by jphilo | Sep 28, 2012 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
It may be impolite to brag about one’s accomplishments, but I’m gonna buck convention and admit my absolute genius for self-delusion. In the past month, I’ve convinced myself that:
- eating large amounts of chocolate won’t result in weight gain if combined with exercise,
- our new grandchild would be born before his/her due date,
- and publishers would snap up my book proposal about post-traumatic stress disorder in children.
If it weren’t for cold, hard facts like:
- my jeans fitting a bit to snuggly,
- our daughter-in-law now a week past her due date,
- and the sweetest rejection letter ever from the first publisher to respond to my agent about the book proposal,
I would still be wrapped in those delusions. Instead, I’ve moved onto new ones. My two favorites are:
- It’s still summer.
- Mom’s holding her own in the fight against Alzheimer’s.
But brilliant foliage of the trees along our gravel road forced the abandonment of the first bit of self-delusion. Two phone calls with Mom shattered the second one.
She called yesterday morning, something she rarely takes the initiative to do. “Any news on the baby?” she asked.
“No,” I answered, “and it’s getting really hard to wait. I was hoping the baby would be born today, on your mom’s birthday.”
“That would have been nice, ” she agreed. “But Jolene, if the waiting’s hard for you, think how much harder it is for Abbey.” She sounded so much like her old self, I wondered if the prospect of being a great-grandmother was winning the war against mental decline.
But she called again later in the afternoon. “What’s my old address?” she asked.
I told her and asked, “Why did you need that?”
“I’m filling out this registration form to prove I live in a different county. It asks for my former address.”
“Is this so you can vote for president?”
“Yes,” she replied. After a pause she asked, “What’s today’s date?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. Every year until this one, my mother spent all September anticipating her mother’s birthday, talking about her, telling stories, saying she missed her. This year, she didn’t know what day it was, even though I’d mentioned it in our last phone call.
I swallowed and said, “September 27. It’s your mom’s birthday.”
We chatted for a few minutes. I teased her about who she would vote for. I promised to call her as soon as we heard anything about the baby. Then I hung up, let go of my delusion, and faced the truth:
- Mom’s memory is failing.
- Alzheimer’s is chewing more holes in her brain.
On the other hand:
- She knows who she’ll vote for in the presidential election.
- She’s eager for news of her first great-grandchild.
- She can still call and talk on the phone.
She may be failing, but her life, and ours, are rich with memories. And when she can’t remember anymore, we’ll remember for her.
- That’s not self-delusion.
- That’s love.
by jphilo | May 18, 2012 | Daily Life
This morning, I was up bright and early. At 6:15 I left the house to walk, my back exercises, Bible study, and breakfast already completed. Ten minutes later, my phone rang.
By the time I fished it out of my pocket and untangled the iPod ear buds wrapped around it, and I inadvertently pressing several buttons, the caller gave up. The screen said it had been Hiram, so I tried to call back. But somehow I hit the mute button and had to hang up. Eventually he called back, and after explaining I really hadn’t hung up on him twice, he remembered why he called in the first place. Which is a miracle in itself, as the rest of the story proves.
“Did you put muffins in the microwave this morning?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered, and then added. “And I ate them. For breakfast.”
“Okay,” he said. “So these in the microwave are mine?”
I pondered the question for a moment.
I didn’t remember putting more muffins in the microwave.
But the older I get, the more I forget what I’ve really done.
The older I get, the more I confuse what I only considered doing with what I actually did. And the older I get, the more reality seems like a day dream and the more my day dreams feel like reality.
That’s when I realized Hiram and I have been married for a long time, and he’s rubbing off on me. As my internal dialogue confirms, though I have spent the last 35 years pulling him out of the anti-memory-time-and-space vortex where he lives, growing older is gradually sucking me into it with him. My days as household memory queen are numbered. Maybe even over already.
Hesitatingly, I answered. “I don’t think I would put a second set of muffins in the microwave. And my stomach feels full, so I ate mine.”
“Okay.” His voice remained cheerful and unperturbed. “They must be mine. I just don’t remember putting them there.”
I laughed. “We’re pathetic.”
He agreed, and we both hung up. I slipped the phone back in my pocket and felt something long and stringy wrap around it. I pulled the phone out again, along with a tangle of iPod ear buds.
Where in the world did those come from? I wondered. Then I stuffed them in my pocket and walked down the road cheerful and unperturbed.
Just like my husband.
by jphilo | Jan 9, 2012 | Family
Until last week, I had no idea an SE Ledger could be cruel.
I didn’t even know the letters SE stamped in the bottom right corner of Mom’s old ledger meant “Single Entry” until last week. Not until it was time to purchase a new ledger to replace her old one. When she bought her old ledger, they could still be purchased at office supply and stationary stores.
But not any more.
Computer accounting programs may have rendered those cloth bound, sturdy books obsolete for the general public. But not for Mom. At age 84, she’s determined to record her monthly finances by hand following the same system she’s used since she started teaching in the early 1950s. Some months, her Alzheimer’s barely gives her the mental capacity to continue this routine that used to be as effortless as breathing, The disease certainly won’t allow her to adapt to electronic accounting.
So she had to have a new, Single Entry Ledger.
The saleswoman at our local office supply store showed me what they had in stock. “You could adapt it for single entry, ” she suggested. How do you explain to a stranger that your mother, who taught three decades of children to read and write and do math, that your mother, who showed you how to use her accounting system to you when you were but a child, that your mother who showed so many young minds how to adapt and change in preparation for the future, can no longer adapt to change, that she prefers to live in the past and do things as she’s always done them?
“No,” I said. “It needs to be a single entry ledger. She can’t adapt.”
Finally, we found a Single Entry Ledger in a catalog. But it cost thirty dollars. So I called Mom and asked if she wanted me to order it. “Thirty dollars!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my.” She paused for a moment and said, “Oh, go ahead and order it. I’ve got enough money, and I need a new ledger.”
The new ledger arrived a few days ago.
It’s been sitting on my desk, alongside the old one, until I take them to Mom tomorrow. The new one is a little bigger than its predecessor, but the rows and columns will be familiar enough to her. She’ll be able to record her income and expenditures, with help from me, for a few more years. I don’t like to look at the old ledger or the new one. They are cruel reminders of a cruel disease slowly destroying my mother’s fine and active brain.
Alzheimer’s.
by jphilo | Aug 9, 2011 | Family
Today’s recycled post from August 8, 2009 is one of my all time faves, for several reasons. First, the accompanying photo is downright gorgeous. Second, the post is a good reminder of how much things change. Third, the post is a good reminder of how things stay the same.
Two years later the heritage geraniums are blooming their deep, intense red. Two years later, Mom’s Alzheimer’s is slowly and inexorably advancing. Two years later, she’s still with us. She’s still here.
Geranium Whispers – Recycled
On this rainy Friday morning, I bustled around the house, opening window shades. The clouds were thick and the house was gloomy, so I eagerly coaxed the weak light that penetrated the clouds inside for a visit.
When I opened the shades to the patio, the blossoms of an heirloom geranium took my breath away. Mom gave me the plant over a year ago, when she still lived in her own home and had no idea she would soon break up housekeeping. Decades before her mother, Josephine Newell Hess, had given her a slip from the plant her mother, Cora Rose Newell, had given her a slip from in the 1940s.
Had Mom waited one more winter, it might have been too late to pass on the plant and the history behind it. In the past twelve months, Alzheimer’s has taken its relentless toll on her memory, stamina, and abilities. Our daily phone calls get shorter and shorter as she finds it increasingly difficult to hold up her end of a conversation. She still loves to read and do crossword puzzles, but has no interest in visiting friends or going new places. Quilting and jigsaw puzzles confuse her. She can’t make decisions.
Slowly but surely, Alzheimer’s is turning my steely, determined mother into a soft, hesitant whisper of a woman. But this morning, when I opened the shade and those bright red blossoms waved at me, they comforted me and reminded me that all is not lost.
“She’s with you,” they whispered. “She’s right here.”
“Thanks,” I said, and then I waved back.
by jphilo | Jun 9, 2011 | Family
Some weeks are just too hot to handle, and this week is getting mighty steamy. You might think I’m talking about the record breaking, never-before-experienced-this-early-in-June heat wave that’s got the whole state sweating up a storm. At least, we hope there’s a storm coming soon to cool things down. But it’s more than the weather making this week too hot to handle, though the heat was the primary instigator of events.
Think domino effect.
Think taking your 82-year-old mother to a mammogram appointment in the heat.
Think she’s already hot and sweaty before the boob smashing begins.
Think she’s really hot and sweaty after the smashing ends.
Think her daughter doesn’t realize quite how hot and sweaty her mother was and took her to Walgreens to buy a Father’s Day card for her son.
Think her daughter figured out how hot and sweaty her mother was when her mother got sick to her stomach and threw up in a plastic shopping bag.
Yeah, that kind of domino effect.
Poor mom. On Memorial Day a few short weeks ago, she was almost dancing in the cemetery, making jokes about modeling for her internment beside Dad. Yesterday, she was over-heated, smashed, and tossing her cookies at the drug store. This morning, she’s feeling better and eating again, but the whole experience has me thinking.
Why are we subjecting this 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s to yearly mammograms? There’s no history of breast cancer in her family. And if she ever was diagnosed with breast cancer, would she want treatment? After all, the best day she had all month was when we visited the cemetery. It’s where most of the people she loves hang out. However, if I continue in this vein, the topic could render this post could get a little too hot to handle. So I’d better stop now.
That darn domino effect.
