Image by sono salvo via FlickrFeeding orange sherbet to my mother: Everything that's been said about how we become parents to our own parent(s) came alive for me yesterday in my mother's hospital room. It's not that I have never done things for her before... but this was the first time I have taken a spoon and fed her, while she was unaware that she was being fed. She wanted the orange sherbet... but when I tried to give her the spoon, she dropped it. She let me put the spoonful of sherbet in her mouth, and ate it. And then when I asked her if she wanted another bite, she nodded, "yes," and her hand (not holding a spoon) headed upward toward her mouth. And so, at the same time I gently placed another small spoonful into her open mouth, with some more orange sherbet. Her lips closed on the spoon and I withdrew it, and it seemed that she never realized that she was not the one who was putting the sherbet into her own mouth....The delirium is not clearing up. Sometimes she knows she's in St. Luke's Hospital, and sometimes she thinks she's in a veterinary hospital. She wants to get dressed and put on her shoes and go home; yesterday, she tried to put the phone on her foot. She keeps trying to pull our her IV, and when we stop her, sometimes she kicks or tries to bite. When I left, last night, she was (finally!) asleep, lying crosswise on the bed, her hands strapped into huge mittens ("soft restraints").
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