Scrubbing the Floor

The air is a liminal state. Up in the air. We say it all the time. At this moment I am in the air in a plane between my life with my mother, tending to her every need and my life without my mother, tending to nothing at all because, for the next almost-month, my brother and his girlfriend will be tending to her. I have left her with them.

It's a project, this vacation, and I've cursed it bitterly. The audacity of it. How dare I--what was I thinking--I paid all this money and it might not even happen--and what if something bad happens to my mother while I'm away.

Fuck it. I can't turn back now.

But I wonder if I will ever attempt it again. My mother was on hospice. Because a patient cannot  have two hospice transfers in a Medicare benefit period, we had to sign her out of hospice or she wouldn't be able to get back onto hospice for several weeks after her return to California. The fancy-dancing to get enough hospice drugs in the interim was, yeah, well, fancy. This morning as I packed to leave my brother's, the medical supply place called asking if they could pick up the equipment today, i.e. the hospital bed, the tray table, the oxygen concentrator, etc. Er. Well, no, I had to tell them. so they're coming tomorrow and already my brain feels a bit fizzy wondering how we will get all this shit back on the Saturday evening that my mother returns. I'm wondering. Not worrying. Because I'm so tired of this shit that I don't have the energy to worry and hospice case managers are houdinis. These women in their pastel scrubs and pretty earrings and perfect make-up are forces. Stand the fuck back. Outta the way. Here comes the hospice nurse. Really.

In a couple of hours I will unlock my front door and return to the former house of moaning. I have no idea what I will do. I might get down on my knees and scrub the grout between the kitchen floor tiles because that would be an excuse to be on my knees and that's probably exactly where I need to be.