Change

 Tonight Maybe had a seizure, quite severe, right on the couch where she'd been sleeping while I read the papers. As usual, I scratched her head and told her she'd be all right. When she came to, what wasn't usual was that she followed me into the room where I changed to  my nightgown  and then into the bedroom. Seeking comfort from fear of the unknown perhaps.  

 It reminded me.

    My mother had a heart attack in 1978 and was in hospital for a week or more. When she came home,   she and Helen were in shock as to what had happened, and did not want to be in the house alone. Danny was a baby, the kids had school, Dave worked in Albany, so Ma and Helen spent several nights here, sleeping on the 2 couches in the living room. I'd drive them home for the day, and then back here until they adjusted to the "new normal" and could stay in their house.

 My mother died 5 years later, and Helen was alone for the first time in her life. She had what she called "that all-gone feeling." Dorothy and I stayed with her. She was now sleeping on the big couch in the middle  room, which my mother had taken to sleeping on. I dragged out the old cot from beneath the stairway, set it up in the middle  room, near Helen,  and Dorothy was to sleep on the couch in the living room. But no, Dorothy soon came into the middle room and crawled in bed with me, both of us in that rather narrow cot. But we slept. Some years later, Helen was hospitalized for what was to be the last time. I slept on a cot in her hospital room the night she died.

 Lloyd at age 46 was hospitalized for a terminal illness. I slept in the hospital the night before he died. His siblings had visited but left. Dorothy may have stayed in his room, I don't recall. After he was gone, I stayed in Dorothy's house. She had an extra bedroom with a daybed for me to sleep on. But during the first night, Dorothy left her bedroom and squeezed into that daybed with me.She didn't want to be alone. 

  When Dorothy was on Hospice, and no one could say  how much, or how little, time she had left, Danny came home from college and was with her when she died. 

  Changes.