"...can cause confusion in the elderly"

my sick room

This is not a throwback post wherein I'm going to reminisce about my mom. I'm writing about me. 

I have pneumonia, and when I went to Urgent Care on Wednesday morning, I was pretty much out of it. I'm told I was there for three hours. I remember seeing the doctor, and explaining to the X-ray technician about the metal clips in my spine. I remember  getting my arm bandaged after the blood draw, but not the poke of the needle. I slept most of the while I was there, unable to sit up or stay awake. There was, I'm told, a very charming man in a neck brace in the waiting room, explaining to someone in Argentina with his phone on speaker that he couldn't make the trip. I didn't hear a word. 

That was Wednesday. I'm much better now, though still too sick to leave the house. My housemates are tending to everything. I'm thrilled to have insurance (Medicare)--though I don't have a supplemental policy like my mom's that covered every penny, I feel very lucky. I can't imagine how awful it would have been in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when my teeth were chattering like a cartoon skeleton's to weigh the question of whether or not I could afford to go to the doctor. What is causing the confusion in the minds of people like Paul Ryan who entertained cutting Medicare? What  caused the confusion in the minds of the Republican lawmakers who tried over and over again to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Maybe they need antibiotics. 

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." ---Kierkegaard

Follow the corridor that looks down on the koi pond and the garden. Get in the elevator. Don't bother with the barrage of confusing signs, just let muscle memory lead. You've been here before. Maybe six or seven or eight times in the past year. Who's counting. Walk past the life-size photo of the nun, past the skinny Jesus painting, past the seascape, turn right at the sailboat. Now walk to the end of the hall. Wasn't it this room where you had to be gowned and masked to visit Dan last spring? Now it's your mom's room. Don't be surprised. Yesterday she was in the very same ER cubicle (# 12) that he was in for his final visit. The day after Thanksgiving she was in #1, also a cubicle that Dan had spent several hours in. Maybe the universe feels you need to be reminded of all this for some reason. So be reminded. Go there. Let the past inform the present. Put your ear to its mouth. Listen.

My mom has pneumonia. She's in the hospital. Between the three visits I made there today, I crawled in my bed with my clothes on. I didn't really sleep. I didn't really read. I lay there, inhabiting a liminal space between past and present. Whenever I decided to open my eyes, I deleted old emails or read a few poems. Tonight I'm sitting in my living room, drinking wine. It's so quiet, the silence is roaring.

My mom seemed very, very tired this evening.

When I left the hospital the sky looked like this.