ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE HAS KIDNAPPED MY MOTHER

May 10, 2008

The following is a guest article, written by Sonja Mason. Sonja is my sister. This is a true story about our mother, Kati. Our mother taught us that the worth of a human being is not measured by how they treat the rich, the strong, and the independent. Their true value can be found in how they behave towards those members of our society whose voice is not strong enough to speak for themselves, namely the very young, the very old, and the animals.

From Sonja, in honor of all our mothers,

Six years ago my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At first we didn’t know what to expect. This sounds naive, but it wasn’t really. We had no experience with the disease. Mother was just getting a bit confused. Somehow, she went from being confused to being frozen in a wheelchair and being spoon-fed puréed food. This is the story of what happened in between the beginning and the end.

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At First

In the beginning, she would merely forget where to put the spoons. Dad told me that she was becoming disoriented but until I went to visit them, I didn’t realize what that meant in practical terms. The visit which was the most memorable was in the spring 4 years ago.

She was still walking and talking but she made less sense than before and it was harder and harder to act like everything was ok. We would sit at the table and my mother would want to partake in the conversation as usual. Since she was unable to follow a normal conversation, she would merely repeat and repeat the same story eight or ten times. I mean this quite literally. We would answer in exactly the same way each and every time and then she would start again. I would marvel at the fact that she did not seem to remember the conversation from one minute to the next. Literally one minute!

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Washing Dishes

One day, I was sitting at the table while she wiped down the counters after a meal. Dad had already washed the dishes. She could no longer do this because it would take her 2 hours to finish. She couldn’t tell where the end of the chore was.

So he would wash and she would dry. Next, she would wipe the counters until they were dry. She couldn’t tell where the end of this chore was either. She would wipe for 45 minutes. It is not a big kitchen. I found it mesmerizing to watch her. She was meticulous, thorough and endless. After a long while, she felt she was ready to move on.

Anyhow, during one of these interminable drying sessions, she was talking about something, I forget what. She said to me “You are not my daughter but I feel you understand me”. What I understood was that she
no longer knew who I was.

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Moving Out

From that point on, it went severely down hill and quickly. She soon became angry, frustrated at her incapacity to be the person she was and aggressive. We soon had to have her put into care. This was a bad day. She was just coherent enough to explain to Dad that if he was living at home then she should be there too. She felt that this was her place.

Under normal circumstances she would have been right. She was unaware that she had gotten lost 3 times only to be returned by the police. She was unaware that she was verbally abusive at 4 in the morning. She was unaware that she was incoherent and delusional. All she knew was that she was leaving home. She was mad. It was all Dad’s fault in her opinion.

On that day, Dad had his first sherry at 8:30 in the morning. He was quite anesthetized when 10:30 AM came around. I gave him some gum and took the car keys. She was not speaking to either of us.

In the 3 years that followed, the only person she clearly remembered was Dad and it continued to be his fault. She would make this clear to him each and every time he went in to see her. To his everlasting credit, he continued to visit faithfully. My sister and brother and I live far away. None of us are there regularly. I live the farthest away. A whole country away. A country full of tears.

We go when we can. We visit Mum, we sit with Dad. He has learned to cook. He can now make blueberry pie, seafood chowder and Béchamel sauce. Not bad for a man who never even made his own tea. This illness has shown us what kind of family we are. We know that when the chips are down we can count on each other. We are team players. It is a sad team but a team nonetheless. We take turns. We try to stagger our visits.

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More Lemon

Dad lives alone now. When I phone, he still says “ We’ll call you back.”

He hasn’t moved a thing, even though it is clear that she is never coming home. Today she sits in a wheelchair unable to move, unable to speak and unable to feed herself. When I visit, I spoon-feed her mashed food.

The other day I was doing just this and I became distracted talking to the nurses. I had stopped spooning in the dessert, which was lemon cake soaked in milk to make it mushy. Suddenly, this voice shouted at me “More lemon, more lemon!” She came through loud and clear. No matter what this disease has taken from my mother, it has not taken her love of desserts.

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Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Outside The Box

Comments

3 Responses to “ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE HAS KIDNAPPED MY MOTHER”

sonja Mason on May 10th, 2008 2:36 pm

I love the intro you wrote for me. Thank you. I think Mum would like it, too.
Holly on May 10th, 2008 4:38 pm

There are times when I can’t remember something about my day, or a time in my children’s development, such as how did Henry learn to be potty trained ’cause I don’t remember that stage.
I fear that if I don’t remember a moment of my life then I must not have been paying attention, or that I wasn’t being mentally present for my children.
Then I think about Kati. As far as we can tell she can’t remember her life, but I know that she had a very good one. She can’t identify her children but she was a great mother. She was a loving partner, she was a wonderful community member, a teacher and a friend to humans and animals alike.
Cathy MacPherson on May 11th, 2008 4:03 pm

My grandmother had Alzheimer’s Disease. I remember the day I fully understood that we were losing her to this horrid disease. I was standing in the foyer of my parents’ home watching her as she sat on the bottom step of the staircase staring helplessly at her untied shoes, picking at the laces. I realized she didn’t know what to do. It was heartbreaking. Thank you for this article Sonja.