MOM! GO TO YOUR ROOM!

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It is really getting bad. Mom is behaving like I should, and who needs that? The other day I enter her room at the nursing home, and she is not there, but her boy toy is, and he is presiding over her lunch tray that was just deposited on her table.

“Hey Henry, how’s it going?”

“Oh, hi Joseph (very formal relationship)

“Mom still in therapy?”

“Yes, should be back any minute.”

Suddenly she arrives, being wheeled in by a therapist who promised to come back after lunch for more therapy for mom.

“Olympia, your lunch is here. But I brought you some soup from home, and I got you brownie COOKIES, they’re soft to chew on!”

“OOOH! Let me have the soup first.”

Now there is chicken soup on her tray from the kitchen, a chicken salad sandwich and a nice fat piece of ginger cake with a little salad and a cup of tea.

Henry pulls out the soup and opens up the thermos handing it to her with a spoon. Mom happily digs in and makes a face.

“What kind of soup is this Henry?”

It looks like paste and is going down like it is too thick to handle.

“Oh that is clam chowder Olympia, I pureed it first. Makes it easier to handle: no chunks”

She finishes up the soup and says” “OK get me those cookies.”

“Ma! You didn’t eat your sandwich!”

“I’m not eating that!”

“Now Ma, you have to eat lunch!”

“Not that!”

“Ma, if that was me doing what you are doing you would be yelling at me and getting out your wooden spoon!”

She gives me a Cheshire cat grin and reaches into the bag of cookies, bites down into it, her eyes rolling about the ceiling like she is going to give me an estimate for a paint job.

Henry leaves leaving just the two of us. The nurse comes by and takes her tray away.

“Oh, Olympia, you didn’t eat, aren’t you hungry?

“Not really. Henry brought me something.”

Nurse, she is a bad girl, she doesn’t eat her meals, just the desserts!”

“All I know is that when she wakes up in the morning, some gentleman is standing at the foot of the bed, a roll and coffee waiting for her when she opens her eyes!

This woman I call Mom has got to be stopped! All the stuff about eating healthy isn’t ringing true in practice. I could have very easily eaten just desserts but always had mom’s face in the way.

If she weren’t already in her room, I would have said: “GO TO YOUR ROOM AND THINK ABOUT IT!”