Fleeting Memories

I forget a lot of things. “Where did I put my keys? Did you see my phone? I know I put my sunglasses right there.”  Mom though, Mom forgets different kinds of things. She forgets how to swallow pills. She forgets that she is taking her pills, while she has one in her mouth. She forgets that she is standing up while you are trying to transfer her to a different seat. Mom forgets that the compression bandage is covering a wound on her arm and she takes it off to see why she has it there.
I worry when someone’s name (often someone I know well) disappears off the tip of my tongue. I worry that I should be taking the Alzheimer’s meds myself. I worry how long will it be, before the erosion of personality starts on me. That may be one of the biggest hidden tolls of taking care of Mom, the conviction that I am looking at myself in a few years.
Some of the things mom forgets makes my life more arduous, like when she forgets how to move her feet to get into the car. Some of it makes life less pleasant, like the toilet chores that are routine for me now. But nothing is quite as bad as the dread of what lies ahead. With Mom and Dad both severely incapacitated with the disease, genetically speaking, I feel doomed.
Well, enough of such pleasant thoughts this morning. I need to check on Mom. It is a gray rainy morning here, I hope yours is brighter, inside and out. Shalom for now.

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…