Christmas Music and Laughter

Today was one of those days when mom just didn’t want to get up. She had been up bright and early for two days in a row and this morning she wanted to sleep! The caregiver tried opening window blinds to make the room light. She tried turning on lights and music. She even tried tilting the bed upwards to see if she could wake her by putting her into a semi sitting position. All her efforts were to no avail and Mom was getting irritated that she was being asked to get out of bed at the outrageously early hour of 1:00. Teenagers and princesses have nothing on mom when these mornings happen!

I had gone out for a while with friends and, when we got the call in the middle of lunch, they graciously asked for to go boxes and we dashed home to try and get her up. It was important because her blood sugar had already been low early in the morning. We’d given her applesauce with corn starch in it to hold her over until she was ready to wake up, but by 1:00 it had worn off and her sugar was starting to drop again. So it was up to me and my bag of dirty tricks…

I raised the bed all the way up, put a Christmas movie on TV, (yes, the Hallmark channel is already running them on the weekends) and then had my friends come in with their joyful voices and friendly laughter to chat with mom. When she heard their voices, the hostess awoke, and she dragged the sleeping princess into full wakefulness with her. They stood beside her bed and chatted with her about whatever she wanted to ask them about while the caregiver slipped out and warmed her breakfast back up. Before she knew what was happening, she was sitting in her chair eating oatmeal and singing along with the Christmas carol that was playing in the movie. It just seems wrong to trick your mom into doing things she doesn’t want to do, but I guess doing it with laughter and Christmas music softens the blow a bit!