Know something?  I think I may be losing my mind.  Every morning, when one of the nurses here wakes me up and gives me all my pills to take—I think there’s six or seven, but I couldn’t swear to it—I feel even more lost and can remember even less than when I went to bed. Get what I mean?  That’s good.  I don’t.
          I’d love to tell this to the tall young man who visits me sometimes and calls me Mom, but I don’t really trust him anymore.  He says his name is Michael, same as my son’s, but why should I believe him?  Lately he has a girlfriend named Ellen.  I don’t trust her either.  Sometimes she comes here with him, and they act all lovey-dovey, creeping into each other’s skins.  Get the picture?  It’s sickening if you ask me.  She wears a big diamond ring, and they keep saying they’re engaged, but I suspect it’s just a part of a good act they’re putting on.  They also keep telling me they just can’t wait to get married.  I think what they really can’t wait for is for me to croak, so they can get all my money.  Children are like that, you know.  Anyway, whoever, he is, he’s the one who put me in this place a couple of years after my Harry died.  I can’t figure out why.  I could’ve gone on living on my own just like I was doing.  I’m not a baby.  Oh, sure, once in a while I’d lose my bank book, and once, after I went to the grocery, I couldn’t remember my address, and Michael got worried and called the cops and they went looking for me, found me, and brought me home.  But is that any reason to put someone in prison?  (That’s what this place really is, no matter what they call it.)  Of course, everyone who works here is all peaches and cream, but they aren’t fooling me.  Maybe Michael and most people here don’t believe it, but I ain’t stupid, even if I may be losing my mind.

I wonder who first dreamed up that expression anyway.  When you lose your mind, is that something like losing your bank book? Do you leave it in a strange place and then can’t find it?  And how do you get it back? Can anyone help you?
          There’s this lady in the next room who must be very smart.  Sometimes I like to talk to her, that is, when I can understand what she’s saying, or at least most of it.  She says she was a teacher, “when I still could walk.”  She’s in a wheelchair now.  Thank God, I’m not.  One day, when I asked her about “losing your mind,” she said, “It’s only a phrase, an idiom actually.  You shouldn’t take it so literally.”  I couldn’t really follow what she was trying to tell me, but I was too embarrassed to let on.

One day, I noticed two doctors standing out in the hall, and I managed to figure out that they must’ve been talking about me.  I’m not sure about that, but they kept looking in my direction while they were talking.  They also kept using two very fancy words: paranoid and schizophrenic.  I’m surprised I remember them, but I do.  Maybe that’s because they sound so weird.  

I repeated them to Michael once, or the young man who says he’s Michael.  He got very fidgety and changed the subject in a big hurry, started talking about the weather and asking me how I like the food here. When I told him I don’t even understand why I’m here, he smiled and said, “Mom, remember, you’re eight-five, just too old to live alone.  You’re much better off here, where they take good care of you.  Believe me, it’s all for your own good.”  I wanted to tell him, no, I don’t believe him at all, but he said he had an important appointment and had to leave.  It seems that he’s always busy with something or other, just so he doesn’t have to spend too much time with me.  

My Michael was always a good boy.  I can remember that very well, too.  He obeyed my Harry and me in most things.  He did good in school.  Then he worked at a couple of part-time jobs so he could pay for college.  He did good there, too.  I can’t remember what line of work he went into after that, but I’m sure it pays him enough that he doesn’t have to be coming around and waiting for me to die so he can get my money.  And that’s what places like this do to people, make them die.
          No one can fool me about that. Seems like very week at least one person here dies, and some weeks as many as four or five.  They put up notices on the bulletin board just so everyone knows.  Sometimes I don’t remember people by some of the names I see there, and I wonder, am I supposed to care, am I supposed to cry, or what?  And when my turn comes, will Michael cry or care—that is, if he’s not too busy keeping an appointment?  I’d like to think so, but I really don’t.  And Ellen, what about her, if they’re even still together?  She’ll probably smile and tell him not to cry ‘cause everything’s fine, as both of them sit and count the money before they bring it to the bank.
          Well, that’s what he thinks.  I called up Mr. Parks, my lawyer, the other day, and I told him to change my will.  Not that I have that much to worry about—my Harry, may he rest in peace, was no big earner—maybe fifty thousand or something like that a year.  I didn’t understand what Mr. Parks said.  It sounded like, “Don’t you remember?   When you had to go to court and the judge declared you incompetent?  He gave Michael power of attorney and made him your conservator.”   Power of attorney?  I wish I knew what that means.  Maybe he was trying to tell me he’s a powerful lawyer, but why would he tell me that?  Aren’t all lawyers powerful?  And I don’t remember the judge declaring me incompetent.  I’m not even sure what that or conservator means.  Maybe a conservator is someone who waters plants to help keep them alive.  That sounds like it might be right.  Then he said, “Be well.”  How could anyone be well with all this aggravation I’m having?  

It’s no wonder I may be losing my mind.  But, if I told that to Michael, if that’s really who this young man is I see slowly walking down the hall toward my room, he’d probably start counting my money in his sick head.  If I could only get my hands on my money, I could put it in a box and hide it in my closet or under the bed.  Then, at the right time, someone here could decide what to do with it, maybe give it to some people who need it more than Michael and Ellen; at least they’d appreciate it.
          “Hi, Mom,” he says as if he’s talking to a two-year old.  “Been eating well?  Been taking your pills?”  And whoever he is, I’d love to take my scrawny fist and shove it straight down his throat.  But, for some reason I can’t remember, I can’t.