I stole this sign yesterday from a dressing room in the Salt Lake Clinic. I was undressing for a mammogram when I saw it. It was like having my mother in the room. I touched it with my hand. This is the very sign my mother read aloud to Tom when she was lying on a gurney in the emergency room at the LDS hospital. She had Alzheimer's but was acting as if she'd had a stroke. "No one deserves to be abused," she said. The sign was behind Tom's head, so he thought she was making it up. It surprised him, because she hadn't been putting more than a couple of words together for a long time, and here she was, saying this lucid sentence.
He asked her if she had been abused. She shook her head, no.
Then she repeated it.
"Why are you saying that?" he asked her.
She pointed to the wall behind him, She had been reading!
Later they found out she was drunk. She had drunk down a bottle of Robitussin for a bad cough. Every time she coughed, she medicated herself. No memory.
Ed said, "Grandma roboed."
I'm glad I stole it.
5 comments:
I love this story. It's tragic, it's funny, it's... I don't know what else. I'm glad you stole the sign, too.
I once stole a book by J.R.R. Tolkein from some nuns. I'm proud of that.
This is such a great story, Louise. And I MISSED you last night.
will you color copy the sign for me and send it out? I think it might make me laugh every once and a while. I decorate with red. It will fit right in.
How was your roadtrip?
Louise. I'll just use your picture. I told my mom.
p.s. Is this the whole story, or is there more to it...something about sitting on the front curb?
I miss Grandma. One of my last memories of her is at one of her birthday parties and I had to reintroduce myself. She gave me a blank stare and did something strange with her dentures (they must not have been entirely glued in). Every so often I buy windmill cookies which take me back to her better days.
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