Well, I didn’t accomplish everything I had on my agenda yesterday. However it was a good, if difficult, day.  Eileen and I met with the Hospice team. It consisted of Melissa the nurse, a social worker and a medical assistant of some sort. Melissa did most of the talking and that was good because she was definitely intelligent, articulate and highly socialized. But I keep having weird experiences with social workers.

I am finding some people who are social workers are not terribly good listeners. Also, that their frame of reference is limited and tends towards stereotyping stuff. I had to keep correcting the social worker yesterday as she quickly categorized and analyzed my history with my parents. But I doubt she noticed it.

But no harm done. And the important thing is that these people are going to care well for my Mother. I had an application for Mom to sign yesterday that would authorize me as Service Rep for her with Social Security. She was sitting up in the cafeteria when we arrived a bit before our appointment with the Hospice team. She took the pen in her hand and Eileen attempted to guide her, but it was to no avail. She couldn’t pull off a signature.

I quickly told Eileen we could wait. The fact is Mom may not sign another form since she is failing. No harm there.  This week two psychologists will examine Mom to determine if she has the capacity to act on her own or is she is mentally competent.

It’s very probably that she will be declared mentally incompetent. I think that at this point my durable powers of attorney kick in and I assume responsibility for decisions for Mom.

I’m guessing this will mean that I won’t need that paper signed about being her Service Rep with Social Security, that I will be authorized to contact them on her behalf. But we’ll see. This is less pressing since Social Security resolved my recent fuck up.

At our evening meal Eileen mentioned that it was difficult to watch Mom fail. This is true. But my main concern is not her recovery which is unlikely but her comfort which is possible. The latter is enhanced by the addition of the Hospice Team.

After the meeting with them, I dropped Eileen off at home and went to church. Charles Huttar had arranged for me to meet his grandson, Omid Huttar, while Omid was visiting. This was fun. Omid is a young musician who not long ago graduated from what he described as a popular music college. We chatted. He recommended some music for me to listen to as a result of our conversation. I always like that.

He was interested in learning more about our Pasi organ. He is a guitarist but he also does keyboards. He say down and played a bit. I showed him the inside of the organ (the trackers) and how the swell box works. I think it was new info for him.

Charles had sent him my so-called Jazz mass. I’m not sure exactly why but Omid was interested in it and asked me to play it for him, which I did.

We exchanged emails and promised to connect again sometime. I sent him a link to this blog this morning (Hi Omid!)

(All the art in my blog today is by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat)