Alzhimer’s: The Thief That Came to Stay

She couldn’t recall how to get to the bedroom.

I girded up my patience and told her for the tenth time she’d be staying right down the hall  in the same bed right she was in last night… and the night before… and the night before. I also reminded her that she had eaten lunch and hour ago. To prove it I even nabbed from the trash can the paper plate that had held her now-eaten turkey sandwich.

“Now do you remember?

“Yes.”

“You also had two chocolate chip cookies.”

She shook her head. “Those were the smallest cookies I’ve ever seen.”

“Possibly.” Everyone who knows my mother knows she loves her cookies. In recent years we’ve learned to never short her of her entitled afternoon sweets. Bound and determined to have her daily share of sugar, she has been known to sneak a few treats in my sister’s kitchen pantry.

Pausing for a moment, she asked me, “Did you drive to your sister’s house?”

“No, I took a plane from North Carolina. Remember when you visited us a few years ago?”

She stared at me, trying to pull that fact from the deep recesses of a memory that’s been evaporating day by day.

“Oh yes. And while you’re here, you’re staying here with the lady who owns the house.”

I closed my eyes, horrified at how the mind can slip so quickly. “That’s your daughter, Debbie.”

This was how our days went when I visited my mother over the Thanksgiving holiday─ hard and full of questions and answers which could only be remembered for fifteen minutes at a time. But occasionally I saw moments of lucidity. “Are you writing anything else, Carol? How is your son, Joel?” I was grateful to see my mother, someone always wanting to be in the middle of whatever was happening, show some understanding of who I was.

At night I’d put her to bed. She shuffled her walker to the edge and we’d start the ritual. Pajamas on, glasses off, she’d struggle to slide her hips into the middle of the bed. Then she took a few minutes to unbend her knees so she could lie flat. Finally situated, she’d look up at me,smiling with the sweetness of a three-year old. “Thank you for taking good care of me.” I felt chagrined, thinking of the moments of irritation I’d experienced that day. I felt ashamed that I could only be of help for a two week visit, leaving my sister, along with my two brothers to handle the day-to-day struggles.

Peggy, ninety four-years young, knows she can’t recall much. It must be scary to feel one’s mental life shrinking, evaporating. Terrifying, I imagine. But as I reassured her, her children will help her. Our role now is to be her designated Keeper of Memories. We’ve got it, Mom. And fortunately, we, her children have a lot of good things to recollect.