The News From Dutchess County

[mallorys_camera]

Spending time in the garden was lovely. Stayed three hours. Got maybe half the 12' X 12' plot weeded? Will return to complete the task later this week. I may not even need to beg Claude to rototill this year: The earth is quite pliable.

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Spring is more advanced in Dutchess County than it is in Ulster. Maple trees all sporting that tender green blur that, upon close examination, is not leaves at all but tiny tree flowers, lethal to anyone prone to allergies. The magnolias & weeping cherries are all in bloom, and the daffodils & forsythia seem to have staying power this year, so the roadsides are a riot of yellow & pink & spring green.

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I drove by L's house where I used to live. It's shabbier than ever though the daffodils I planted are blooming in great clumps.

I was pretty happy for most of the time I lived at L's house, and I wondered—not for the first time—if L would have lost her mind if she hadn't had that knee replacement.

I warned her!

Good little libertarian that I am, I have a pretty hard & fast rule about never offering personal opinions about courses of action when it's clear the other person is bound & determined to see them through—except when I feel an emotional bond with the other person and the course of action runs straight through a disaster zone.

Surgery under general anesthetic is risk enough on its own for anyone over 80, but added to that, I'd seen L's chest X-rays! I knew how badly her lungs were compromised.

So over lunch at one of the Culinary's extravagant restaurants, I told Linda my concerns.

It was one of the few occasions I can remember that I ever saw Linda get angry.

I can't remember exactly what she said—I wrote about it at the time, so it's here somewhere—but the gist was that I was not the boss of her, so why didn't I just STFU.

I felt so badly about the encounter that I ended up paying for the lunch—$100 plus.

But shortly after the knee replacement, Linda began manifesting signs of dementia. I think she may have stroked out on the table. Or thrown a mini-clot. Or something.

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Linda was never someone with whom I was going to forge a deep connection, but I was fond of her and grateful to her.

I haven't seen her since I moved out, but Belinda, whose grim sense of duty compels her to take Linda out every couple of weeks, tells me she's not doing well. She doesn't appear to bathe, smells faintly of urine. She prattles thoughtlessly. She eats half a dozen rolls at a sitting.

Neither one of her children like her, so they're not looking out for her.

Mrs. Neighbor Ed drops by for tea and takes her out shopping once a week, but Mrs. Neighbor Ed, though a kind person, has definite boundaries.

The house keeps getting shabbier and shabbier.

Sad.

And maybe I'm in complete denial, maybe this is just what happens to people when they get old, but I can't help thinking, It didn't have to be this way...

Comments

[asakiyume]

My two nearby children both have more up-close and personal encounters with people who are suffering from mental illness and/or are homeless than I have. Both of them have tried to help extremely difficult people way past where I would have--they're generous and kind (-er than I am, is what I mean). And both of them have said that some people are just really, really hard to help. They're capricious and can be cruel, they're undependable, can be scary, etc. They undo things, they break things, they threaten, they wreck things. Hashtag, not all people who suffer from mental illness or who are homeless. But some.

But Linda isn't homeless and didn't have a mental ailment until she did... so yeah, maybe she didn't need to end up in the circumstance she's in :-\ She's luck she has Mrs. Neighbor Ed and Belinda.

[mallorys_camera]

She is lucky. Belinda tends to be pretty saturnine—and, of course, she did vote for Trump in the last election (though she's showing signs of buyer's remorse)—but she has an old-fashioned sense of obligation toward her friends that I admire—she was the one person who brought meals to Linda during her physical convalescence.

Mrs. Neighbor Ed is just a real doll.

I will occasionally slip $$$ to beggars whom I assume are homeless because "there but for the grace of God..." But the problem is very big. And I am very small. Plus, that oxygen mask that you're supposed to fasten on yourself first is getting kind of slippery. So...

[bleodswean]

I one hundred percent agree with your assessment of the surgery. I am BEGGING my mother to stop listening to the ortho about knee replacement / hip replacement whatever her current pain complaint is. I don't understand this NEED she has to undergo elective surgery.

We saw this exact thing happen with Kidling2's gf's grandmother. At 81. Knee replacement and for six months following she was completely cuckoo. Poor thing. It was tragic. One night she just stood up in front of a backyard crowd, undressed and walked naked into the house. Terrible.

[mallorys_camera]

DO NOT LET YOUR MOTHER GO THROUGH WITH THAT, E!!!!!

Manacle her to her living room couch! Drug her! If either of your sisters is enabling this, figure out a way to cut off her communication with those sisters!!!

Because I am telling you (a) the ortho will not help any mobility issues she may be having and (b) she will not emerge from the operation with her mental faculties intact. And guess who's gonna have to end up dealing with yr mother in her new, mentally compromised state? You!!!!

Can't they do steroid injections & tramadol for the pain? Technically, tramadol is not an opiate.

Glad you got to spend time in the garden.

[smokingboot]

I feel for the house and for Linda, and yes, maybe it didn't have to be this way.

But who could live with the uncertainty?