Dose of Reality

The last few days have been mostly sunny in Boyne City, and so has Rosie.
Mom has gradually been moving into medications in non-pill form, reducing the pill-swallowing hurdles of her daily routine. Although pill time has been a great source of character and patience building for us, we'll just have to find other ways to exercise those virtues.

I promised to share some Rose-isms. We haven't sat down to recall them all on paper yet, but here's a couple:

"The eagle is of symbolic interest."
"I have an anecdote."
"Una minota minosa." We don't know what it means, but Suzy thought it sounded Spanish. A quick web search didn't prove her right. However, there is a Czeck word minuta, meaning "minute."

Mom has been talking from her past more and more. She has been talking about her sister Dorothy, her brothers Howard and Jack. Suzy said she talked about her brother Donald a couple weeks ago - Donald was her brother who died in infancy years before she was born. She has asked about her mother, Naomi, and has occasionally called us Mama.

Mom has frequently talked about Dad, referring to him as my husband, which she never did in the past. He was always Dad or Ken. Yesterday she said to me, "I was expecting your dad would be home from golfing by now." After eight years, I still occasionally wake up forgetting Dad is gone, the sting of reality sometimes taking several minutes to set in. How would it be if reality was not so readily accessible? I asked Mom if she missed him. She said yes. Then we moved on to discuss someone on an old TV gameshow she thought she knew.

The conversation is not always in reality, but the inflection, the humor and the expression are all Mom. She told us yesterday she wasn't very pleasant to be around. Evan told her she is our sunshine, even if she isn't feeling like a sunshiney person. Evan is good at cheering his Grandma up. Almost always, Mom is happy and comfortable, and she really is our sunshine.