Struck Blind

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So when my mother called me, this was years ago, before she was dead, after saying hello, Mom's voice lowered to her "something very serious has happened"  tone that she got when somebody had died.

This article describes the use & performance of personal security alarms carried by two elderly women, my mom and my aunt.

Mom called with terrible news

My mother called me, this was years ago, well before she was dead.  On the phone Mom wasted no time getting down to business.

Hello, Son.

Mom's voice lowered to her "I've something very serious to tell you"  tone and she continued from that deep octave with all-appropriate drama:

Son, I've something to tell you ...

I've been struck blind!

Oh my God! I said, Mom that's terrible. I'll be right down there to help take care of you. 

Oh no, she said stay home. I'll be ok. 

Mom had an absolute terror of being found incapable of caring for herself. Her worst fear, not without reason, was being locked up in a mental hospital.

I took a breath and listened, my head spinning, picturing Mom in a world of darkness, stumbling into walls, then pitching bumpety-bump thump thump down the thickly-padded stairs of her Boca Raton condominium.

The carpet was so thick that it was actually difficult to walk up or down the stairway. There was a reward, though. At the bottom of the stairs you could land right in the hand of a wooden Pedro Friedeberg chair shaped like a hand.

Like Friedeberg, Mom and my brother-in-law Irwin were the family Surrealists. Friedeberg's original hand-chair was made by a Mexico City carpenter. Friedeberg thought it'd be amusing.

Not without my own humor of a less-generous sort, I loved translating the name of Mom's Florida community from its original Spanish. Those high-falutin' condos? Really? Boca Raton, Really?

Mom would never have approved of someone saying that she lived in Rat-Mouth Florida. But she did.

Our conversation shifted and we talked about the usual nothing for a moment. Our phone conversations were always brief.

Mom explained more than once:

You make your call, state your business, and get the hell off the line.

OK so my mom was blind. Some serious life adjustments were going to be needed, and quickly.

Suddenly our conversation veered when Mom mentioned, just in passing, that while she was out driving her car that morning she'd again confirmed that the regular ratmouth Florida drivers as more-rude as ever. Someone had given her the finger.

WHAT! I exclaimed.

How can you be driving your car? You just told me that you've been struck blind!

Well she said, I only went to the dry cleaners.

Dx: macular degeneration. Mom really shouldn't have been driving. She terrified fellow ratmouth fellow shoppers when she drove her car right through the SAX 5th Avenue Store front entry doors.

...

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