Afternoon showers

I got a call from Mom yesterday in the middle of the work day, asking about the bank.   She said she'd called the bank and they said she had no account there.  Since everything she has is at the bank, this caused her considerable anxiety.

She called my Aunt Peg and told her that "Sam has embezzled my money!"  Mom asked Aunt Peg to connect her with a good lawyer.  Aunt Peg insisted that Mom call me, and I explained that her money was still there.  She seemed reassured.  Aunt Peg wasn't.

Not that she thought I was stealing from my mother, mind you.  I'm not.  If I took her money I would just have to support her anyway, unless I also engaged in elder abuse and abandonment.  Seems a little late in the process to start that whole scenario, and besides, if tables were turned Mom would take care of me.

Aunt Peg is still chasing content.  I explained to her again that after this small storm Mom will again be calm, reassured, and will (I hope) forget that she suspected me of venal behavior.  She forgot she was furious about coming back from Aunt Peg's house and going to a new memory care facility.   She forgot to notice that it was a memory care facility.  Mom's like the weather in Kansas.  She's variable.

All of this is about taking the details of life and drawing conclusions based on linear continuity.  Each day we take in information and sequence it, forming hypotheses, executing them, managing our worries, desires, tasks and ideas with the aid of short-term and mid-term memory.  Mom is still a reasonable person, in that presented with facts she can usually make a good choice.  When she has to hold multiple facts and tasks in her mind simultaneously she is getting to the point where some of her conclusions are a little skewed.

When we moved her up here, I got Mom in touch with a colleague who is a fine attorney, so that we could make sure all her legal matters covered in Iowa.  Jean took Mom into her office without me present and talked through what Mom's wishes were.  She presented me with completed documents and did not allow me to be part of the process.  I understood it then, but I really appreciate it now.  Mom got a chance to speak her mind and express her wishes back when her conclusions were pretty solid.

So much of life is about process.  How we put things together, reason things out, related to common issues, pay the bills.  From here out, in my mother's life, content will be secondary to process.  The future and the past give way only to the moment.   Troubles will arise, dissipate and disappear again, like spring storms on the prairie.

This is sad to see in one of the finest organizational minds I have had the privilege to know.  On the other hand, the tree is falling in the forest, and no one remembers the sound.  So no harm is done.