The Trouble with Food

The matriarch has no teeth--not a problem. The matriarch loves sugar--again, no problem. But, as my mother-in-law ages, I notice she spits out less if she eats porridges, stews, and soups. But, she really prefers food she can chew. It is not a pleasant sight and for the sake of the family I make my mother-in-law wet foods; she can't quite see what we are eating, but she knows she is eating something different. I cannot imagine what it is like for her: on one level, I know she enjoys the food I make her because she eats it all but, on a different level, I know she resents the fact I make her meals differently from the rest. And, I know she wants something to get her gums into as well...

The problems are a little more serious than just the spectacle of the solid food spat out. When a very old person is unable to chew their solid food, they swallow it whole and are then unable to digest it. They become gaseous and while it is funny to hear my mother-in-law tooting like a choo-choo train, it is extremely embarrassing for her. So, I know I am right for the body when I make her the softer foods; it is not so positive for the ego. I know my mother-in-law is angry she cannot chew foods properly; Saturday's lunch with my husband is becoming just awful. She pretends to be full and he is now eating 2 fish and chip dinners for Saturday lunch and that ignites a whole other set of problems with no possibility of resolution: no family dinner Saturday nights because he is too full, my children usually cook Saturday nights so he is not impressing them, the lunch is a lot of fried foods which is not good for his health (yes, he could throw it out but his mother doesn't believe in wasting food and, until we know for sure she is blind, the woman is treated, for the most part, as though she can see--yes, yes, I know a grown man still listening to his mother but she is almost 100 and used to getting her own way!)

When I brought her strawberries up to my mother-in-law this evening, I could hear her stomach rumbling. I don't know if she was hungry or if it was gas or what; she dug into the strawberries as soon as I left the room. So much of an older person's life is encouraging them do what they want for as long as they want and so much of it is trying to know when they no longer know what it is they want. I find the longer the matriarch is here the more patience I am developing and the less hopeless I feel. I am not being negative when I say I can feel her dying; I don't want her to die: I just see and feel her slipping away lately. I don't know what that means, really. It is like my children, one day they were babies and then, almost suddenly, they are not; my mother-in-law is here and an annoyance and something of a burden and all of a sudden, she is not. I heard her muttering under her breath at me the other day when I couldn't take her out for the afternoon; I looked at her and I felt so much love it was ridiculous. And, I know she has gone through my purse again and I know she has some other quirks but I keep thinking, maybe realizing for once in my thick skull, so what? At the end, what does it all matter, really? What does it matter to me? My husband just shakes his head and watches "Jeopardy" with his mother before he goes to work and tells the children they can make him breakfast on Sundays.