1977

Recently I received a note from one of my mom’s friends. I looked at the envelope enviously. The handwriting is beautiful. Neat. Perfect. Last year when I needed my mom’s signature on some documents I found she was no longer capable of signing her name. She didn’t know her name. She doesn’t understand how to sign her name even when shown an example.

Inside the envelope are a note and a picture. The picture is a large group of ladies taken in the 70’s. My mom’s friends. Friends she made in grade school and met with regularly until everyone was either too infirm to meet or dead. The back of the picture has the same neat, precise handwriting with every single woman’s first name and maiden and married last name listed, in order. I was envious of the 88 year old woman who could still recall the details of this group, and had capacity enough to record them. I was envious of her family too. Out of the group of 10, 3 are still alive.

My mom is the only woman making a silly face. I stared at the picture a long time. The date says August 5, 1977. I thought about the person I was in 1977. A sullen 17 year old. Depressed. Angry. Did I know that then? I think about the woman my mom was in 1977. Pretty. Smart. Beaten regularly by her husband, my father. Depressed. Sullen. Angry.

If Then What

In the middle of the afternoon last week I received a phone call. "Susan, this is Kristie, this is not an emergency." If I were directing a scary movie, I would cue the foreboding music at the word "emergency." Because when the director of the assisted living facility where my mother lives calls, it usually isn't a happy call. This time, she informed me that twice in the last day or so, my mom had wandered off of the floor she lives on. Once she got onto the elevator and made her way to the third floor of the building (at 3 a.m.), and the other time she was found on the ground floor. The director kindly informed me that she thought it was time I move my mother into a secured "memory care" facility.

So, we have come to the point I have been dreading. The next move in my mother's life. Where I have to take her out of the place she has lived for the last 6 years, take her away from the caregivers she has grown so attached to, and move her into a safer setting.

My mother's dementia and I have been locked in a fierce battle for years. And while I won't make a pact with the devil, I will bargain with God to hang on to my mom for a while longer. I've pulled out all of my ammunition over the years.

Maybe. . .
If I move my mom closer to me.. .
If I get her new hearing aids. . .
If I get her out of the building. . .
If she gets the newspaper delivered. . .
If I try the latest in Alzheimer drugs. . .
If I hire a companion. . .
If I move her to an assisted living apartment. . .
If I move her to a smaller studio. . .
If I don't take her out of the building. . .

If I do all this then what? She will recover from dementia? My mother's senility has broken my heart more times than any boyfriend ever did.

Years ago, when my father was dying, I would walk to my office and look at the faces of the people passing me by. I would marvel about how you can't tell what people are dealing with just by looking at them.

So today I am donning my (figurative) t-shirt with the saying across the front "I'm in pain, people!!"

Grasshopper

Last summer my kids and I were in the car with my mom. My mom always rides shotgun with the kids in the back. My son use to ask Grandma "Who Am I?" This game was actually an effective way for me to gauge her cognitive decline. Usually, she would remember his name. He would then point to his sister, "Grandma, Grandma, what's her name?" Often times my mom would falter at my daughter's name. She would usually smile sweetly and say "I don't remember." Then he would point at me and say "Grandma, who is that?" It was clear my mom was going to say something! My mom, my smart, funny mom knew who I was! She was going to answer him! She replied "That's the lady who drives me!"

I am reminded of the old Kung-Fu T.V. series on in the 70's. Where if I were young Caine I would ask "Master, why should we love those who forget us?" and the blind old Master would reply "Grasshopper, love is confined in memory, but translucent in deeds."

This painting is the third in my series of bugs. I love this grasshopper. I took artistic license to change his colors and I think he is quite dashing!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly
Ugh! I hate when I forget to turn off the date on the camera! Original pastel.

Where would I be if I were a hat?

My mother's winter trademark is her white fur hat that she purchased at least 30 years ago at the Chicago Marshall Field's store on State Street. The personnel at the senior living complex where she resides knows her hat, her neighbors know her hat, and most importantly, my mother with dementia knows her hat. That hat turns up her vanity. When she places it on her head she always has to check herself out in the mirror! So imagine my broken heartedness when it suddenly came up missing. She had it at my house, I took her home and placed it on the shelf in her closet and the next time I wanted to take her out it was missing. I searched everywhere for it. I looked through every drawer, tore through the closet, looked under the bed, but it never turned up. For several weeks every time I went to her apartment I searched all over again, because the dementia robbed my mom of putting things back in places that made sense, I would search the cabinet in the bathroom, the kitchen cabinets, all the drawers I had previously searched. I know from experience with misplaced hearing aids that anything "lost" is usually in some quirky hiding place known only to my mom and if you are patient and wait long enough, the missing item turns up inexplicably. Last week I did my usual search, looking in all of the places that I had previously looked. It dawned on me that I had never checked in the fridge. Imagine my horror at finding a pair of dirty (very dirty) underwear balled up in the door of the fridge. Now tell me, what is more ironic? That I found a pair of dirty drawers in the fridge or that I opened the fridge to look for a hat?

More Art

Today I am posting an oil pastel that I did several years ago.

I Fought the Girls and I Won! (or how I wrestled my demented mother's breasts into a new bra.)

Why did I think my mother needed new bras? Just getting her to wear new clothes was a challenge and often times she wouldn't. So just what was I thinking when I marched her into the lingerie department of a major high-end retailer?

One sales woman was "busy" when I explained that my elderly mother with dementia needed to be fitted for new bras. I was embarrassed for my mom. Here was a woman who use to dress impeccably, and now her shirt was stained, her pants too short, and her bra had holes in it. Another saleswoman became available and as I hustled my mother into the dressing room she started to loudly protest. "Why am I here? I don't need anything! I didn't ask to come here!" Her protests can usually make me back down. I start thinking that maybe the task at hand is not that important, that my mom won't know the difference, that maybe it doesn't really matter. Why am I bothering?

I tell my mom that I am going to let the saleswoman help her while I sit in the armchair just outside the dressing room. At that instant, I am sure my mother is overwhelmed by the task at hand, she looks scared as I pull the curtain shut. I can hear the sales woman talking in a very soothing voice. She goes out and brings an armful of bras back in for my mom. My mom's sense of propriety survived the dementia. She doesn't get rude with the saleswoman, she complies. She tries on bras. She finds one that fits correctly. I ask the sales woman to give me a bag for my mother's old, holey bra and to take the tags off of the new bra she has on.

When I get to the cash register, I ask the saleswoman her name. "Lucille" she tells me. I tell her that for over a year I have been trying to get my mother new bra's, but have never been successful. Most salespeople don't want to deal with an elderly woman with dementia, and the new bras I bought my mom at places like Wal-Mart and Target never fit correctly or would sit in her drawer. I start to cry as I pay the bill, for a strangers kindness to an elderly woman with dementia. At the loss of my well coiffed, well dressed mother. And amazingly, Lucille starts to cry too.