Hope you are doing well, and that this morning is full of joy with peace. I remember the special dishes that came only once a year, after the presents were opened, the egg casseroles and biscuits and the warm friendly smell of cinnamon.

I had Christmas Eve lunch and dinner with Big Mama and sat with Raven for an hour over at the Bluffs facility. My Bill was a trip, and if I had known the four minutes he would be awake I could have made a much more efficient plan for the day.

He was asleep in the recliner in the television lounge, mostly covered by a beige blanket, but the Staff had dressed him in a festive green-and-red motif.

I chose not to wake him, or intrude in his dream, whatever it might have been. He was stirring in his sleep, periodically muttering things with grim intent.

“Seven-thirty…I insist,” he said at one point, never opening his eyes. He had a call button for the nursing assistants, which his searching hands would periodically find clipped to his blanket and press, summoning Erin or Cindy to recycle the alarm.

At two-forty, I had been through my e-mail on the iPad and wondered what would happen if he did not wake in the hour or two I had to devote to this part of the day. The NA approached him and did his vitals…”Whoop!” he said…never did open his eyes…”Oh, man” he says and squirms…then, “Ahhhhh” with a shuddering sigh.

The NA, a sturdy young woman in a blue scrub top and pastel trousers, had an efficient air. She wheeled the blood pressure machine atop its roller-tower along side him, and took his temperature. She managed to get the cuff around his painfully thin arm and grunted in satisfaction as the machine beeped its completion of the task.

“How is Billie doing?” I asked.

“Good…115 over 67 for his blood pressure. Temperature normal.” Raven did not open his eyes through the procedure.

I looked up what his reading meant on my iPad in the comfy chair across the room from him, untrammeled by any dementia except mine.

“Readings above 90/60 and below 120/80 are considered normal for most adults, though in some cases a systolic reading over 110 can be associated with dizziness when standing.”

Senior Editor at Caring.Com Melanie Haiken noted that even with a reading in the “normal” range, Raven might want to consider lifestyle changes to minimize the chance of future high blood pressure episodes.

Those include:

“Quitting smoking.
Losing weight
Increasing physical activity,
Lowering salt intake,
Limiting caffeine,
Limit alcohol.
Reducing stress.”

I mentally ticked them off as risk factors. The Bluffs is non-smoking. He is wasting away, the menu is deliberately low-sodium, he has not had a real cup of coffee in years, can’t find any booze, and his stress level is probably nothing we can do anything about.

Somewhere, Billie is in there, trapped in the husk of Raven, and he knows it. His body language, even asleep, reflects full fight-or-flight response.

What is left of the curiosity is in his thin artist fingers, delicately tracing the cord that connects his alarm to the call box on the wall.

“This in I pawrn…,” he declared, and then the sleeper woke, his light brown eyes now showing puzzlement. I got up and went over to say hello.

“Want to get up?” I asked. He seemed to nod, either with recognition or agreement. I untangled his thin legs and made sure the Velcro on his shoes was nice and tight. His recliner is one of those cool ones with a remote control on a telephone cord connected to a motor. I pressed the button and the recliner’s footrest lowered into the chair and the back came upright, and then raised up with a forward motion that would deposit him on his feet.

I thought maybe he would like to shuffle the circuit, as we had done the day before, but Raven was having none of it. he seemed dizzy, go figure. I pushed the button to make the chair recline again, and soon I had him horizontal again, blanket in place and call button clipped to his mid-thorax.

I talked to him for a while, and then realized I had to get going if I was to serve up a little happy hour snack for Big Mama before the light evening meal at Potemkin Village.

“We are going to open your Christmas present tomorrow, OK?” He looked at me with eyes deep sand lost. “I don’t want you getting into the box until I come back, OK?” I waited until he was asleep again and then collected my crap and got the hell out of there.

In the common area in the lobby they were showing a Christmas film, and had made popcorn. I snagged one of the little paper bags, glad they had salted the popped kernels properly.

The whole thing is amazing. I saw someone in the Challenged Dining Room wake with a start and attempt to cut up their napkin.

In Raven’s decline, Big Mama sometimes (like often) lost track of time, and would take him to lunch or dinner well before the appointed time. He took pleasure in playing with the little plastic packets of jam, his slim artistic fingers failing to find the tab, and then chewing on the unopened packet.

I could see the marks on the table-cloth where the jam jetted out from between his teeth in astonishingly long arcs of dried strawberry.

It was actually sort of artistic.

I wonder if he will be awake long enough this morning to see me open his present? I hope so.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com