The Day I Took my Mother to her Assisted Living Interview

I got to her apartment at nine. The interview was scheduled for eleven. We had an hour and a half drive ahead of us. She was sitting in front of her make-up mirror putting on lipstick, wearing only shoes, her green sneakers, but no pants. She had become ornery lately, having fallen and broken two ribs the week before while pushing her shopping cart around town. After that, she got a urinary tract infection and became the usual three headed rattlesnake until after the first two doses of Cipro. I was holding my breath that everything would go smoothly that day.

She wasn't budging until she found the right hat and right bag. I'm looking at the clock and holding hats up one by one.

I said, "We better get going." 
"NO!" she bellowed, "I have to decide which bag. Bring me those two. No. Over there, over THERE!" 
She placed both bags across her arm, one after the other, again and again, finally choosing the brown one.
I said, "Good. Let's get going." 
She continued to sit until finished with her explanation as to why she wasn't taking the bigger bag.

I got her in the car and off we went. She seemed better at that point and I began to feel a little more hopeful whereas I hadn't before.

She said, "Now, they are going to ask me what day it is, I know they will. What day is it?" 

"It's Wednesday, September third," I said. "September third," she said, "Now how am I going to remember that?" 

We had been talking about the three sisters that lived near her childhood home in Tennessee. After the middle sister died, the older sister propped her up on their living room couch and apparently forced the younger one to keep feeding her and pretend the middle sister was still alive. A few weeks later the postman smelled something while putting letters in their mailbox and called the Sheriff. 

"Why yes, the three sisters and it's September the third," she said. "I can remember that."

I also told her what they were going to ask on the mini mental status exam, the counting backwards from one hundred by sevens part. She practiced but didn't get too much farther than 93. 

After that, she pulled out her compact mirror, lifted a little tube of brown putty from her purse and began applying that to her face, examining herself from different angles and talking all the while. She was upset she had to rush in applying her makeup. 

She started talking about her own mother, how her mother had been really nasty to her whenever she got her period as a little girl. . .

Then she became a little suspicious of what they might do to her at the assisted living facility. In the Emergency Room that week they started an IV, she yanked it out, threw her hat at the nurse and called her a bitch.

I told her it was going to be like an audition and that she had to be on her best behavior and couldn't start giving them shit until after she was accepted. She changed the subject.

As it turns out, she was accepted. And she really liked the place because there was a Rite Aid pharmacy across the street. 

"Look at that Rite Aid," she'd say, pointing out her window. And she liked the mushroom soup they served her in the restaurant downstairs.