mum-son separation

mum’s mental condition seemed to have taken a turn for the worst these two days. she’s been very confused and forgetful.

last evening, when i arrived home, she told me her office (the rehabilitation center) had issued a letter for me to sign and asked if this letter was to formalize our “separation”. she seemed pretty convinced that people from her office, together with the maid, wanted to “separate” us. kinda weird to me. i probed further and learnt that the rehabilitation center had indeed given me a letter through her. it was a letter seeking consent to bring her for an outing. i explained the content to her but she refused to go. she insisted it was not something good and that she should not partake in. i could understand why if i were to frame things from her point of view. she was afraid that by agreeing, she could possibly be agreeing to a “separation”. i assured her that no one can possibly force a separation between a mother and her son, to which she said people could have been jealous of the closeness of the mother-son bond that she has with me and thus wanted to separate us.

to allay her fears, i had to explain how the rehabilitation center would rotate residents for such events and that it would be her turn to head out now. giving residents the letter of consent was a routine process and that she should not be too worried about it. and to further calm her down, i told her that the invite for the outing was extended to her by the patron venerable of the rehabilitation center and thus she should not have to worry about breaking the mother-son bond or for that matter, not having vegetarian food. temples and monks do not do such stuff, i explained. well, technically, i was not lying to her cos the rehabilitation center was opened by a buddhist organisation. i could see her calming down after that although she forgot about my explanations and repeatedly asked me to throw the letter of consent away.

added to that, she was not happy that the rehabilitation center had briefed the maid and given the letter to her instead of getting to her (mum) direct. i checked with the maid and the maid explained that that was not the case. accordingly, the rehabilitation center staff had given the letter to mum personally but had instead briefed her about the content. this incident reminded me of something similar previously. but this time round, it was a little more difficult considering mum was also confused at the same time. i simply told the maid that in future, if there’re gonna be any letter or things that the center wants to give, they should give it to mum and to brief her direct and not to her (the maid).

on hindsight, i think mum could have been confused last evening by the tv serial she was watching. she could have possibly confused the show with reality. and this, coupled with the sun down effect, could have made her irrational and behaved the way she did. that was how mum had always been acting every evening.