In The Mood

In The Mood

Mr. What-ya-call-em what you doin’ tonight
Hope you’re in the mood because I’m feeling just right
How’s about a corner with a table for two
Where the music’s mellow in some gay rendezvous
There’s no chance romancin’ with a blue attitude
You got to do some dancin’ to get in the mood

Sister What-ya-call-em I’m indebted to you
It all goes to show what good influence can do
Never felt so happy and so fully alive
Seems that jammin’ jumpin’ is a powerful jive
Swingeroo is giving me a new attitude
My heart is full of rhythm and I’m in the mood

In the mood doo-wah
In the mood doo-wah
In the mood doo-wah

Thursday was one of the hardest days I’ve had to go through where Nana is concerned.  After only six hours of sleep, I was woken up at ten and we left around eleven.  We saw Uncle Bill first, visited with him for awhile, then went to find Nana.  When we did see her, she was in this really small room, it was barely big enough to fit the three of us, and she was asleep.

I think that was the worst thing for me.  I haven’t seen her, save Thursday, since Thanksgiving.  And I kept saying that I would go up there this summer, but stupid selfish me, I never did.  Seeng her lying there, with tubes in her nose and all around her face, leading to IV’s and seeing the heart monitor by her bedside, her sleeping on her back, her arms to either side still losely bound, with her mouth slack . . . it shook me up so much.  I could barely hold the tears back.  I wanted to write a letter to her and give it to the nurses to read to her when she was awake, but I couldn’t have done it without breaking down and sobbing.  Heck, just the thought of writing the letter in the first place nearly had me breaking down.

Anyway, though I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, my dad talked with a nurse most of that time and Mike stood next to me or was over near my dad.  I just stood, staring at Nana, or the numbers on the heart monitor, feeling my eyes fill up with tears I tried to hold back.

I wish she had been awake.  Even if she had been screaming and fighting and slugging nurses and whatnot, I think I could have dealt with it better.  Because even if she didn’t recall it later on, she’d have seen me.  She’d have known I was there.  She may have calmed down just from the fact that it was me who was there, assuming she recognized me as me, instead of some relative from years long past.  Instead, she was asleep, completely unaware of the fact that I stood at the end of her bed, watching her sleep.

When my parents came back tonight, my mom told me that she’s being given antibiotrics because she’s contracted light pnuemonia.  They have an oxygen mask over her face, but apparently the doctors are optimistic.  They’re moving her to a regular room tomorrow, I guess, and they think by the end of the week they can have her in the rehab center place, where they’ll help her get her mobility back up to where it should be after everything with her hip.  Which is, ironically enough, the least of the problems right now.  I haven’t heard one negative thing about her hip since she had the operation to fix things.

I touched on this in a note to Melanie tonight and I’ve been thinking about it every time Nana crosses my mind.  I’m in limbo about whether or not I want her to come out of this.  I don’t wish her death, but I’m not sure I wish her life.  Not if this will be the remainder of it.  In and out of hospitals, oxygen masks over her face, being unconscious/sleeping most of the time . . .  I can’t help but wonder what her will to live is.  I mean, in some ways, I can’t help but think she just wants to pass on and be at peace, but her body doesn’t seem to want to give out.  I mean, she’s freakin’ super woman where that’s concerned.  I can’t help wondering how strong she’d be if she hadn’t smoked for however long.  (I’d have to find out for sure from my dad, but I believe after his dad died of smoking related cancer, that she quit.  It might have been before, but I’m not sure.)

In any case . . . I don’t know.  I don’t want to be in a world without her even though I know eventually, that’s inevitable.  But . . . her dying seems like such an . . . odd notion.  I think Dolly hit it right on the head.  We always believed Nana was immortal.  I mean, every time when I went up there when I was a kid, there were two things I could always count on.  One, there were Cheetos on top of the fridge.  Two, there was a bowl of Jell-O in the fridge.  And when we’d have dinner up there, that bowl of Jell-O was always mine, to happily play with, wiggling it around on a spoon or in my fingers.  (Hey, I was a kid!)

Anyway, back on subject.  While I don’t want to see her die . . . I don’t want her to suffer in life, either.  It would be too horrible of a fate for her to keep living in pain or something like that.   suppose . . . I guess I just want her to have peace.  Whether that’s living on for a few more days, weeks, months, or years, or dying tomorrow, I just want her to have peace.

Selfish part of me speaking here, though: I want to see her again before she does die.  Hopefully she’ll get through this and I’ll have more than one more chance, but I want at least that one more chance.  I don’t want her to die without me being able to say "I love you" in person.

Oh . . . as I start tearing up again . . .  Okay, I’m gonna go before I really turn on the water works.

Oh, wait.  The song in the box.  There’s a story with that song.  By eighth grade, Nana had pretty much stopped leaving the house on Staten Island.  But when my dad found out we were performing In The Mood for one of the chorus songs, he told me that that was Nana’s favorite song.  So I asked him if he would tell Nana that I wanted her to come down and see our concert, so she could hear us sing that song.  Only I told him to keep it a secret that we were doing In The Mood. I wanted her to hear it and be surprised.  I know she came to that concert, but I don’t really remember her reaction, or much of anything after it.  But yeah.  She came, and she heard us sing that, and to this day I, (of course,) remember that as being her favorite song.