Just Rosy

Spring has arrived.  I almost feel like I've missed it, although it has been a beautiful spring arriving in a timely fashion this year and not prematurely as it did last year with disastrous results.  No view from the swamp.  No view from the feeders as a bear came through in the night on May 1st!  The month of April began with my mom in the hospital for 7 days with congestive heart failure.  I moved in with my parents for two weeks when she came home to care for her as she is usually the primary caregiver for my dad and everyone else, it seems.  If this were a year my husband was deployed, I'd just move in.  The social isolation my mom suffers is painful to see.  She has a hearing loss and wears hearing aids, but I'm not sure they aid much.  Our easiest conversations were between 6 and 7 in the morning, before she put her hearing aids in.  She waited too many years to get hearing aids, and by the time she did her brain and ears no longer knew how to communicate!!  She is a great lip reader, if you speak slowly and enunciate well.  My dad is a mumbler who always keeps his head down and doesn't bother to make much eye contact.  The result is a lot of yelling on his part.  His two favorite phrases are "I have to raise my voice, she can't hear me" which is all well and good, if he could leave out the angry face and tone.  Lately, his favorite phrase is "She doesn't listen to me!"  Really, Dad??  SHE CANNOT HEAR ANYTHING!  Frustrating for all involved.   Incredible loneliness and disconnection for her.  He calls people on the phone but at 89 doesn't always remember accurately the news conveyed so she gets nothing.   I am the youngest of 5 children, and we go around and around trying to decide what would be the best living situation for them.  The moral of the story, we've decided, is to make plans and IMPLEMENT them before you are in your mid seventies.  If you wait until you're in your eighties, it is TOO LATE!!!

My sister had a third hip replacement on May 2nd.  She refused to go to a rehab facility and instead came home.  This is a terrible time in her household to be recovering at home, because her husband works long hours this time of year!!!  I've been trying to go every morning and do what I can, which is mostly light housekeeping and putting lotion and socks on her feet.  From there, I try to do what she would be doing at my parents.  I had no idea how often she would visit my parents.  Meanwhile, my daughter and her family came home from a week visiting her in-laws and the grandbaby girl is terribly sick.  Weeds have overtaken my flower garden.  I think I'll just drag a hunk of carpeting and lay it over the whole thing and cover it with a load of bark mulch.

Thankfully, this visitor appeared yesterday morning and spent the entire day on our window screen.  It was a pleasant diversion.