The emergency calls were starting to come more frequently.
Your mother is having trouble breathing and the paramedics have been called. We can’t get your mother’s blood pressure down and the paramedics have been called. Your mother fainted walking to breakfast and the paramedics have been called.
I’d had my mom placed in an assisted living facility near my home, for moments like these. I could get to her place in 5 minutes. Or meet her at Cedars-Sinai in 10. Sometimes I beat the ambulance. Sometimes I did not. When the phone rang at 5am one morning, I answered as though I’d been sitting up all night waiting for it.
“It’s Marion.” Marion was mom’s roommate. I skipped the formalities. “She okay?”
“Well, she’s not dead, if that’s what you mean.” Marion was a piece of work man. She had a teacup Yorkshire Terrier that smelled like rotting flesh, a million dollars in the bank, and not one soul in the world who loved her. She and my mom had been assigned to one another at City View. She was mom’s 4th roommate attempt and the one that stuck.
My mother, who was never truly grateful for anything, but could mimic gratitude when necessary, complained that Marion was too… everything. Too big. Too loud. Too filthy. Too wealthy. Too nosy. Too self-involved…
