Lunch on a pretty summer day

After an hour's relaxing on the porch, my uncle is having a light lunch here in the dining room...half an egg-and-spinach sandwich and a salad of strawberries on butter lettuce, cranberry juice and maybe a cookie afterwards.  It's one of those early afternoons when the sun is flickering equally lightly through the trees all around us, its buoyancy peaceful, hopeful.  Goodness knows we could use all of those spirits these days.  I've already told Julie, our caregiver, who has just come in, that today needs forthwith to be low-impact.

It's been quite busy this morning...the nurse coming at 10 while he was only half awake, breakfast punctuated with questions like "do you know where we are?" and "how are you feeling?" (hard to answer any time!); the physical therapist drove in right after that, a wonderful woman named Valerie who keeps him moving gently and firmly and with whom he has the most patience of all those who cross his path bothering him about something or other; then a caregiver who, though not new to his care, is unfamiliar.

This week, after a three-day stay in the hospital geriatrics clinic that severely tested his mental status (not to mention his tolerance, of which he has very little for such intervention, anyway) there have been more people in and out, night and day, than he can keep count of, much less put names and faces to.  Every one is concerned for his welfare, of course, but very old age is tired of concern...it simply wants to live out a routine, have a little company, take a shot at humor, fall asleep unimpeded in a chair or rocker, certainly not be bothered with what day it is.  I can sympathize.

Things will even out very soon, though, with more predictable, uncomplicated attention; it took me a day or two to iron out a feasible schedule of caregivers, but thanks to his previous illnesses, few as they have been, I've gathered a useful network to call on.

We're so lucky that we can give him that, that he can afford it.  We are not, as a country, set up to really care for people--the old, the young, the ill and distempered.  Always there is a sticky web of bureaucracy, a crude dismissal of the poor and soon-to-be-poor, to struggle through even for basic support.  Something as simple as the height of a bedside table, or as complicated as the prejudicial assumptions made to distinguish each medical necessity...all of them spell our irresponsibility for one another.  We don't, to put it bluntly, get it...even, amazingly, while we are living it ourselves.  And yet because of rules, regulations, and presumptions, and care facilities that seem to care more for themselves than for their inmates, conditions that can often be addressed simply and cleanly with a good dose of common sense, take on herculean proportions.  Unfortunately, common sense seems to be missing in huge doses.

Anyway, our newest chapter here at home is that, despite fortunate stability of care, each day now will be a different reality, evening out one way or another as the hours go by, certainly, but needing to be carefully negotiated each morning.  Unless one understands that continuously varying state of mind which is at work in the aged mind, it can be confusing, both for caregiver and cared-for.  We are grateful for the stability of environment that allows it plenty of room to wander safely, in place where, as the nurse today put it, there are plenty of clues to hook on to.

Lunch being finished now, it's well-deserved naptime for my uncle.  I'm off to the grocery to stock up on tomorrow's fare.  The young ones are coming to visit...quite a different energy in the house, and like the airy afternoon most welcome.