The World According To Anne Arky

A few weeks before Mother left Virginia for Florida, I awoke in the middle of the night from a disturbing dream -- I dreamed that they wouldn't let me talk to Mother. I don't know who they were, but I was so upset at not being able to talk to her that I came very close to calling her at 4 AM to reassure myself that I could talk to her if I wanted to. Fortunately, I had presence of mind not to follow through with this very real desire. All I could think of was that this is what it would be like when she was dead, because then I wouldn't be able to talk to her. I was quite fearful and claustrophobic at this idea and knew that I was nowhere near ready to find out how that would really feel. I managed to get back to sleep for awhile, but fitfully. Later that morning, at a more reasonable hour, I called Mother and I told her how relieved I was to hear her voice, and I told her about my dream. She reassured me that she would make sure that they (whoever "they" may be) let me talk to her.

I called Mother this morning at Joe’s because she told me day before yesterday not to call her on her cell phone any more because the roaming charges were too high. I tried to call at Joe’s yesterday, but Joe has no answering machine, so they never even knew I called. I had some errands to run today, so I did them, and when I came home, I called Joe’s again this evening. “Oh, your mother’s not here – she’s in the hospital.” Well, thank you very kindly for notifying me, dammit! “Oh, we thought you’d be at work.” Well, hell’s bells, unlike some people, I have a @#$3ing answering machine, so you could have left me a @#$% message!”

What we knew then (or I found out when I called Mother at the hospital) was that Mother felt maybe they’d been doing too much gadding about, and she wasn’t up to it. My nephew, who held power of attorney in my sister’s place while my sister was on the high seas, took a flight the next morning to Florida to find out what was going on and what needed to be done. My brother, who is more than anything a most self-serving individual, was all bent six ways from Tuesday to find out that the nephew and not HE had power of attorney. My nephew proved why he was entrusted with this weighty responsibility at the age of 30 over his self-serving uncle, age 54, when he replied, “This isn’t about YOU.” (Why my brother backed down at this response I’ll never understand, because it’s ALWAYS about him.)