The Fella' Who Feeds Me

Mid-afternoon brought the banging on the doors to get into our house. I'm becoming numb to it; it's a slow process of desensitizing myself in this particular situation. I headed downstairs around 4:30, an hour before I should have stopped working, but hopefully I'll be able to last longer once my desensitizing is complete. Today we really engaged in conversation - at least I let Blanche talk and talk she did. She was trying to explain to me that the "fella' who feeds me" isn't doing it all the time or doing it right. I explained her to her that daughter Tracy is the one who does most of the cooking around the house for us, and she gave her standard "that's not what I meant" answer and we were on to the next topic.

But then things took a turn. Blanche became very agitated and told me something was wrong but she couldn't put her finger on it. When she first came over, she was clutching her purse and said she was going to go to "the building one over" to talk to someone. I asked if she meant the house next door and she said yes. I asked her if she knew the Polish couple well enough to go over and talk to them. She said no she didn't, but she did not know what was going on, but she needed to talk to someone. I spent about 10 minutes explaining that everything was fine, it was a perfectly normal day and that she did not have anything to worry about. She told me that everything was normal until someone came and killed her dog. I explained that she did not have a dog, she only had a cat, and if that had really happened, Tracy and I would have known about and we would have done something about it.

That seemed to calm her down so I kept telling her in a conversation-type tone that she did not have anything to worry about and she should just have a seat and read the paper while we waited for Tracy to come home from work.

It's getting harder to explain in writing my conversations with Blanche because they are becoming more and more confusing. Tonight, in order to cope, I'm drinking heavily so I don't feel so sorry for myself because this is what I'm doing on a Friday night! I stumbled on a bucket of frozen strawberry daiquiri's in the freezer downstairs - jackpot! This too shall pass.

The rest of our dinner chat focused on a phone "conversation" Blanche had today with her mother. (Yes, you are correct - her mother has been gone for many years). That lead us into a conversation about children, phone calls during dinner and her late husband making faces whenever his mother called them during dinner. Keep in mind that I translate much of this for your reading pleasure because Blanche never actually uses names or identifies people. It's more "he was on the phone making faces" type of thing and I try to guess who she is talking about. A little more alcohol and this could actually be fun for me.

Next, Blanche headed over to her apartment and came back about five minutes later. She informed me that her son was over in her apartment and she just wanted to check and make sure he was okay. I had to cal her on this one, so we went back over to look through her apartment and guess what - her son who lives in Florida was not there! Surprise, surprise...

Well, unless she comes back over tonight, I guess that's it for today. If anyone ever reads this, I hope you get something out of it. Learn how to talk to someone suffering from Alzheimer's. Understand that we cannot imagine in our wildest dreams what they are going through. Little pieces of Blanche's mind are slowly being destroyed. Words are disappearing; people are disappearing (or re-appearing); an apartment empty except for a cat is turning into Grand Central Station with any number of people passing through each day and I envision her brain as one big knot that can no longer untangle even the simplest thing.

I hope that I never again know anyone with this horrific affliction. Bye for now.