Life of Wry

For posterity, posting a photo of Dorie and Eppie–sisters–who care for my mom 24/7.

I can’t even begin to count the number of women who’ve been in and out of this job in the past nearly seven years. For the most part, they are saints who take care of the a multitude of tasks, big and small, with patience and pride. Most are originally from the Philippines.

As good as they often are, 24/7 is a hard pill to swallow for most, especially my mom. Sure I’ve written plenty about the friction, compromises, conflicted feelings, awkwardnesses… it’s just hard.

But, it’s nice to see these two smiling.

~~

Post script: I drove home today. Didn’t leave until about 1:00pm, after a nice breakfast and a full game of gin rummy (my winning streak continued!). I called mom when I got to the other side of the Grapevine–always a nice place to take a break and put in a miss you, thinking about you call.  All was good.

About an hour and a half later, just as I’d passed Harris Ranch, I got a call from Dorie, upset. Mom had fired her and she was banished to the driveway. Suffice to say, this left us in a bit of a pickle, as mom can’t be alone. I was hours away, Matt was in line at LAX, about to board a plane for Dublin, Chris was, at that moment, unreachable. I even left a series of panicked phone messages for Betsy. Long story short: the police (yes, mom had called the police) stayed until we’d finally reached Chris, who, thankfully, arrived reasonably soon thereafter; Matt brokered a quick solution with Eppie, who agreed to fill in for her sister and who also able to find another person, Ellen, who could work her weekend shift; and we were back in business. Chris hung around for the evening to keep mom’s spirits up, and filled in a couple of blocks of time over the next four days when Eppie and Ellen had previous commitments; I continued on home; and Matt took off for a week in Ireland.

And that was that. Good team work!