Alzheimer’s Robbed Me
of My Mother
I am the oldest of three children
born to my parents; more specifically born to my mother. Unfortunately for my mother my brother, born
second in our family, never came home from the hospital. I have never seen so much as a hospital
photograph of Richard Mark. My sister,
Kimberly Jeanne, died before she reached the age of three from complications
following an open heart surgery. That
left me as the apple of my mother’s eye, though admittedly there may have been
a worm or two in the apple that she either didn’t know about or ignored. I’d prefer to believe that she didn’t know
about them.
Mother and I were close. Among my first recollections of Mother were
in the living room of our little house in Beech Grove, Indiana, as I lay on the
floor at her feet while I played with a wind-up train. She sat in a rocking chair reading a book
while listening to the radio. I even
remember the radio station. It was
WIBC. I think I grew up listening to
WIBC.
We left that house in Beech Grove
before I entered school. We lived in a
little trailer in Johnson County, Indiana, while my father built our new house
in what was known as the Mount Pleasant Addition in White River Township. The trailer was so small that you had to step
outside to change your mind.
Sometimes in the evening Mom, Dad,
and I would pile into the car and go to the house that was under
construction. As summer moved into fall
and fall moved into early winter the weather turned cold. Electricity had been run to the house long
before the house was finished so Dad hooked the kitchen stove up to the
electricity so we would have some form of heat.
It was in that setting at night that Mom would tell me of her
experiences as a child going to bed when it was cold outside. Heated bricks were carefully wrapped in
towels and placed at the foot of the bed and she and her sister, Ninagale,
would run and jump into their feather bed and snuggle in and keep warm through
the night.
After the house was built Mother
added the finishing touches that made the house a home. There were summer gardens, pictures on the
wall, little mementoes placed on shelves, fresh cut flowers in vases, and live
potted plants throughout the living room and kitchen. She planted purple irises outside around our
patio. Oh, and music from WIBC played in
the background. And of course there was
always a fresh supply of chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies available for
the taking.
Mom thought it was important that I
learn to cook. It was probably much to
the dismay of my father that I spent time in the kitchen at the time, but later
in life he would come to appreciate the fact that I could cook more than a hot
dog or make a peanut butter sandwich. In
time I learned survival cooking skills that would see me through a short stint
of bachelorhood.
My mother enjoyed a practical
joke. On one April Fools’ Day she had a
hot breakfast all prepared for me before I went to school. She even fixed me a glass of chocolate
milk. I should have realized what day it
was. I went to take a swig of chocolate
milk only to discover that she made it with water and not milk! I don’t think she would ever stop
laughing. The next year she again
prepared a hot breakfast for me on April Fools’ Day, complete with a glass of
chocolate milk. Fool me once and shame
on you. Fool me twice and shame on
me. In spite of what some people think,
I do have a long memory. I placed my index finger in the milk and then
tested it. Behold! It was milk and not water. Since Mom had placed a straw in the glass I
chose to drink my chocolate milk through the straw only to find that she had
pinched its end so that I could not draw the milk up through the straw. Again, I don’t think she ever stopped
laughing.
As one Mothers’ Day rolled around I
stood in the kitchen with my mother and the Mothers’ Day song came to
mind. You know how it goes. “M is for the many ways she loves me, O is
for” (something else, I don’t have a clue what it was for). “Put them all together and they spell Mother.” I swear I don’t know what possessed me, but I
started singing that little song, but changed the words. With a smile on my face I began to sing, “M
is for the many times she beats me.”
Without skipping a beat, Mother continued the rest of the song with, “O
is for the other times I should.”
Yes, Mother had a good sense of
humor and truly enjoyed a good practical joke.
There was a sensitive side to Mom
as well. She could shed a tear at the
drop of a hat. I’ll never forget the
time that I came home “very” late from a New Year’s Eve party. I was 15 at the time. She could not look at me for a month without
crying. I knew that my mother loved me,
but I think it was at that time that I realized just how much she loved me.
Time passed and I married the woman
who would become the mother of my children.
Perhaps it might be more appropriate to say that I married the woman who
would become the mother of my mother’s grandchildren. We lived near my parents for the first five
years of our marriage. Whenever we went
to my parents’ home to visit Grandma was always the willing spoiler of the
grandkids. The grandkids were always
willing to go to Grandma’s house.
We moved to New Mexico after those
first five years of marriage, and so we made annual pilgrimages home. Without fail, the aroma of fresh baked
homemade bread wafted through the door as we entered my childhood home. There
were fresh strawberries to pick from the patch in the back yard, homemade grape
juice, trees to climb, and always lots of love.
The thousand mile drive there was always worth the trip. Mom always said that as soon as we left she
would start cleaning house, not because of the mess that was left behind but
because she had to do something as she cried when we left.
Years passed and I didn’t really
attribute anything to Mom’s withdrawing from the mother and grandmother she had
been, but one day it happened.
Becky, our oldest son’s wife called
one day to report that Grandma had fallen and that she was now in the
hospital. By now we had moved to New
York so it was only a long day’s drive home.
After visiting with Mom for a little while we learned from the nurses
that Mom had been up at nights wandering the halls of the hospital, visiting
with everybody. We did not understand at
the time that the nurses meant that she had been doing all her visiting in her
mind. It didn’t take us long to figure
out what they meant. It was Alzheimer’s
Disease.
Her doctor wanted Mom to go into
rehab for three weeks before she returned home.
I will spare her the indignity of the details. It was not pretty. But, it was while she was in a nursing home
doing rehab that we came to fully understand that Mom was not going to be able
to live independently at home and that Dad was incapable of caring for
her. Choices. We could either look for a long-term care
facility for my parents or they could come to New York to live with us. We looked at assisted living first, but the
longer we watched the less it seemed that this would be an option. We brought my parents to New York to live in
our house with us.
Mother was expert at hiding the
truth; what was happening to her. Ever
the detective, I had to know, so I started digging. I did not have to look very far. I began with her handwriting. Mother always had impeccable handwriting and
now it was so small it was indecipherable.
Then what I could make out was incomprehensible. Next I looked through her checkbook and
cancelled checks. Why people cashed her
checks I’ll never know, especially the one that she wrote for a million dollars
to her doctor. Thankfully, she had an
honest doctor. Then there were the
memory issues. She could remember what
happened 70 years ago but had no idea what happened 15 minutes ago. In a very short period of time she forgot who
I was. Then she didn’t know who my
father, her husband was.
The disease progressed to the point
where we could no longer provide the kind of support Mother needed. A nearby nursing home was selected and so
began the final descent into hell.
We made daily visits, but most of
the time she just slept. Dad would sit
and visit with her but even there most of the time he would simply sit with her. At the end of those visits with her he would
be a wreck.
Susan had a flight out of Albany to
Salt Lake. Since it was an early morning
flight and Albany was at least a two hour drive, we decided to go up the night
before and spend the night in a motel.
Dad was still well enough that he could take care of himself and if
there was a problem he was quite capable of calling. As we backed out of the driveway to leave I
turned to Susan and told her that I wanted to go by and see Mom before we
left. She was sleeping when we got
there. Rather than awaken her we slipped
out the door after I gave her a soft love tap on her arm. I made a quick stop at the nurses’ station to
make sure that they had my cell phone number.
We had checked into the motel and
had just sat down to dinner across the street from the motel when my cell phone
rang. It was the nursing home. Mom had passed away. The last time I saw my mother was when she
was asleep. And now she was at peace.
Alzheimer’s robbed me of my
mother. There had been a few coherent
moments when she was at our house and she recounted to me the happier times in
her life when she was growing up. Those
times were mixed in with reports of purple flowers that were growing in the
snow in our back yard. And of course she
was eager to tell us of her most recent visit she had with her father. But, there were no more practical jokes,
fresh baked bread or cookies, and no more love.
I had fully expected to cry when my
mother died, but I didn’t. It took me a
couple of days to figure out why I didn’t cry at her passing. She had died three years prior to her
physical death. Her body just needed a
little extra time to catch up to her spirit.
A little piece of me had gone with her every day.
Perhaps I should be bitter with the
fact that Alzheimer’s had robbed me of my mother. Maybe in a way I am. But, the last years of her life are not what
I choose to remember. What I really
remember is the fresh baked bread, chocolate chip cookies, pride in her
grandchildren, her patience, and her kindness.
Oh, and the love. That is what I
remember most about my mother. The love.
I love you, Mom.
