May 4th 2015

Before

I had been hoping mother would be travelling with my elder sister Joe when driving back from Murès to Villemarie. She had sat mother living with Alzheimer, for the last 7 days in order to give a rest to Julienne since she is the only one able to watch over mother. As i say i was hoping mother would come to Villemarie and i would have fetch her there during last week end. It all seemed perfect for a plan, except that Mom was terrified at the idea of leaving her cats and dog by themselves. Of course, we mentioned her that either Julienne or brother Hebert. could go feed them, but she was just uneasy with the idea, not to say rude. I have called my mom at least 3 times, three weeks ago, while my brother Luis was there sitting her too, and then at least 4 times last week when it was Joe’s turn. Those 4 last times, we used Skype to communicate. On the phone, mother seemed fine, her tone was happy even though she would keep asking the same question over and over again. But on the visual screen, as she watch me, i keep wondering what she is thinking about, because she is not talking. She just watch me without saying nothing. When Joe is there, i talk with her, mom is beside and then she suddenly disappears out of the screen surface or frame. I asked Joe where she went and her answer is pretty much always the same. She went after her dog or her cats. This is systematically the same affirmation mother does also.

– I have no more cats. All my cats are gone.

And we keep telling her that she has her three cats and that they are just hiding or sleeping somewhere. But she still goes in and out of the house, going upstairs, in the basement, in the garden, repeating the same gesture dozens of time per day.

When mother was brought to the Hospital for her mental evaluation 4 years ago, it became a period of high tension in the whole brothers and sisterhood. My brother Hébert, who had been living with her most of his life, had decided to throw away lots of stuff in the house complaining about the fact that there was an epidemic of vermin and flees. So he threw every pieces of furniture of mom’s bedroom and living room, even carpets. And of course we believed him. Father, who is not living with her since they are divorce, mentioned to me later on that as brother Hébert was cleaning up things, he found out a dead baby cat mummified in a pile of clothes mother had just left there and was used as cats bed. When father was telling that story he seemed to be telling me that this did not made sense and that mother was going crazy with her cats, like how could she have left a dead stinky baby cat there? Well, at some points, there was more than 12 cats in the house and many of the females were pregnant in the summer of 2011. The smell of ammonia and cats excrement was floating in the air of the whole house. Especially upstairs. We discovered later on that the room, i have been sleeping in when visiting, had dried cat’s poo  hidden under the furniture, not to talk about all the piss that must have also been drying there for decades. No wonder why i became intolerant to this smell now.  I went there in July of that year 2011 in order to meet with Joe and do some cleaning of the house after the  »emptying »  Hébert had done. The girls would clean the whole mess up, of course. That is what women i there for, cleaning after men… But the plan changed because mom arrived in a taxi directly from my Uncle’s city where Luis and Joe had placed her in May 2011 to live with Uncle Clincey after mom was out of the hospital. This was like a choc for the two of us, me and Joe, since this was the last thing we were expecting. I can just imagine the state my mother was in. Crazy mom who paid her taxi drive 250$ to free herself from a situation she was not comfortable with. Not bad a decision for someone with Alzheimer. Overall, that summer was a very difficult one. Hard to recall those painful memories. Many thing happened that i will write in some other Blog entries later on.

So, like i was saying, i had hope that mother was going to be able to travel up to Villamarie then to Bytown, but i was just giving myself some illusions. When talking on Skype with mother last week and asking her how she felt about the possibility of coming to Bytown, she did not really say no, but was worried about the animals. In fact, what i saw was a woman with not much reactions and not being able to focus on the screen. This was my last hope. Then Joe, in one of the last face-talked we had, said that mother was probably not going to travel because it would disrupt her routine and environment and she would possibly become worried and stressed. So instead, i am the one who will be travelling to sit her but for less days that was first planned. I will go next week for 4 days.

A false promise of freedom to mother who used to love to drive along the roads from one village to the other.