Sleep

 I know I need 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Alene needs more and Monday night she slept 10-11 hours. So yesterday, Tuesday, she was in a great mood in the morning and felt so refreshed! We enjoyed our coffee on the front porch and talked, laughed and reminisced-mostly about our days working for Safeway, but also about some of the antics we pulled in our younger days. We never did anything to hurt anyone, although we did like to make fools of ourselves and laugh until we were sick. I know her kids and grandkids have heard some of the stories-they just shake their heads in disbelief. Her memories from those days is as good as mine. 

As the day progressed, she gradually declined and the repeated endless questions began. When I got here, I asked her if she would keep a journal of our time together. She wanted to know what to write and I said anything you want, what we do during the day, what we eat, things we talk about, your feelings…basically anything you want. She agreed! I didn’t think she would. She wrote in it Monday and read to me what she wrote. One thing is that she thinks she’d like to continue the journal after I leave-she thinks it would be good for her! 

Yesterday she pulled out that journal several times and wrote in it. I don’t know what she wrote but endless question number one for the day was “What’s the date today?”.  She probably asked me that 15-20 times. Another endless question yesterday was a carry over from the day before and she asked how old DanaRiley is. Every time I would answer “12”, she would be so surprised and comment on how good she looks and acts for being 12. 

We were talking again about Dan the mower man yesterday and I was admonishing her for giving him so much money and she defended her actions and defended him. That’s the first time she pulled out her journal. I do admire her loyalty to Dan and I get it. He’s made her feel safe at times when she’s been up here alone or with her cousin and things have gone wrong. She’s called him, even in the middle of the night, and he’s come to her rescue to fix things. She was ready to call Dan yesterday when she couldn’t get the dryer to start; she thought it was unplugged and couldn’t reach behind it. I said I’d look and the reason it wouldn’t start was that she didn’t close the door all the way. I’m not sure she believed me. 

She wanted to talk yesterday about some recent pivotal times in her life. She started with moving into the house she shares with Abbey and her girls and Doug, Alene’s cousin, who is about the same age as her kids. They’ve lived there since sometime in 2017 when Abbey thought it would be a good idea for all of them to live under the same roof. Alene didn’t want to but finally agreed. She loved the house she was living in but it wasn’t big enough for all of them. Besides, now with her dementia, she couldn’t live alone. 

The event that she says is most disturbing happened about a year ago when her doctor took away her driver’s license. That destroyed her and does still. She feels that was the true beginning of losing control of her life. She doesn’t feel now that she has much control of anything. I mostly avoid the subject of driving because she gets angry. 

Alene also owns guns and has threatened suicide by gun. So Abbey and Doug have removed the guns from her life. Alene fought it, hiding her gun(s) and ammo in closets and under mattresses throughout the house and even here at the FF. Well, they’ve finally found them all. Alene is pissed. She wants a gun for protection when she’s here at the FF. I don’t object to guns. But I did tell Alene I didn’t want a gun here while we were together. Her suicide plan was to shoot herself in the huge detached garage. 

More later…