Fleeting Memories

After yesterday’s post, I went searching for pictures of Dad. I found one that is just a little unsettling. It was taken around Christmas in 2002. When I looked at it, I could not help recognizing that look in Dad’s eyes. I see it in Mom’s frequently now. It is the confusion and fear that the dementia leaves as it isolates its victims. Once familiar places seem foreign and mysterious. The sound and motion of a room full of people does not bring any comfort or companionship. The coming and going and ambiguity of once familiar faces must actually increase the loneliness of this powerful deterioration.
It can be frustrating for the care-giver. When I try to spend more time with Mom, to engage her in more conversation, to reminisce with an album of old photos, I may actually be increasing her stress. It may leave her feeling more isolated and lonely because she just can’t remember.
It really is a terrible and dehumanizing adversary, stealing away its victims one face or one feeling at a time. Lord, have mercy on those who are loosing their faculties, and on those who love them and have to watch helplessly as they fade away. Yes have mercy.

Some times I just don’t know what to say. Last night Mom was pretty clear about who I was. Then I said something about Dad. Mom responded that she did not remember being married. I joked with her a little bit about how that would make me illegitimate. Well that only confused her. I grabbed the portrait of Dad sitting beside her. I asked her who he was, she said she thought his name was “Jim.” She also said she thought he was handsome.
I can’t help regretting how few pictures I took of Dad while he was with us. Alan took most of the pictures from those days. But I will always have my mental images. I will never forget the nights when Dad would walk into our living room and ask “if the people who own that apartment would mind if we slept there, it is getting too late to go home…” We never could convince him that it was his apartment, if it was after 9:00 pm. Dad’s sundowning was pretty extreme.
We moved Mom & Dad up from North Carolina almost 8 years ago exactly. We had decided we needed to do it after Mom was diagnosed with early stage dementia in the summer of 2000. We had no idea how bad things really were.
Dad has always been hard of hearing. He worked around noisy machinery most of his life. His inappropriate answers and mild confusion was always attributed to his hearing problem. The day we were finally able to move them into the new addition on our home, we learned how things would have to change. Dad drove back to my in-laws house. They had been staying with Dave and Jane for several months. Well, what should have been a 10 minute drive home turned into a 13 hour ordeal. Dad somehow ended up on I-95. He had a full tank of gas. He must have driven repeatedly between the New Jersey and Delaware borders until he needed to get off and get gas.
Needless to say, we could not let Dad keep his license. That was the beginning. The beginning of living intimately with the effects of Alzheimer’s. Some days frightening, some days very endearing, never dull, always a little sad, often arduous. But we have accumulated precious memories even as we have watched theirs disappear. Now if I can only escape my genes…

So, I just spent about an hour writing a new post. Unfortunately when I tried to delete a section, I deleted the whole post. So this is going to be an abbreviated version of what I really wanted to say.
I feel sometimes that my life is defined by the routines of every day. My apologies to Simon & Garfunkle for using there turn of phrase, but it is the ordinary stuff of life that “are the borders of our lives.” I am not just talking about the time I spend caring for Mom. I mean the whole lattice of insistent details that you can’t ignore. Everything, from a dishwasher full of clean dishes to brushing your teeth. I feel like it all has me corralled and fenced in.
It has been over a week since my last post. Which is probably a good thing for everybody. After all, who needs to read about rubber gloves and Lysol. You don’t need a dissertation on Swiffers and sweepers. It has been a deadening, dulling, disconcerting week. Nothing bad, but nothing good. Just a week of ordinary duties.
The only break in that week was the fourth. We spent the day with my in-laws. Dave & Jane, Nancy & I, and Mom: just the 5 of us most of the day. It was quiet, it was cool and dry, it was relaxing. Mom got so comfortable in Dave’s recliner, watching Ron Howard as an elementary school boy in Mayberry, that she was annoyed that we had to come home. She said she could sleep right there.
Since I insisted on moving her, she was going to prove that she couldn’t move her feet. She did a pretty convincing job of it. But I got her home. Yet not without mishap. While “flailing and hooting” about not liking her wheel chair, she managed to cut her arm on the way in the door. So now we have one of those slow healing wounds that are so much fun.
Sunday afternoon, Mom was pretty tired, too much excitement the day before, I guess. Well, she fell asleep in her own recliner, sprawled at a most uncomfortable looking angle. But while we were not looking, she had pushed down her bandage and scratched and rubbed her cut so that she, and her chair, were covered in blood. It was actually pretty grissly looking when I first saw her. But it was superficial, just messy. Now we keep her arm lightly wrapped in a long ace bandage. There is too much of it to push away. She can only rub at the outside. Hopefully this will give it the rest it needs to heal.

So that has been the highlight of this last week. I have not had many of those Peter Cottontail moments like I wrote about last time. In fact, it seems like it has all been exhaustingly ordinary. But we keep putting away the dishes and brushing our teeth, it’s what we do. So, I hope you can find something to savor within the borders of your life. Peace rjb