It all starts with Mom. My mother will be 90 in August. She is incredibly “with-it” for someone of her age. She is very independent, although, her world has got much smaller in recent years, She still takes care of herself, and her affairs. She even balances her checkbook, something that I’ve never been able to do, successfully.
I check in with her everyday at 7:30pm. She has trouble hearing, so the call is usually her talking, me listening, She gets meals home delivered which is intended to make sure she is eating. She tells me the weather everyday, even though we are only two hours away with basically the same weather. The call usually goes something like this long run-on sentence … She starts with, “Well we had another miserable day here, it rained, the temperature is 47 degrees, I had beef stew for lunch, it was good, but salty, green beans, jello, and a cookie, the sandwich was lunchmeat so I gave that to the mailman, for dinner I had cottage cheese with strawberry jelly, it was good, thats all i needed, I had a busy day, I didn’t hear from anybody, I talked to Judy, “Im tired” and ready for bed. Thats all I have.”
It’s conversation is repeated pretty much exactly the same everyday, but it gives me the opportunity to check on her and assess any subtle changes both mentally and physically. I know it also gives her something to look forward too, and she lets me know if I miss a day and wants to know why I didn’t call. 🙂 Occasionally she may throw in “How was your day” but not usually. My theory is that she she repeats this mantra almost with taking a breath because if she pauses, you may ask a question, she cant hear what you say. That starts a whole struggle back and forth conversation were Im talking so loud that the entire city block can hear me. I’ve learned that I cant call her when in public, it becomes very disruptive and people begin to give me dirty looks. Also, If I call her at any other time of day she will talk and talk and then all of the sudden say “Who is this?” It’s sad but I’ve learned that this is our new mother-son normal.
The reason I gave you the back story is because one night at the very beginning, when Corona was just a flu going around Asia, my Mom and I had a slightly different phone call. Corona was on the news, but seemed so distant. People in China were getting it and there was a report of a cruise ship quarantined, off the coast of Japan. Everything still seemed a world away and not affecting me at all. Well that night she blurts out, “You know your ex brother-in-law is on that boat. I think he has the virus”
Ok, she is ninety. Do I believe this? She has to be confused. Maybe he is on a cruise and she is just getting mixed up, associating all cruise ships with that ship. It’s so difficult to communicate with a older hearing impaired person, but I did my best to unravel, how she associated my former brother-in-law, who neither of us had seen in 20+ years, and the current quarantined ship. All I can say is, “Trust your mother.” I got off the phone and headed straight to the internet.
First I searched his name, (Im not mentioning his name to protect his privacy) nothing came up. I tried to find him on Facebook, I could find him. I search for about two or more hours, and nothing. It took several days to find concrete evidence, my mom was 100 percent correct. He was tested on Feb 3, and was in a hospital in Tokyo on a ventilator. The last update I received he survived the virus and is off the ventilator, but has a long road ahead of him. Not sure what that meant, but it was not the time to ask. He survived, tahts the main thing. His wife did not get sick.
That’s when I started taking this, way more seriously! Im not a person that takes medication. I hardly ever use aspirin or Tylenol and the last time I had the flu was probably 25 years go. I went to the store the next day and bought flu supplies. If you remember, in the early stages, they just said flu symptoms. So my preparation consisted of Aspirin, rice, applesauce, Gatorade. I had no idea…
That was February 26, gosh, just 23 days ago.
More to come…
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