It probably goes without saying, but I never thought it would happen, especially now when training and educating folks has to be done with carrots and not sticks.
Who can forget
poor old Ralphie’s punishment for dropping the F-bomb when he spilled the lug
nuts into the snow in “The Christmas Story”?
It
happened. I was least expecting it. I hadn’t said anything to deserve it, at
least on this occasion.
I will have to
blame my association with Dementia Together.
I was trying to follow the route to “contented dementia”. The Goodwife doesn’t appreciate me hovering
over her all her waking hours, so I try to give her latitude whenever I can.
So it was, I had
removed from the kitchen to the dining room to a recliner after supper. I had a cup of hot tea, a bowl with apple
cobbler I had made a day or two prior. I
was sitting there relaxing, watching tv, enjoying my dessert.
I heard a lot of
activity in the kitchen, but I ignored it.
The Goodwife had pretty much washed the dishes to death. I try to ignore the water that needlessly
goes down the drain when pleas to “let the dishwasher do its job” go unnoticed.
I expected her to
sit and enjoy her apple cobbler, which I had dished out and left on the kitchen
table for her. But she didn’t settle
down to it. She was up and around,
opening and closing cabinet doors, looking in the refrigerator, pacing around
in the kitchen.
Having finished
my cobbler (it was a little heavy on crust and light on apples, I have to admit—haven’t
got the recipe down quite yet), I went to the kitchen to find her digging
through her cobbler complaining that it had no taste. She had applied a few peanuts and stirred it
up, but that wasn’t helping.
Then I noticed
beside her bowl was a teacup with something floating in cream. I thought it was more cobbler. It turned out to be some leftover corn bread. It looked good. It had something blue in it. Had she actually got into the freezer
and dug out some blue berries?
I couldn’t
figure out what would be blue. I should
have figured a bit longer. I took up the
cup and a spoon and took a bite. It didn’t
take long to violate the long-standing rule of don’t spit in the sink. I spit.
And spit. And spit some
more.
Attempts to
clear my mouth with water, then a gulp of tea revealed that I had a latent sore
throat. For a while, whatever I swallowed
stung my throat a little.
As soon as I
could, I grabbed the cup and dumped the contents into the garbage bucket. When I rinsed out the cup and dumped it, it
foamed. The contents of the slop bucket began
to have some suds.
It was then I
realized that the pretty blue tint was Dawn liquid detergent.
The second
cardinal rule of dealing with a dementia person is “listen to the expert” the
expert being the person with dementia since only that person knows what it is
like living with dementia. Realizing
that every moment in the dementia world can be a fleeting moment, I couldn’t
help myself. I violated the first
cardinal rule: don’t ask direct
questions.
“Why would you
put dishwashing soap in something you’re going to eat?” No answer.
Possibly didn’t realize that she had put soap in the cup with the
cream.
I offered to try
to flavor her apple cobbler, but by then, she had given up on dessert. That should have been the end of the story,
but wait, there’s more! (Been watching
too much commercial tv.)
The next
morning, I decided to see if there was any salvaging the tasteless cobbler she
had left in the bowl. If peanut butter
was good on bread, why wouldn’t peanuts be good with the too-crusty apple
cobbler? I tried a bite. It stung my throat, but then, so did the tea. The solution to the tea sting was to let it
cool down.
I tried a little
jelly with the peanuts on cobbler, and it wasn’t bad, but two or three bites into it, I
tasted the bitterness of the detergent.
Was it imagination? Memory? No, it was real. Somehow, some of the detergent had found its
way into the cobbler, too. Into the
garbage bucket with the remnants.
I rinsed my mouth
again, but the bitterness and stinging of my throat never went completely away
for hours.
Still more!
A day later, the
Goodwife wanted to help with supper, so I set her to cutting up cucumbers for
salad. She peeled the cucumber and I had
her put the peelings into the garbage bucket.
Yes, the same bucket containing the soapy cream. That went okay.
Then I asked her
if she wanted to cut up some mushrooms to go into the soup. She did.
That didn’t go so well. She tried
to put the sliced mushrooms into the same bucket she had put the cucumber
peelings.
I managed to head
that off, but when I turned away, she started to dump the uncut mushrooms left
in the container into the garbage bucket.
I wasn’t totally successful at heading that off. I quickly pulled a few mushrooms from the
bucket and began rinsing them off.
They only sudsed a little. I can’t say if my attempt to salvage the
mushrooms was successful or not. I haven’t
tried any of them yet. Maybe the story
isn’t over, yet.
There could be a
lot of morals to this story. Blue isn’t
a good color for food. I don’t care much
for blueberries. I still remember having
a blue snow cone many, many years ago at the ice follies. I insisted on blue and I got blue. It was pina colada. It was awful.
If you believe in
karma, then what comes out of your mouth will be balanced by what goes into
your mouth, like soap for a foul mouth.
I can’t contest that.
Clean up my
language? It was easier to break the tobacco habit.
Stow the soap out
of sight, at least during meal prep?
Living with
dementia is interesting.
End of story.
