Ana's house

Monday 2 December 02
8;30 PM
“I need to go see my mother.”

Friday 15 Nov 02
12noon
“Dear Lord God, please shorten my life, I’ve had enough. I am so confused.”

Friday 8 Nov. 02
8AM
After Breakfast, ”I’m getting the hell out of here & going home.”

Thursday 31 October o2
9:30 Am
“Dear Lord God, if there is something I’m still supposed to do, let me know now before I die.”


Monday 21 October 20 02
“I‘d better get myself home in case my mother comes looking for me. Don’t want her to find an empty house.”



Mon. 16 September 20 02
10:00AM
“Corina, my mother, is very young you know.”

Thursday 2 July 02
4Am
“I have to go to school.”

Thurs. 27 June02
11:00 AM
“Where is Jana?”





Mon. 24June 02
10:30AM
“Where is my car?
I want to go home to Canal Blvd.”



Sat 25 May02
5:00PM
“I need to go pick up my mother, she is waiting for me.”

11 December 01
Mrs Ana gave us all a dance lesson

A daughters note from November 2001

As I reached up in bed to turn out the light last week & Ana appeared in my doorway dressed in her Blue pants & blue flowered shirt...earrings…black pumps...glasses & purse & hat.

She is ready for anything except BED. So, at midnight we are walking...clear night with stars. I felt like I was on a movie set waiting for the sound track to go on.
We come in & have a bowl of ice cream...the forgotten antidepressant...a leg massage & the Gods being with us... sleep till I hear the door to mothers bedroom being opened at 7 AM.


A daughters note from August 2001

It start in earnest Monday the 6 of August. Ana walked into her bedroom about 2AM with 4 shirts on her arm from her closet...ficked on the lights of the bedroom & asked a sleeping Clem where the cash register was...

This is really a progression. She has been stuffing socks & shirts sleeves with combs & earrings & stockings & things in earnest since the Dr. put her on a new Drug called Reminil that " will slow down the onset of Alzheimers ", a pretty non-substantiable claim if I ever heard one.

Clem told the nurse, whom I have managed to get past the Cherubs at the
door with, about a month ago that the Meds were working because they had had a sexual encounter. He followed her to the elevator for this little epistle, to her horror. He said, "It's been 4 months & she even remembered what to do." Which must have been in reference to the tube of lubricant that was left on the bathroom counter.

So Tuesday night I get the first alarm call. I spend the night not sleeping
on the sofa in the living room. My stepfather had tried to board mother into
the apartment.. She fled to the balcony & then when she was blocked started heaving potted plant over the railing... told him there were still windows...you really have to love this girl.

By Friday my stepfather is crying & asking for a sitter for the night. Friday
I have my stepsister & husband at a tremendous facility... it
looks a lot like the Pierre in NY, but transplanted to the Levy of the
Mississippi River.



Mother is off the Reminil & coming down slowly. Sunday before last she fled
the apartment & I followed her through hedges & down alleyways in a drizzle for about half an hour… till she started to slow down & then I walked up to her & asked her if she wanted to go back to her apartment ( the apartment does not mean HOME to her). She keeps asking me to come with the wheels.. lets take a cruise... can we go to my brothers ( of course dead 30 years)...she is searching for home all day long....she must check on Corina. I guess Ana is just tired of listening to the same tape for dinner now for 8 years. Clem is constant. Clem has asked me to put him on the list for the assisted living facility. I spent Wednesday night on the sofa again... did a 20 hr . stint again. This
always makes mother happy...wheels.....


A daughters note from May 2000

The first rain in weeks here. Dancing Al is held up on the yellow sofa
hugging a pillow.

I have Shirley in the back bedroom with the fan on watching the
rain pour down in the inside courtyard. It is so peaceful we could be
in Martinique.

Almost 250,000 people attended Jazz Fest last weekend, so,
we are in the eye of the storm so to speak at the moment!

Al has made peace with leaving the farm, so, last night we went dancing.

Cleo is still in a coma at home...this is her 7th day with no food or water.

Last week Beth & Carolyn & I laid on the cool floor of the dinning room under the big table & talked like girls, while we vigiled Cleo. This is the last house of our
childhood. After this there will be no warm spaces left, but memories, to lay in.

We will all be adrift.

My Mother, herself, is floating farther & farther away form the written past. Every now & then she surfaces like a porpoise with a sea cucumber of truth, a precious morsel of hidden memories
.
I had always felt guilty that I loved my Nanan more than anyone in the world,
my mothers older sister, Carmen. And there was mother with her sea
cucumber, "You know Carmen loved you the most, you were so warm &
cuddly, you made her so happy."

I can't imagine that I could have made her happier than I felt at her side. Mother has taken my disloyalty & given it a badge of honor. I guess we all loved Carmen the best.



Wed Aug 25, 1999
Mother had a stroke the Spring of 1995, two years after she married Clem Dreisewerd. I continue to take them on vacations

Mother gets herself locked in the toilet, on the plane so after that , all night I am up & down with Ana--between her waking up worried about where her purse is & me worried about the stewardesses trying to break her out of the toilet, again. In the middle of the night sometime when I am waiting for her outside the bathroom I peek in, to find her getting undressed. "I'm getting ready for bed," she says. I must
have been very bad in a former life.

The dearest thing of the evening was looking back into the 1st class and
watching all these enormous men, strapped infor the night, and each with a little spoon and
gold cone, eating tiny cups of sherbet. Of course come day light again my
Stepfather, Clem, lodges a complaint that he was cheated out of his ice cream...which he no longer remembers eating, He has probably also forgotten he said he lovds me.

In the airport Ana tells my friend Violetta that she is going home...
she has had a long trip and she was homesick. We had been gone one day.