Nonfiction by Gail Purdy
The afternoon was grey with light rain. No different than any other day during the winter months. The world appeared softer through the rain-spattered windshield as I sat motionless in the car outside my mother’s apartment building. I felt the deep heaviness that had made itself at home in my body. What else did I need to do before I went home and cocooned for the night?
My cell phone rang just as I turned the key in the ignition. The woman’s voice sounded harsh coming through my car’s audio system.
“This is the Director of Care at Evergreen Baptist Care Facility. Is this Gail?”
“Yes, it is.”
“We have a bed for your mother. You have until tomorrow to decide if you want it. If you do, you must move your mother into the facility within 72 hours. Normally it is 48 hours, but you have an extra day because of the New Year’s holiday.”
The idea of my mother moving into a long-term care facility was something I didn’t allow myself to think about. I didn’t want to hope. Was it possible that this journey of caring for my mother might soon end? Was someone throwing me a lifeline, and I just needed to grab hold of it? Could I grasp hope and not let it slip through my fingers?
It had only been two weeks since the case manager visited my mother to assess if it was safe for her to continue living independently. The regional health authority would decide if my mother qualified for a ‘subsidized bed’ in a long-term care facility. A decision that was weighted heavily on how many authorized services my mother was currently using. Any assistance I contracted privately to support my mother didn’t count. “I only gather the information and present it to the assessment team,” the case manager told me. “Every care facility in your immediate area has a six to nine-month waitlist. So don’t expect your mother to move soon if she is approved.”
What did live independently really mean? The only reason my mother had been able to live alone in her apartment over the last several years was because of me. She had fallen five times in less than four months, and each time I found her lying on the floor, not knowing how to call for help. When she stopped bathing, I arranged for someone to assist her. When she could no longer make sense of microwave instructions to reheat prepared meals, I hired someone to purchase groceries and prepare meals for her. Afraid of falling again, she had become reluctant to leave her apartment.
Fingers deformed by arthritis made it difficult for her to remove medications from the pharmacy-sealed blister packs. Yellow and red pills were found among the forks and spoons in the kitchen drawer, and a zip-lock sandwich bag containing a handful of pills sat near the toaster. Evidence of what had been lost and retrieved over time.
Each square on my mother’s large calendar contained the names of people who came to help her each day. Confusion set in each time she looked at it or when someone showed up to help her. “Why are you here?” she asked. “I don’t need any help.”
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As the woman on the phone continued to speak, I heard her voice, but I couldn’t respond.
Frustration and anger had taken their toll. Trying to manage the needs of my aging mother was crushing me. As hours turned into days and days into months, I felt fragile. Feeling myself slowly breaking apart, I wondered if I would be lost in the shattering. Self-preservation was screaming at me. Responding to these needs had become a way of life for me, and I didn’t know how to be any different. And now I was slowly losing myself.
Anger bubbled just beneath the surface of my self-control. With a force and energy of its own, anger surfaced at will. I wanted to live my life, not my mother’s. She no longer knew how to keep herself safe, and I was anxious about what might happen when I couldn’t be with her. I was afraid of losing her, and at the same time, I wanted her gone. Fear and anger wrestled inside of me, each fighting to take control.
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Only a few seconds had passed as images from the last year flashed through my mind. I slipped back into the present, aware of the rain on the windshield and the woman on the phone.
“Yes, we will take the room,” I heard myself say as numbness spread through my body. Fog descended over the streets as I drove home.
Gail Purdy is an emerging writer and multi-disciplinary visual artist living on the west coast of British Columbia. She is the runner up recipient of the 2021 International Amy MacRae Memorial Award for Memoir. Her story “The Parking Lot” was part of the 2021 Amy Award Anthology.
