The last few days, the last week, I don’t know, time seems so abstract these days, Ila Jean has been weeping uncontrollably. If she’s awake, she’s crying. I know part of it is the fear of death, understandably. The fear of being abandoned, the fear of the unknown. And I know part of it is the dementia—she cries over the state of the country, over the death of a woman she’s never met (the mother of my mother’s best friend). And also I wonder how much of it is the family curse creeping in on her as it has the rest of us. The depression, the anxiety, the panic attacks, the moods disorders that have disordered our entire family on her side, starting, as far as we’ve traced back, with her own father.
I’ve been feeding her Ativan like candy, and thank the medical professionals for it. And when that’s not enough, I move on to the morphine. I give her morphine less for physical pain, which she does have, and more for keeping her as calm and relaxed as possible. Our medicine cabinet is a pushers dream. Morphine, Ativan, Valium, Restoril, Hydrocodone. And sometimes it’s not even enough. I now have a dry erase board just to keep track of what I give her, and how much, and when.
- Lesson #1 for Newbies: Get a dry erase board and keep a record. You will lose track of it all otherwise.
The Life and Death of Ila Jean Brown 