Alzheimer’s Robbed Me of My Mother

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.