August 20th is Arbitrary

My mom's been talking a lot about her "After Party" - the term she uses for her memorial service. Read about how this whole "After Party" thing got started at my previous post here.

I told my therapist about my mom's After Party plans, and she said that my mom is actually handling death extremely well. My mom isn't scared at all. The only thing she seems to be worried about is that her After Party won't go as she planned. Although, I still can't get her to tell me what she specifically wants at her After Party.

I did get a few more details out of her. My dad asked her when she wanted to have her After Party and she told him August 20th. She said August 20th because that's the day she's going to die, so she wants to After Party the same day. Well that was really tough to hear. The fact that my mom has chosen a day that she's going to die... Wow.

So a couple days later I asked her if she's thought anymore about her After Party and she said that she's decided that she wants one of her employees from her business to be the DJ. I thought, okay, now we're getting some details.

Then she told me that she wants to have a rehearsal After Party so that she can make sure everything will go as planned. I thought this was such a cute idea, even though it is about death. I also thought it was a good idea because I've been trying to convince her that we should have the party while she's still alive, but she won't budge. So I thought with a rehearsal After Party, she could enjoy a party that she planned.

I couldn't get any other details out of her about the rehearsal After Party. I asked her when she wanted to have the rehearsal, and again she said August 20th. I said, I thought that was the day of the real After Party? She said "It's all arbitrary." I'm not really sure what she meant by that, but I asked her how she chose august 20th, and she said "Well I had to pick something to work towards."

I thought about it, and at first I though August 20th seemed like an accurate guess for when she's actually going to leave us, but the past few days she's gotten a lot worse. Things seem to be progressing quickly.

I work with my mom with activities and stuff, things to stimulate her mind. (I've been labeled the recreational therapist of the family) But every day I see her, she can do less and less. Two weeks ago, we were doing 2nd grade level math. I printed out multiplication, subtraction, and addition worksheets. After a few days, she said "I can't do the subtraction." No she can barely do the addition.

Last week I moved her down to pre-school level activities, like matching games and simple paint-by-numbers. This was one of the matching games I did with her:

I asked her to draw a line between the matching whales, but instead she connected all the whales on the right side only. So I folded the paper in half and I had her circle the purple whale on each side. Then I unfolded the paper and ask her to connect the two whales that she just circled. And she just couldn't do it. I ask her to point to the two whales she circled, she did that. But she couldn't draw a line between the two.

So now it's this week and I'm just trying to get her to draw anything. I experimenting with what she responds to best: still life, drawing pictures of photos, drawing pictures of building, etc. So far I've figured out that the best thing for me to do it to get a picture, usually a family photo, and quickly sketch a picture of it. Then I ask her to color it in. This has been working relatively well.

Yesterday I tried doing still life. I sketched a bowl with apples and oranges and told her to color it in. It didn't go well...

You can see that she just seems to be contemplating drawing. But she never actually touches the paper with her pencil. And it the end she just puts the pencil down. I never got more than a few lines of orange out of her. I think drawing is becoming too hard for her.

I feel like she's reverting back to infancy, at least cognitively. We were watching my baby videos yesterday, and I totally see similarity in how I was developing and how she seems to be un-developing. She seems to be at the infancy stage of cognition when she just likes to fiddle with things. You know when newborn babies like to just touch everything? That's what she does. If you watch the video agove, you can see near the ned that she becomes more interested in the tape on the pencil, than actually drawing with it.

So I'm think that drawing may now be the best activity for her anymore. I want to continue trying to stimulate her brain, but I don't want o buy her baby toys. But I can't think what what else to do. In some ways she at the level of a new born baby, but if I buy her babies toys, she'll recognize that they're made for babies. I don't want to hurt her feelings or anything. I just don't know what the next step is.