Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Social graces


Mom says some of the darnedest things, I just have to write them down. They are not always nice, and they are not always in line with Amy Vanderbilt's etiquette guide, but they make me smile, at least eventually. Sometimes it is her age, sometimes her brash personality, and other times her dementia, but she gets away with it! Some of the most recent:

At the hospital her nurse came up to her bedside to take her blood pressure. Mom looked up, patted the nurses tummy, and asked an obviously not pregnant young lady if she was pregnant. The embarrassed young lady told her she had a two year old, at which point Mom chastised her for not losing weight right away, like she did.  

She has named both her arthritis (Arthur) and her ileostomy pouch (Oscar), and refers to them as if they are her friends, which confounds her caretakers.  

During her husband's memorial service, as the honor guard was folding the flag to give to her, she loudly announces, "Oh I remember teaching you girls that in Girl Scouts!"

"Look at that fatso! Buddha, buddha!" she will say just about anywhere

While at Wendy's, she announced loudly, "My physical therapist is a lesbian." 

When the hospital nurse manager came in the room to see her, Mom somehow cajoled her to carry her dinner tray out of the room and bag up her leftover chicken.  

And my absolute favorite so far, she calls her private parts "possible". Not sure why. Possible what? But the other day she gave one of the CNAs a lecture on how you have to fold the toilet paper, not wad it up, or how in the world will she be able to wipe Possible? Thankfully, the nurses did not know she was referring to a body part.

I no longer get embarrassed.  

And the way everyone is so attached to their phones and tablets these days, and the seemingly invisibility of the elderly, I doubt anyone even notices.







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