Fourteen years ago, tomorrow, my mother passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. This was my last column to her.
Today my mother will rise and sit at her dining room table. She will have a cup of coffee to her right, well-browned toast on her plate. She will read the morning’s headlines, slide open the door to her patio so her cat may sun itself and then carefully, gingerly, almost reverently open cards from her four remaining sons.
A bouquet will adorn her table, a similar one in the living room with messages reminding her she is loved. She will cup the petals in her palm, lean close and smell the fragrance and briefly recall life as it once was.
And then she will forget.
My mother, like millions of mothers and fathers around the world, suffers from Alzheimer’s.
“I just get so frustrated,” she repeats often in our weekly telephone conversations, her repetition as much a symptom of the disease as a point of conversation.
My mother’s life is confined to the immediate. Her memory is shaky, like a fog that covers her past – she can recall glimpses but often fails to put events in context.
Shoe boxes full of pictures await their place in photo albums. There she stands with former First Lady Pat Nixon, and in another she’s laughing with Iowa Gov. Robert Ray. There she is as a little girl, brothers book-ending her as they pose outside their farmhouse. There with her husband and five boys, all dressed in centennial garb.
Many pictures have partial identification, first names without the last or one person in eight. She struggles to recall who or what or why or when and we go to the next photo where her comfort level returns as she knows all that are framed by the camera.
“I just get so frustrated,” she repeats.
Today she is bone thin. Her emerald green eyes have grayed. Weight loss is a symptom of Alzheimer’s and my mother, at 5 foot 5, struggles to stay above 90 pounds.
She has been victimized by every kind of solicitor. Churches, charities and “benevolent” associations all have proven themselves to be far less than benevolent. They appeal to her kindness, playing on her generosity. Financial duty, the first step of her independence, has been removed to the care of an executor.
She remains adamantly self-sufficient – she still drives to the drug store, the grocery and home again. She gets lost in parking lots. Calling me more than once, tears choking her as she dials my number, the only one still left in her fading memory.
A neighbor mows her lawn, refusing reward for his efforts. Another brings her flowers, showing kindness to match those who have taken advantage.
Today I will call. My mother will tell me she hasn’t heard from her other sons despite me knowing different. Today we will talk of the immediate, knowing the moment, this moment, is most important.
Today she will tell me about the flowers, about their fragrance. She will tell me about the coffee and her toast and of letting her cat sun on the patio.
Today I will tell her I love her and for a moment, a brief, flickering moment she will tell me she loves me too. And as our voices grow still and silence fills the air, I know that the days of sharing my life with my mother are over.
— Brian Bloom can be contacted at [email protected].
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