Mom is 93. Her joints have stiffened and her eyesight has failed. She lost her right breast decades ago to cancer. If, ten years ago, she were to have not awakened from her night’s sleep, her death would have been very sad, but not unexpected. I would have missed her terribly and I’d regret how my daughter didn’t get many years with her grandma. But such is not the case. Instead, it was about ten years ago that we started noticing Mom’s mental processes beginning to fail. She repeated her life stories more often. She couldn’t remember names of neighbors and friends. She took to writing everything down and posting these notes throughout her apartment:
- Aspirin in drawer next to sink
- $650 rent due on 5th of month
- Dr. Anderson - primary care physician
- Clean cat box
Then the adaptations began to fall short. I found opened containers of yogurt, pudding and salad dressing stored in the cupboard rather than the refrigerator. Duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate purchases of batteries, ketchup, scotch tape, envelopes, jelly, and other random items were scattered about her small apartment. Her fingernails were often dirty, her hair disheveled and food dotted the front of her blouses.
Three times I accompanied her to her doctor appointment to discuss these changes with a medical professional. Three times THE MOST ASININE TEST EVER to assess her cognitive abilities was administered. Three times she was determined to be okay.
Diarrhea became common-place. Was it the unrefrigerated food? Maybe the host of supplements she recently purchased? It was obvious she was suffering alone at night as her bed and the path from her bed to the bathroom was often stained with her own feces. The apartment manager began suggesting it was time to move Mom somewhere else.
An assisted living place that would accept her meager income - - and her cat - - was found. She accepted the move from her apartment to assisted living with relative ease. “I have the nicest neighbors here,” she’d say.
And it was this same pleasantness that became the hallmark of her decent.
The handful of stories from her life that she repeated over and over again all had happy endings. When asked, she always replied she felt great. She was always happy to see a visitor and never sad when the visit ended. She loved the mountains, the rain, watching people from the front porch. Everything was good, right, pretty and happy. This ever-pleasant, easy going, upbeat person was definitely NOT the mom I knew.
The descent continues. She doesn't live with her cat as she can’t remember to care for it. She struggles using her walker, opting for the wheelchair more and more often. She wears pull-ups 24/7 and a Johnny-on-the-spot is permanently placed in her room. The life stories she recounts is reduced from twenty different stories to maybe five or six… on a good day. I self-medicate before visiting her so I don’t become too exasperated having to hear the same story repeated over and over and over again. She quit wearing her glasses a few months ago. “A miracle,” she claimed one day and she hasn’t worn her glasses since. She sleeps most of the day in the chair in front of the television. Her ability to initiate conversation with others is gone. Her stories once rooted in fact have become pure fantasy. She believes she drives a Pontiac convertible and tutors rich kids every Tuesday.
What hurts most is realizing my heart connection with this frail and confused woman is faltering. She doesn’t behave, talk, reason or conduct herself like my mom. She is becoming just some old lady that I must visit and spend time with. Any sense of guilt I may feel when I don’t visit her is eased with the knowledge she doesn’t even realize I’m not visiting her. She’s incontinent, in pain and her sense of taste and thirst are so diminished that she enjoys neither drinking nor eating.
My truth is, if she were to die today, I would only feel relief. I have already grieved Mom’s passing. Mom is lost somewhere down the dark hole of dementia, and it kills me a little bit every day to know she is nowhere near the bottom.
