Recovering

Daughter came home and fell asleep in a chair in my study today. She slept for over an hour. I think she was exhausted from the anxiety and poor sleep. Tonight she decided to sleep in her own bed. I’m hoping that means the current crisis is past.

Brother sent a text message to Sister yesterday, telling her not to panic if she saw my email before she talked to me. Sister was in an in-service meeting, so she was reading this under the table and trying to respond the same way. Brother may have intended to be reassuring, but the messages that followed certainly did not calm her fears.

He explained I’d sent a picture of a sweatshirt that had burned. Sister told me about the text messages that had gone back and forth, and unfortunately I don’t remember them all. My favorite, though, was when she asked if the fire department had come. He told her not for the sweatshirt, but they’d come for the second fire. Poor Sister. I suspect that by this point Brother was enjoying himself immensely.

To make matters worse, when Sister tried to call last night, I was in Bible study and didn’t have my cell phone with me. Daughter was at the church, too, so she couldn't answer the phone. Sister didn’t leave a message, and while I’d seen she’d called, I didn’t call her back because I knew she’d be getting her daughter into bed. I had several calls from her today, though. Niece fell and cut her lip on the playground. Sister was trying to figure out if she needed stitches. She said, “You know, this is the kind of thing where I would have called Mom.” I told her I’d been thinking about that a lot lately. She was stopping by the nursing home to see Mom tonight, and I assured her that Mom would have a wonderful time fussing over Niece.

Mom has been deteriorating, and is now incontinent at night. Dad says there are more days now when she doesn’t know him when he goes over to visit her. The other day when he went over they'd temporarily locked her out of her room because she was taking all the clothes out of her drawers and hanging them on the handrails in the hall. But when Sister and Niece walked in this evening, Mom knew them. She wanted to know what happened to Niece’s lip. Sister explained, and asked Mom if she thought Niece needed stitches. Mom examined it closely (she’s a retired nurse) and told Sister it would be okay and didn’t need stitches. Sister said Mom looked at it again later, and again announced there was no need for medical attention. I think Sister enjoyed her glimpse of Mom this evening. I think she needed that. I'm a little bit jealous.