Difficult Truths and Love Entwined
I've been thinking of my mom lately. She loved Spring, her garden, being out in the sun. She pops into my thoughts like new shoots in sunlight.
I've also been thinking of fellow caregivers and families who are having a difficult time in "Dementia Land" or "Alzheimer's World". Thinking about what "just going with it" looked like on a day to day basis for us.
One day this week I went to Kroger for their brand new olive bar (god, the roasted marinated tomatoes and the feta cheese & olives in herbed olive oil!). Memories rolled in like waves. Mom and I shopped at the Kroger close to her house.
I expected it, I did walk into a Kroger...
Grocery shopping with her was a trip. Part laugh fest, mostly negotiation, always filled with love.
We'd make a list in the kitchen, checking to see what she needed. She'd tell me she needed more Diet Coke and ice cream. I'd gently reassure her she had plenty of both. No, can't have enough, she said...because she forgot she had any. She squirreled Diet Coke all over in various kitchen cupboards, then forgot where she put it. And she wanted to make sure she had enough ice cream for the kids. The kids she hallucinated, that ran through the house playing; the kids that sometimes wouldn't go home and she'd call asking me to help get them out of the house so she could go to bed. The kids she wanted to feed...so we had to shop for them too.
No arguing, just noted.
The last few times we picked up groceries together she insisted on getting hotdogs and chips for the kids. So, we got cheap hotdogs, buns. I talked her into a smaller bag of chips. I'd seen her leave place settings and PBJs for 3 children that simply weren't there. But they were very real to her. I knew that telling her any different was upsetting, agitating. We made allowances in the budget and rolled with it. She might eat it, or feed it to the squirrels.
The hallucinations became particularly challenging. I'd get calls from mom LATE at night she'd tell me my dad was unconscious on the floor; she wanted to call 911. He'd been dead for years. The fear in her voice was palpable. Mom thinking dad was in pain on the floor yet knowing somewhere in her failing, murky memory that what she was seeing wasn't right.
I'd drive to her house at two in the morning to reassure her that dad's not in pain or crisis and that she is ok. How can I convince her she's ok if she's seeing him injured on the floor. How the hell is she ok when she saw that? How is any of this all right? How is it any better when you know you are losing your mind and you cannot stop it. Your daughter cannot stop it. She can only let you know you are not alone. That she is there, riding this horror show out with you.
Once I saw my mother talk lovingly to an empty chair convinced she was talking to my sister at a considerably younger age. I knew I should just let her do that, play it out, because to her it was very real. To disrupt that would only agitate her to a point at which I could not calm her. It would have been cruel to tell her that her youngest daughter was not in that chair at all. So I let her be. All the while my heart broke into a million tiny pieces on that kitchen floor, forever changed by the scene I witnessed. She never remembered doing that. I could not possibly ever forget it.