I can remember a time when my MIL was still alive and wasn't wheel chair bound at the time but still pretty slow. She was one who thought you had to have a bowel movement every single day like clock work. She had no patience with a laxative. If she hadn't done her daily constitutional by 8 AM she would take some milk of magnesia. Well if no movement by 10 she would take something else. So we took her to Walmart one day. She loved to go costume jewelry shopping. After we got in the store she realized all the medicines were working n her. So I tried to rush her back to the bathroom as quick as I could. Well it didn't work. I mean as soon as she hit the door, no where close to the stalls yet, she had her pants down and she was going all over the floor, her pants, her legs, everything. And they were just all looking at me, not my MIL like how could I have allowed that to happen and what in the world was I going to do about it. Or at least this is what I imagined from their looks. I did the best in cleaning her up, asked her to stay in the stall, thank heavens for handicap stalls that are bigger, husband was outside waiting for me and I asked him to go buy a pair of sweat pants for her. I told her what her son was doing and she refused to wear them. She was not a woman who spent her money on things she didn't think she needed. She told me that we were going to walk out of that bathroom with our heads high and go to the front door. So that is what we did. I did have my jacket right behind her so that one couldn't see the mess but we walked right out of that store with our heads held high.

I learned a lot over the years from my mentally ill MIL