Posted 7-15-19
Pretty uneventful weekend for mom, which, in my book, is just fine. Minus a cure she will not “get better”, as such. There will be good days and there will be bad ones as we hope and pray (!!) for a cure for Alzheimer’s/dementia. I am not giving up. I know cures…and miracles…happen and I am rest on the fact that our Creator knows best.
At the end of the week last week, we had a familiar face reappear into the memory unit. One of the original Sweet 17, who had been shipped out into the general population since she was thought to not be a flight risk anymore, had became a flight risk and was found all the way across the building. This Bird Woman of Alz-catraz made me daydream:
Brenda hands work like clockwork, but on steroids. She has but one box of tongue depressors left from her late-night raid on the nurse’s station, so she knows she has to maximize each stick’s utility if she is to balsa-chisel her way through the under side of wall below the heat-cool unit to freedom from Alzcatraz. The guards, most notably the absent-minded Nurse Schultz, don’t pay as close attention to her as they do the others since she took a “permanent” seat in her wheelchair. But what the rotund, saucer-eyed “Know Nuttheeng” Nurse doesn’t know is Brenda has been working out her legs secretly and is ready to try her escape. Her first order of business, though, is to undermine the heat/cool unit mounted in her wall with carefully designed carvings under the mounting hardware. “Flick, flick, flick…snap. Dang it!” are the tones of the ever slow rhythm of the wooden throat-checker devices and the pending escapee over-and-over-and-over again. One layer of drywall dust after another, freedom got closer and closer, almost thwarted several times by a nurse or an occasional visit by hospice.
“Flick, flick, flick…snap. Dang it!”
“Flick, flick, flick…snap. Sigh!”
“Flick, flick, flick…snap. Crud!”
“Flick, flick, flick…snap. Grrrrrrr!”
“Flick, flick, flick…snap! Crunch! Ahhh…ahhhh…..yaaaaaasssssss!” “I see daylight” a smiling Brenda screamed in her mind as she dug and chiseled with renewed strength until mount one broke free…then two! The Bird Woman left the unit in place and covered it with her fidget blanket, waiting for the right time… and her ride, to come.
That afternoon, during naptime mainly for the sundowners crew, Brenda snuck into her bathroom and called a cab with the phone she had traded four of her very favorite desserts (chocolate pudding) for.
“Meet me in the side road next to the Nursing Home at 1pm sharp…and bring some pudding pops for a bigger tip!” she whispered, bargaining with the seemingly oblivious cabbie.
Brenda is a physical specimen and quietly removed the last mount again and gently slid the window unit to the floor on top of a yoga mat at 12:57pm, just as she planned, and slid out the roughly trapezoid-shaped hole she that was opened and quickly sprinted like Carl Lewis to the curb to meet the cabbie…and her pudding pops. And with the lightning-quick departure, that was the last we have seen of Brenda, the Bird Woman of Alzcatraz… Police were notified, dogs were used to search for her scent, but she was gone. For good…
Someday, some sweet day, Mrs. L and my mom will indeed escape Alzcatraz. No, tongue-depressors and escape plans will not be present. Some sweet, glorious day either there will be a white flower at an Alzheimer’s walk signifying that a cure is finally found or a white robe given them in heaven, but make no mistake, they will escape this awful island. Until then, we visit, we serve, we love, we pray, and we dream of better days ahead…
#EndALZ