11/27/2022

Elda’s nervousness happens almost every day, more or less at the same time in the afternoon. She gets depressed when she's tired and gets nervous when she's full of energy. Today she was depressed; she always thinks there is a problem, someone is sick, or anything negative that makes her sad. I pass by their house every night after work, and today I found her whiny. She speaks to me in her language which is now hard to comprehend in many moments, but not all. We respond by intuition and try to console her by telling her everyone is fine, everything is fine, that we are all doing the right things and that there are no problems, etc. Me in Italian, Lisa in English. It takes time but then with the help of lavender drops under her nose and/or lighting an infuser so she can breathe the aroma, she slowly calms down. These moments last from 30 minutes to an hour and a half and more, depending on what is occupying her mind the most that day.

In recent years since they have moved to Italy, to Matassino, (ten steps from my house) I have noticed, that Elda is very sensitive towards her family. When she spends her days worrying about everything or nothing, the day does not go right for her and she doesn't want to do anything. Even if she doesn’t know some of the terrible things that were really happening to her family such as: the death of her  son-in-law and of her sister, Gloria; she felt it and in my opinion her pain manifested itself in this depression or nervousness. During those times she was restless, walking up and down the house (most of the time trying to walk alone), even quickly. She walked to her pictures of her family, her sisters, moving them here and there on the shelf or she would go to the window and look to see what she could see outside, saying to me “look look”. While I didn’t understand what she was saying, it was clear that something wasn't right for her.

Mamma Elda is a very beautiful woman in every sense: sweet, strong, determined, just. She dedicated her life to her very large family; she was still babysitting her great-grandchildren until almost 90 years old. In these five years the progress of her illness has stolen her reason, she doesn’t know clearly what is happening around her, but she feels the energy that something is wrong. Just recently her son who has been struggling for months with cancer, had two major operations in these past weeks. After the first operation, her son began to have some problems and had to be heavily sedated with his hands tied as not to risk removing the tubes, while waiting to have another surgery. During that time of heavy sedation Elda entered his world through their thoughts it was astounding to us to hear her say: my son must stay in a bed, or he has no more energy (putting her head in her hands). She knew before we knew how Bobby was; truly amazing and splendid how a mother's love reaches her child and overcame her disease. I believe Elda overcame her illness during that time because of how she expressed herself with extreme lucidity and clarity to the point of directly asking us for help to go and see him and hold him again. Because of her clarity Lisa spoke to her clearly and told her to tell Bobby to fight, be strong and know that he was not alone. Luckily Bobby has stabilized and slowly it is our hope he gets better and stronger.

Fortunately, there are also days where she is serene, she talks, smiles and laughs. We laugh too even if most of the time we don't understand why she is laughing, a laugh is always good. I always tell her that she is more beautiful than the sun when she smiles, and that makes her smile more. My behavior with her hasn't changed much, I try to treat her as normal as possible because that is what she needs and deserves.