Second Appointment

Second Appointment

I can’t remember very much about the April 17 session but I’m sure I would have talked with Dr. Huggins about the fact that after Daddy died in 1980 a Mrs. Turner had been hired by my brother to live with Mother as a companion and take care of her, and that Mother had begun showing signs of senility, and that Mrs. Turner was going to quit because Mother was so “out of touch” with reality. It seemed that Mother would go to the back door and call my daddy who had been dead for some time, “Milton… ah… Milton”, thinking he was in the backyard tending his rose bushes. Then, later, she got where she didn’t trust anybody so she hid the silver goblets under her bed and her checkbook between the mattress and the springs. One time, when dressing, she put her slip on over her dress. When she reached the point that she was no longer able to control her bladder and required constant care, it became necessary to put her in a nursing home. She, then, would tell us that “they” were digging a hole at the end of the nursing home building and wanted to put her in it. And that “they” had poison in the paint on the ceiling which would fall, as she lay on her back in her bed, into her eyes and make them itch.

I would have explained to Dr. Huggins that Mother had hay fever every spring and that was the reason for her eyes itching. When we would tell Mother that there was no hole being dug at the end of the building and no poison in the paint on the ceiling, she would insist that we didn’t know what we were talking about. Before Mother died in ’72 she was transferred to Craft-Farrow in Columbia and Eleanor, being at Columbia College, would visit and check on her nearly every day. I can remember, at that time, hoping that I would never have to end up like mother did.