familyvalues

My mom, who is now 86, has vascular dementia, as noted previously.

She's more "there" in the mornings, and is sometimes able to connect up and have actual conversations, though I admit, this is not often. Then once she starts getting tireder, she is just not rooted in reality, meanders verbally, and has some kind of rich inner life to which I am not privy, and which, when she's asked about, she is unable to explain. (Which is more curious to me because she was just in 2026 in the morning, you know? But it is what it is.) This does often lead to problems because she meanders off, physically, to obey the mysterious dictates of her soul, and can't/won't explain what she wants to do, and does *not* take well to re-direction. (Or, in the words of the medical establishment, is combative.)

She's also miserable and seems to have developed actual aphasia at this point -- that is, she has something specific she wants to say but says the wrong words. Which, sometimes is commentary on 2026, but is also sometimes commentary from her inner life, so even if we could understand it, it wouldn't make sense, but the frustration is the same either way, so sympathy is at least called for.

She does recognize me pretty consistently, which is good both for her sake and mine (because the first time I actually knew she didn't know it was me was Not Entertaining), but she also firmly has the idea her parents are still alive and she wants to visit them (in Lancaster, PA), which is... not so good. My dad is very bad at dealing with the latter, and keeps going, in essence, "No, they're dead," which is. Nowhere near the response you want, there.

Also, she has no sense of time, so she's like, "Let's go!" three minutes after we start a thing. Which is one thing if it's at home, but it's more of a problem if she's at, say, her 5 year old niece's birthday party. My brother and I did decode that it's also her telling us she's done with our visits and we should go away, though, so that was good.

And, she is still doing the "taking a walk and then getting lost and getting the police called on her," thing, which frankly by this point is infuriating because why the fuck won't my dad get inside locks for the house, or at least notice that she's leaving. ?!?!??? <-- my internal state.

Anyway, the reason I'm making this post is that she's getting a lot more unstable on her feet, and has fallen a few times lately, though has not, thankfully, broken anything, but she can't get back up again when she does fall. My dad has now, despite their previously having promised each other they would Never Leave Their House, made the decision that he's open to looking into assisted living/memory care facilities, hosanna. (They've had in-house helpers for a bit, but my mom keeps taking against them because they tell her what to do and she hates that, see above re: combative.)

He called me up (I having had warning from my brother) and was like, "Can we get her into an ambulance and have her taken somewhere this afternoon?" and I barely managed not to laugh at him. No, is the answer, no we can't. I said something about it not being feasible. (I mean, if she broke something it would be, but that is To Be Avoided because it would lead to the downslope, and while she is not exactly happy in her life, the "broken bone to pneumonia" pipeline is not the most efficient way of dying, pardon my distancing humor.)

But! I have now scheduled two tours, one for my brother (on Friday) and one for me on Monday, at two different local-to-my-parents places, and we'll go from there.

Pepperell has an open Town Meeting, which is to say, Pepperell has the New England tradition of Town Meeting, in which The Populace decides what the town is going to spend and do over the course of the next year. This often amounts to rubberstamping the votes of the Select Board and the School Committee on the budgets, but they do also result in actual questions and actual decisions on some topics, like zoning stuff, so it does involve actual democracy, too.

In some towns, it involves elected representatives being Town Meeting Members (my mom was a Town Meeting Member for literal decades), which is called Representative Town Meeting. Pepperell, as noted, has Open Town Meeting, in which all residents (or in some cases, all registered voters in the town) can deliberate, so I went, rather gleefully, and I was in full Anthropology mode. (I am, yes, registered already. Because.)

I covered Town Meetings for my newspaper, of course, so I went to Every One, and Could Not Vote, had to pay attention to Everything and Be Neutral and Make Sure I Stayed Til The End, so the best thing about last night was I got to leave early.

Aherm.

But I also got to vote! So that was fun. And I identified the people who ask good questions and people sigh in relief when they stand up, and the ones who ask incessant ones forever, about whom other people sigh and mutter about to their neighbors, and I enjoyed the Town Moderator, who isn't as good, Roberts-Rules-wise, as Dedham's long-time one who just retired, but is funny, which is a boon.

They do have Info Sessions the week beforehand (what we called Mini Town Meeting in Dedham), which I did not manage to find out about this time, so I Now Know for future use.

I ran into my neighbor, who works in the Town Clerk's office -- she's one of the people who checks people in, so we nodded to each other in the hallway and I got swept off to the main auditorium. (As is tradition, it was in a school auditorium.) They asked, at the beginning, if anyone was new, and a youngish guy and I waved, and people nodded at us, and the couple next to me said they'd lived in Pepperell 40 years and always came, and I said I was used to Town Meetings because of the newspaper, and it turned out the wife had been in newspapers, too, so that was nice. (Not that I remember their names, but, you know, I can nod to them in future.)

There were a lot of presentations and the thing I was trying to stick around for didn't happen by 9:45, so. I went home. (They have to deal with PFAS contamination in their municipal water supply, and had gotten money for it, but things have changed slightly so they need more money, and I figured it'd be controversial. I don't have to care about the contamination because I have a well, but I do want to Make Sure They Spend Their Money Right.) Alas, I have an early client on Tuesdays, so, as I said, I got to Leave! Yay!

Anyway. Am glad. Like Participating.