Assisted Living
I wanted a closer look at how it goes
from day to day so I stayed in the Guest Room.
It was quiet. I answered my email, books
were stacked on the bookcase, but no
reading lamp, complimentary adult diapers
filled a basket on the bathroom counter. The food
is not great, but I already knew that. Her friends
call out when I wheel her past their tables —
Ethel is my favorite. I’d like to spend more time
with her. The coils of tubing that tether my mother
to oxygen when she’s in her room unspool
when she moves, tangling in her walker wheels.
While she brushes her teeth then pats her hair
into place, the caregivers move on to the next room.
She complains that they hurry her though
she knows their hours have been cut leaving them
with less pay, less time and more to do. When they
return, they hook up her oxygen and push her chair
downstairs for exercise class in the Living Room
where one night I went to a meeting about VA benefits
for spouses, but benefits don’t apply if a spouse
is an ex, and their marriage was over
thirty years before my father died. I asked
the finance director if there is something we’re missing,
some aid that might come my mother’s way now
when she needs help more than ever before. She asked,
Does she have a house? No, we sold the house
and the money is gone. Assets? No assets —
just her small pension. Life insurance?
She pays twenty-four dollars a month for one
of those policies hawked on late night TV. I think
it’s a waste, but she says she won’t stop
because it’s our inheritance. In the afternoons
I took walks in the park by the concrete river
which has water this year. I followed the trail
across from the golf course filled with geese. The
homeless men slept alongside their shopping carts
in the grass. Plastic bags caught in the trees
told how high the water flowed in the recent
floods. I mistook egrets on the far bank for large
white bags until they took flight.