How to keep an old person company

Visits to my frail, demented mother are like wars: interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror. No idea what to do about the moments of terror, but I’ve been working on the interminable boredom. 

 When my father was alive, he and my mother spent whole days lying on the foldout futon couch that became their 24-hour bed: sleeping, watching television, reading the paper. If my father got off the futon to prepare a meal or collect the mail or pay a bill or make a phone call, my mother would erupt in a fury. “What’s he doing!” she would fume as though he had betrayed her, and she wouldn’t always forgive him when he returned. My mother, the forthright feminist who railed against dependence, struggles with an abject fear of abandonment.

 So these past three years, since my father’s death in 2014—the ultimate abandonment—I try to give my mother the gift of companionship, even though I live 3,000 miles away. I call her on the phone almost daily and visit her for a week every two months. It doesn’t satisfy her deep need, but it’s what I can do. And when I’m with her, I try to spend every moment by her side, even when she’s sleeping. 

 The thing is, it’s really, really boring. She can’t talk coherently and dozes off in the middle of a sentence. Thank god for endless reruns of “The Big Bang Theory”—a show she adores and I find better than nothing. 

 A few visits ago, we spent her waking hours looking through old photo albums. Another time, we played catch with a Nerf ball. On her birthday, the Threshold Choir serenaded her. On my last visit I spent hours sketching her, which put her in the center of attention but required no verbal interaction. This week when I visit, I’m bringing the makings of a pussy hat, which I hope to finish and leave with her, like a party favor, so that she has proof in the pink that I was there. I’ll take pictures of the two of us in our hats. She’ll be mystified, but I know that if she had her wits, she’d love it. 

 Next time maybe I’ll do home spa: grease up her feet and put them in plastic bags to soften them, and ditto with her hands in vinyl medical gloves, maybe put a little honey on her face, olive oil in her hair. 

 But life is long, particularly in the case of my mother, so I need more ideas. I have a copy of her dissertation: “Feminism and the Secondary School Curriculum 1890-1920.” I could read it to her. But maybe that’s too mean, acknowledging as it would her stark decline. Oh, how she would hate what has become of her.

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