So it turns to my Ma is in the mid stages of Alzheimer's Disease, too. This after the one-two punch of a severe heart condition and a brain tumour.I'm re-discovering Alzheimer's ugly truth - that you lose the person you love long before they leave this earth. But I'm also learning that it can intimately acquaint you with love in forms you never thought possible.
If my Mom remembers one thing, I hope it's this.
Love is how I - a committed vegetarian - found myself making meat loaf for her, because I know she likes it.
It informs how I gently remind her that we need to take off all her clothes to take a bath, then stay with her to her soap up, because personal care is one of the first things to go in the middle stages.
Love makes me open the cupboard and quietly throw the food away because she's forgotten that that's what a fridge is for.
Love is what I feel -- well, love and the nervousness of a parent whose child is off to her first day of school -- when I arrange for her to spend Fridays in an adult day program for dementia patients. And pride is what I feel when she comes home brimming with excitement because she has made new friends who are "ordinary people." Translation: people just like her.
My Mom already forgets when I was born. Sometimes she grabs my arm and says, "My daughter" when we're out. I think it helps root her.
But I know the day is coming when she might forget who I am. I hope love comes to visit then, too.
1 comment:
Campbell's dad has had Alzheimers for years now, and it has been...many things to watch. The family is quite lucky in that he has accepted it with a certain amount of grace, which makes it easier on everyone. I guess the funny moments (being happy to be in the home because there are lots of young ladies to fuss over him) are necessary to balance out the irritating ones (asking the same question literally 500 times in a day) and the sad ones (forgetting details about the family).
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