bounding over: "Hello luvvie, welcome to our little party" she trills, still banging her nefarious instrument in time with each word. Some more small talk follows, each word of which stressed with a jangley bang. I feel the onset of joy rage looming, so I go to find someone who will acknowledge our arrival in some useful way. Head of team comes to the rescue, and dad is finally shown his new room - a large bedroom, two beds but he is to be sole occupant, big, well equipped bathroom, the bed, unlike the hospital one proves comfortable. Dad, tired after his day of activities, nods off, and he is fast asleep till late afternoon. My sister and I return from Belinson Hospital (where I was born, oh so many years ago), where we met with head of Chest, Heart & Lung Ward, who had seen dad a few days ago, to consider treatment options. No radical news there, but he says we needn't "slam the door" on the surgical option, let's look at it in a while, in the light of dad's recovery. We force our mum to go into the home's dining room to have lunch. As with everything else, ever, it is a struggle against monumental resistance. My niece volunteers to sit with her. She melts, even offers to buy Adi lunch. Later of course we find that she couldn't quite go along with this outrageous extravagance fully, so she kept going back to the salad bar, while the main course she only nibbled on, and... you've guessed it - had the rest wrapped-up to go. So now it languishes in the refrigirator, still along the leftovers from the previous day, brought back from the restaurant by the hospital.
Lea, Adi and I go to a "noodle" restaurant in town. It's now 3:00 pm and I realise I haven't eaten all day. Really I ought to be thin. We have a fantastic late lunch, then we split - I go back to the home, Lea and Adi back to theirs.
My mother is having great difficulty learning how to make her way from the apartment to dad's room, and forget about comprehending how to phone him direct - there is a cellular phone with him, and the room's landline. She is too technophobic to even listen to voice messages on any phone, let alone respond, delete or save them. To make matters worse, the home is deliberately designed so that the support clinic is separate from the main section. To reach it from the main building one has to use the goods lift, which is in a slightly different location to the "proper" ones, and go to floor 0. Enough to confuse my mum. To go back it's even worse: that same lift cannot be called to floor 0, one has to operate a fire door by pressing a button on the side to release the lock, then push a cross-bar on the door, go through it, go down some stairs one landing down - this is in fact the ground floor, call the lift there, or go out of one of the two (very similar looking) fire doors into the lobby, then take the lift they are used to, and ride up to the 2nd floor. For my mum (and many others, I hasten to add) this is like taking a walk in a minefield. So far she got lost each time she attempted to make the journey.
In the apartment I find that the salad I made for her this morning was left untouched. It's clear to me she had not eaten today till she was frog-marched to take lunch. When I get back to my dad's room I open the door (it's late afternoon now) to find mum sitting on the bed opposite him, just guarding him loyally. He is still asleep. She launches straight into one of her tirades, like she is continuing an on-going conversation, how he is asleep too much, won't sleep at night, plenty of "oy veys" thrown in, the usual broadcast. Eventually I show her very plainly and carefully how to wind her way home, and all is calm again. Later in the evening my brother arrives, Nir and nephew Idan arrive too, proudly carrying their helmets, having travelled on the legendary Honda Gold Dream.
Dad has had a little accident - he wet his tracksuit bottom, and the bed. I know that the stubborn old goat wouldn't ring the call-button by his bed till it was too late. Orderly comes to take him to the shower. I put the pant in a carrier bag to take upstairs later.
Mum greets me at the flat with a rant about how she cannot just pop down at any given moment: "I have to take this suppository (gee, thanks mum, needed to know that!) and I could be caught short at any given moment". I lose it: "What's all this shouting? what does it have to do with anything?" She doesn't want to use the toilet in dad's room. "Why not?" "What if dad needs it suddenly?" "So, you can't really see him at all, right?" "Aw, aren't you the clever one!".
"Mum, do you have any dark coloured washing to do?" I ask. A flurry of items start to fly out of drawers. "Do these run? Are you sure you know which temperature? What else do you think you can wash with this? You'll mess it all up. I don't want you to wash my stuff".
After I escort her back to dad's room (quicker that way) I go back up, sort out my own washing, and run a half-load. By the time she returns, unassisted this time, it is all done, clothes hanging to dry. She says nothing. I am too edgy to start any conversation with her, when she asks me who that salad in the fridge is for. I go slightly crazy! "I didn't know it was for me, or for breakfast", she pleads. I remind her what my very words were, in answer to her own question that same morning, while I was actually making it. I resolve to vent my spleen on the first unsuspecting victim. Today, dear reader, it is you.