The Duration

We’ve decided Mom will stay here for The Duration, and so I sleep on the couch, the same one she had on the island in March. She’s had it for years. It’s a terrible couch—too short, too squishy, and just generally unpleasant, but it lets me be here with her every day and every night.

After the first few days of overwhelmed jet lag and cell phone difficulties, a schedule is haphazardly sorting itself out. It’s not like last time when there was a lot of things to do and a lot of places to go and everything had to happen on time. There’s nothing to do, here, now. There is no let’s-just-get-through-radiation equivalent, there’s no goal and no time frame. There’s nothing to get done. All we have to do is keep Mom safe and comfortable and as happy as we can.

So I get up in the morning and bring Mom either a mocha or chai latte-flavoured protein smoothie and help her get ready for the day. Hospice comes three times a week and I talk with the nurse about the necessity of coordinated care; the Facility staff comes, eventually, when I buzz them to help me help her out of bed. I make breakfast, I make lunch, I make dinner. I rub lotion on her hands and help her stretch when she’s sitting in the wheelchair. I change the sheets every day.

My sister is here for the bulk of each weekday; today we sat on the horrible back-straining couch and ate takeout sandwiches and talked about our days ‘off,’ by which we mean we get a couple of hours to ourselves between 9:30 and 4:00. (My daily trip to the supermarket across the street, at which I almost unfailingly forget to buy things like milk but seem to be able to remember to get three kinds of flavoured hummus, doesn’t count). Yesterday was my first ‘full’ day off, during which I drove my sister’s car to a local mall and got my hair professionally dyed for the first time in my life. It was time-consuming and expensive and I hate how it looks, but fortunately there aren’t many mirrors.

I do the dishes in the tiny kitchenette sink, wipe down the counters, feed the cats. I bring her iced tea to drink. Sometimes I chat online to a friend in Wellington or Seattle or London, drinking tea I make in the microwave because hardly anyone uses electric kettles in this country. Sometimes I fold laundry next to her while she lays in bed in front of a movie, fading in and out like the sun behind a cloud. At night I lay on the incredibly uncomfortable couch trying to sleep, wondering how many days we will all do this together, not knowing how long The Duration will be.