Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Not Going to Colorado

Mom's entire goal in life is to get back to Colorado.
Every few days she has another plan on how to do it.
One day she says she will move back to the P.E.O. Chapter House in Colorado Springs, where her mother lived the last four years of her life. When I point out that it would be far away from me, she plans for me to move into the room next to her and live there. I stop arguing against the plans and just murmur assentively.
Another day she is going to go back to Boulder, buy back her house, and live there again.
Other days she is focused on moving back to Trout Lake, near Telluride, and living in her cabin there.
Today I had to tell her that John and I are driving to Colorado for a week. She wants to go with us, but I tell her this is just a trip for John and me. I don't tell her we are going to the annual meeting of the cabin owners at Trout Lake--she would want to attend it.
I've made arrangements for her private caregivers and for my daughters to visit her because I will actually be gone almost three weeks. John will return in a week, but I will attend a conference in North Carolina, then be back in Boulder and Denver visiting family, then briefly back at Trout Lake. I can't tell her that I will be in Boulder.
I don't know if she will be able to last so long without my daily visits, without getting out for church or doctor visits.
She will be on her floor in her residence except for a few trips out in the wheelchair to the local drugstore.
She wants to go but accepts my leaving.
Will she have a medical emergency or an emotional crisis?
We'll see.

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