Chapter 5 third chapter

Ruth took Lu Ling to pick up the car from the hospital parking lot.The skin on Lu Ling's arms was loose, and it felt like the thin wings of a small bird. Ru Ling was very happy for a while, and anxious for a while. What happened in the doctor's office just now had no effect on her.But Ruth sensed that her mother was slowly becoming a shell, and that before long she would be as light as driftwood on water.The doctor diagnosed that Ru Ling was suffering from Dementia.Ruth could not understand that a word so beautifully pronounced should be the name of a devastating disease. Dementia is the name of a goddess: Dementia made her sister Demeter forget to turn winter into spring.Ruth couldn't help but imagine the frosty foreign matter filling her mother's brain, drying it out day by day.Dr. Xu said that the MRI examination found that Ru Ling's brain had local atrophy, which was consistent with the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.He also said the symptoms of the disease could have started years earlier.Ruth had been too surprised to ask the question, and now she couldn't help wondering when exactly the doctor said "a few years ago."twenty years ago?Thirty years ago?Forty years ago?Maybe, all the years when Ruth was growing up, my mother was so difficult, talking about ghosts, poisoning curses, and threatening suicide, all because of illness.Dementia has washed away all the mistakes of the mother in the past. God must have forgiven the mother and daughter for years of torturing and hurting each other.

"Luti, what did the doctor say?" Ru Ling asked suddenly, which startled Ruth.The two of them stood in front of Ruth's car. "He said I was dying, right?" Lu Ling said mockingly. "No." Ruth said with a smile. "Of course the doctor didn't say that." Mother watched Ruth's expression carefully, and then she concluded for herself, "It's all right if I die. I'm not afraid of death. You know that." "Doctor Xu said your heart is fine," Ruth said quickly.She wanted to try to explain the doctor's diagnosis to her mother, making it easier for her to accept it. "But he said you might have something else—an internal disorder...maybe causing memory loss or something," she said, guiding her mother into the front seat of the car and helping her put her seat belt on.

Ru Ling said disdainfully, "Hmph! I don't have amnesia. I have a good memory, better than yours. I still remember those things when I was young. Our place is called Xianxin, where two rivers diverge from one river. Made a heart shape, and finally dried up..." Ruth listened to her rambling, walked to the other side of the car, opened the door, got in, and started the engine. "What does he know? That doctor didn't even listen to my heart with a stethoscope! No one has ever listened to my heart! If you don't listen, neither will Gao Ling. You know how painful my heart is. I just don't Complaining. Do you hear me complaining?"

"No--" "Let me tell you!" "The doctor said that sometimes you forget things because you are in a bad mood." "I'm in a bad mood because I can't forget it! Look at all the sad things in my life!" Ruth checked the brakes, and after confirming that there was no problem, she started the car and went around one bend after another, heading for the entrance of the parking lot.The mother's voice was still whispering in my ears along with the rhythm of the engine: "Of course I'm in a bad mood. Once Aunt Bao dies, my life will be meaningless..."

"Sorry, I was a little distracted." "Honey, I've wanted to talk to you about this for a long time. But I don't want to blame you, it's not your fault that this happened. I'm just worried that you haven't been quite right lately. You seem to—" At 5:15, Ruth called her mother and told her she would pick her up shortly.Nobody answers the phone.Maybe mom is on the toilet.Ruth called again five minutes later, still no answer.Mom is constipated?Still asleep?As Ruth tidied up her desk, she put the phone on speaker and pressed the automatic redial button.The phone rang for fifteen minutes and no one answered it. Ruth imagined all possible situations, and finally boiled it down to a worst-case scenario: Ru Ling forgot to turn off the gas while cooking, and the fire started, and Ru Ling splashed water to put out the fire, but took Wrong, the result is fuel on the fire, and it burns more and more.Mom's sleeves were also on fire.On the drive to Ruling's house, Ruth imagined the fire engulfing the house, the roof collapsing, and her mother's charred, deformed body lying in a pile of blackened embers.

As expected, when Ruth arrived, she found that the second floor where her mother lived was flickering and dark shadows were flying around.The front door wasn't locked at all.She rushed in and yelled: "Mom, mom, where are you?" The TV in the room was on, playing foreign language programs loudly.Ru Ling couldn't figure out how to use the remote control.Ruth taped up almost all the keys on the remote control, except for the switch and the channel up and down buttons, but Ru Ling still couldn't learn it.Ruth turned off the TV, startled by the sudden silence. She ran into the inner room, opened the cupboard door, and looked out of the window again.Her throat began to tense, and she cried out, "Mom, where are you? Talk to me." She ran downstairs again to knock on the tenant's door.

She tried her best to pretend nothing happened, and asked, "Excuse me, have you seen my mother?" Francine rolled her eyes, nodded knowingly, and said, "About two or three hours ago, she hurried to the street. She was wearing pajamas and slippers, so I was quite impressed. I thought , 'God, she's just crazy.' ... of course it's nothing to do with me, but you should take her to the doctor, or give her some medicine or something. I'm just saying that with the best of intentions what." Ruth rushed upstairs again, dialing an old client, a police chief, with trembling fingers.A few minutes later, a Latino police officer appeared at the front door, fully armed and serious.Ruth was even more terrified, and hurried out the door.

"She has Alzheimer's," Ruth said hastily. "Seventy-seven years old, but with the brains of a child." "Her features." "Four foot eleven, eighty-five pounds, black hair in a bun, probably in pink or violet pajamas..." Ruth said, with Ruling's image in her mind: Mom With a confused face, he lay unconscious on the street.Ruth's voice began to crack. "God, she's so weak, so helpless..." "Does she look like that lady over there?" Ruth looked up and saw Ru Ling standing blankly at the end of the path, wearing a sweater over pajamas.

"Oh! What happened?" Ru Ling asked. "You were robbed?" Ruth ran forward. "Where have you been?" I asked, looking up and down, to see if there were any signs of injury on my mother. The officer walked up to the two of them and said, "Happy end." Then he turned and walked back to his patrol car. "Stay here," Ruth ordered her mother. "I'll be right back." She walked to the patrol car, and the officer in the car rolled down the window. "Sorry to trouble you," Ruth said. "She's never done this kind of thing before." As soon as she said the words, she immediately thought that maybe Lu Ling did it, but she didn't know it.Maybe she does it every day and every night.Maybe she hangs around in lingerie all day, who knows!

"Well, it's nothing," said the officer. "My mother-in-law did the same thing. We call it 'sunset work'. As soon as the sun goes down, she goes out and hangs out. We have to put alarms on every door in the house. It was a rough year, and we had no other choice. Sent her to a nursing home. My wife looked at her for nothing, and finally couldn't take it anymore." Looking at her indifferently?Ruth thought it was hard work and filial piety to invite her mother to dinner and help her with a part-time job. "Thank you anyway," she said. As soon as she returned to her mother, Lu Ling began to complain: "Where's the grocery store on the corner? I walked around and around, and it's gone! It's turned into a bank. Don't you believe it? Go and see for yourself!"

That night, Ruth had to spend the night at her mother's house, sleeping in her old bedroom.From this side of the city, the sound of the foghorn was louder.She remembered listening to the Foghorn every night as a teenager.Back then when she was lying on the bed, with one sound, two sounds, she silently counted in her heart how many years before she could move out.First five years, then four years, then three years.Now, she's back. The next morning, Ruth opened the cupboard to look for breakfast cereal, only to find it filled with stacks of dirty paper towels, hundreds of them.She opened the refrigerator and found that it was full of plastic bags filled with black, smelly and sticky things, half-eaten food, orange peels, cantaloupe peels, and frozen foods that had been thawed for a long time.In the freezer, she found a box of eggs, a pair of shoes, the alarm clock at home, and a bunch of things that looked a bit like bean sprouts.Ruth felt sick.In just one week, the family has become like this? She called Art in Hawaii, but no one answered.She pictured Art lying carefree on the beach, forgetting all his troubles.But how is this possible?It was six o'clock in the morning local time, how could he be on the beach at this time?Where is he?Could it be hula dancing on someone else's bed?One more thing to worry about.She could call Wendy, too, but Wendy would just sympathize with something crazier her mother had done.What about Gideon?He cares more about customers, contracts and whatnot.Ruth decided to call Aunt Gao Ling. "Worse? How could it be worse?" Gao Ling said. "I gave her ginseng, and she said she ate it every day." "The doctor said it's useless—" "Doctor!" Gao Ling said disdainfully. "I don't believe this, saying that your mother was born with Alzheimer's disease. Your uncle is a dentist, and he doesn't believe it either. Everyone will get old and forget things when they get old. When people get old, things to remember are really It's too much. Let me ask you, why did no one get this disease twenty or thirty years ago? The problem is that today's children don't have time to visit their parents. Your mother is so lonely, that's all. No one tells her Chinese. Of course, her brain is a little dull. If a person doesn’t speak, his brain is like a machine without oil, it will rust!” "Well, so I want to ask you to help me. Can Mom go to you and ask you to take care of her this week? I'm so busy this week that I really don't have time to—" "Needless to say, I wanted her to come over. I'll pick her up in an hour. I was going to be near her house anyway." Ruth finally breathed a sigh of relief, all she wanted was to cry. After Aunt Gao Ling took her mother back, Ruth walked a few streets to the seaside, Lands End End of the World.She needs to hear the roar of the waves, and let the loud noise of the mighty waves beating against the shore hide her own beating heart.