In an instance...

It was just breakfast.  Nothing fancy.  Cereal with fruit, actually.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.  And toast for mom, of course.  Not sure where that comes from.  I don't recall mom ever being a toast person except when we had breakfast for dinner when I was a little girl and Daddy was traveling for work.

Anyway, the first week that mom was here we had eggs with potatoes or something like that.  And mom specifically asked for a piece of toast.  I never have toast if I have potatoes or cereal - or anything else that kind of falls into the toast food group.  But hey!  No big deal.  I made her a piece of toast with too much jelly, just the way she likes it.

The following week, I made breakfast sandwiches and she asked for toast again.  It was breakfast sandwich - a whole English muffin - toast of a sort on both sides of eggs and sausage and cheese.  Weird.  But okay - I made her a slice of toast.

And I have made her a slice of toast every day since.  I wonder sometimes if she would miss it if I didn't make it.  It might have been one of those passing ALZ things.  I'm not planning on risking it.  It's part of the routine.  The precious morning routine - which is the most pleasant, easiest, most dependable routine of the day. 

Which brings me to this morning.

Every morning before mom will sit down at the table, she counts the pills she takes with her morning meal.  Currently, the count is FOUR.  Funny how, if the count changes due to some new or removed prescription, it doesn't throw her off - she just counts to three or five or whatever.  But she has to count.  Out loud.  And then she pulls her chair out and sits down.

Then she makes a joke about "all those pills", lines them up and says "I have to take all these, right?"  And I say, "Yes mom.  One at a time.  With your water."  And that's how it has been every morning for nearly a year.

I lay out her breakfast the same way every day.  It has always worked.  Until today.

I have no idea how it happened.  I turned around for just a minute to put a knife in the dishwasher and make sure I had turned the coffee maker off. 

When I turned back around, she was tapping her water cup with her finger - and it was on the other side of the place mat - and she was clearly confused.  I asked if there was anything wrong and she couldn't get the words out in a complete sentence, but it was her way of asking what the water was for.  I told her it was to take her pills with and to keep her hydrated so her blood pressure didn't fall too low. 

And she got so sad.  She told me she had really messed things up this time and pointed to her cereal bowl.  She had put her pills into the cereal and milk.  What? 

And since our roles are so completely reversed - I just fished them out with my fingers like I would do with my kids.  No spoon.  No ceremony.  Just fingers.  Quickly.  Before they melted or had some weird milk reaction.  Can that even happen?  I flashed on some memory of a medicine that can't be taken with dairy.  Was that me or mom or one of the kiddos?  No idea. 

Maybe I was too calm about it.  Because mom just looked up at me and smiled.  And then looked down at her pills.  And then picked up her spoon to eat the cereal.  I let her know that she needed to take the pills - one at a time - with her water. 

And just like that, we were back on track....and she has no idea it even happened.