A Day's Work

What if I had just merely continued to send letters to my mother when she replied to mine? What if I had decided to out-chin her and wait for her to call me?

Would anyone have called me and said, "Pardon me, your mother is getting feeble in the head?"

The last time Mom made any attempt to write was a hastily-scrawled Christmas card that got here in January. I think the last actual letter she wrote was early last spring. I know that last July she complained bitterly that no one had sent her a birthday card, even though I had done so.

I made a commitment to call her every day last fall when I downloaded Skype, which allowed me to talk to her for free. I hadn't been calling her, because dammit, in 20 years, she only called me when my father died, when my sister was hurt in a fall, and when she got sucked into some scam and needed help in getting bailed out of it. But after a couple months of no communication, I caved, and called, and have tried to call ever since.

In recent months, alarmed by the increasing vagueness of her conversation, I called her local Agency on Aging and sicked them on her. They're trying to help her, and failing, because she gets so nasty about having any help.

Yesterday, after talking to a friend about Mom's phone being out of service, the friend stopped by her house to check the phone. It wasn't working, and it wasn't that she had just left it off the hook. He took her to a store to buy a new phone, and was appalled at the disgusting odor of her truck -- so bad he had to drive with the windows down. Mom's explanation was that she didn't know what the smell was from, but it had been like that for weeks.

When they got back from buying a new phone, the friend set to find the source of the smell. He thought maybe a bird had flown in and died in there ... but instead of a bird, he found rotting groceries still in the bag that Mom had bought and forgot for at least a month.

Sad news.

But he did determine that the phone was not the problem, because even with a new phone, the line didn't work. He tried to talk to a phone rep, but they wouldn't talk to him, and when he handed the phone to Mom, she couldn't understand what they were asking her. (She doesn't understand much but basic rustic Pennsylvanianese at this point, if that.)

So I called her neighbor, and asked her to go over and see if she could find an old bill with an account number. She did, and called me this morning, very upset, because Mom hadn't paid her phone bill in three months.

I called the phone company, and paid the bill with my credit card. Then I talked to customer service and found out her phone wasn't working due to nonpayment. I called the Area Agency on Aging and someone is going to visit Mom and go through and get her account numbers for utilities -- I'll set up an automatic payment that I can monitor, which I would have done months ago but Mom was adamant she wanted to see what all bills were coming in.

The picture at the top of this entry reminds me that spring comes every year, and locust leaves are beautiful in morning sun, and the world will go on, in joy and filled with the Spirit of God, no matter what. No matter what.

Mom's phone line is working again. However, she still chooses not to answer my call.