Our morning:

Dash out – forgot to pick up prescription.

Lay em’ all out!

My nemesis.  I sure there is something in here about heroin use, drought, and Trump – all things I’ll have to talk her down, away, up from.

Must fluff and flip the pillows before each time sitting down.

An unflattering pic – the daily routine can be that way.

A breakfast cobbled together to substitute for missing things.

Are you going to give me coffee?? She asked.  “Ummm,”  I say, trying to think of something witty.  It’s too early for that so I tell her I forgot and work quick to remedy that.  That’s when I realize I have no juice for her.  NO JUICE?!?!

Her view from her seat at the kitchen table.  A little bleak today.  I’ll hear her ask:  “No sun?”  all morning.  I’ll act like it’s the first time she’s asked every time and I’ll champion the rain and hope she’ll be less worried about the drought.

She piles them up nicely for me but she doesn’t wash them anymore.  It was a tough choice to take that from her, and we hear her worries about “not moving all day.”  She worries she doesn’t do anything all day but she does plenty, including exercises everyday!  But we also now make the bed for her while she’s eating breakfast.

 

For now, while I’m washing the dishes, she’ll go to the bathroom and it will tucker her out and she’ll rest for a while on the couch.

Under the disguise of a very normal day are hidden considerations and concerns:

Putting her pills on the pot holder because it’s easier for her to pick up, knowing I have to lift the bird feeder so she can see the birds when she sits at the table, how anxiety inducing it is to leave the house with no one there, even if it’s to get her pills.  What if she falls?  A lackluster breakfast missing key ingredients but with a partner who has been working so much, there has been no time to get out the store.  To remembering the days when she would make her own bed, do her own dishes, make her own breakfast, and seeing those one by one change and get lost to time and age…  There is a constant shift to “This is how it is now.”  Every pill she takes all day long has come from nervous decisions, doctor’s visits with long explanations or hospital stays, trials and changes, but we worry; do we give her just too many pills?  Do they do anything to help her anyway?  Do we let her have her independence as much as possible?  But she can, and has, fallen doing things on her own.  We make and question decisions every day.

Despite, and above, these considerations and concerns, is the joy.  When she enters the kitchen, sees me and throws her arms out for a hug or in hearing her snort laughter when she reads about an escaped monkey from the zoo.  It’s in the way we give love, picking blueberries from the yard and putting it into her oatmeal, turning it a dark purple, in cutting her food for her, in mixing MiraLAX into her coffee…

I’m not a religious person but every morning that I get to complete this ritual, I feel blessed.