Days 3 and 4 of my journey saw me wake up in Jacksonville and hang out with my parents at their facility. Every day my Dad wakes up, has coffee, then goes and gets my mom out of the memory care home, brings her home, we would hang out for a while in the house, then go get lunch at a restaurant, hang out for a while, then he would take her back up there to eat her meal, come back and get me, we would go have dinner, then go visit her for half an hour or so before she went to bed. It’s a very odd routine. Some parts of it feel very normal while other parts feel extremely odd. I was asked often if it would be hard to see my Mom this way and the answer is, of course, yes, but not all the time and not equally. Parts of it felt almost like regular life, and other parts felt bad and very weird. The home is pleasant and safe but it doesn’t feel like a place to live. And I was surprised at just how…disturbed…some of the occupants are. There is the “TV lady” for example who is quite healthy and walks around very fast and aggressively asks you to do things like fix her TV or find her socks. She only goes away if you are very firm and basically yell at her to get out. That part I didn’t enjoy. But the weather was great, and it was awesome to just sit with my Dad and talk about our lives, and even the parts with my mom were good in some ways; she still knows who I am and wants me to stay all the time. She even still gives me a hard time about getting married. :)
