Mors Sanctissima Non Stupebit, Day One (Foto--Piers)

My beloved little Piers,
° This morning I had a comparatively brief visit with Mother. I yammered and yammered the way I yammer and yammer; bimeby I blithered. Mother opened her eyes once, did not recognise me, did not speak, closed them again. All about as usual.
° And yet animal panick kept building inside me the whole time. Why?
° I returned to my car, parked conveniently in the fire lane just outside her window. The charge nurse came in to medicate, the customary little plastic cup of pseudo milkshake laced with tranquilliser, antibiotic, thyroid extract, I don’t know what all.
° She tipped part of the viscous fluid into Mother’s mouth, then stroked and chopped her throat, massaged vigorously her cheeks, just as you would do to trick Jackson Ng into swallowing a hated worm capsule. She added water, then dashed to the bathroom for towelling. For it all flowed back out.
° So I knew.

° I knew why I’d had that same dream three times already this week. Mother and I are out walking through the neighbourhood, the day is sunny and pleasant, we encounter her friend Jan (she was her classmate, then neighbour all her life in Kosciusko, is now her neighbour just down the hall at the nursing home). All so pleasant, all so normal.
° Only, atop every wall we pass, and in writhing masses underfoot, are countless rattlesnakes.
° I knew what it meant. And I denied what it meant, till I saw the charge nurse’s failed efforts.
° The throat muscles have lost their coordination.
° Mother cannot swallow anything, no liquid, no medicine, no food.
° I gmailed my cousin up North, reported the dream, suggested that Mother might be getting a little worse.
° For I was back in full denial. But I did sleep without the nightmare last night.

° Love, Giac.