Let me start by saying I am terrified of getting Alzheimer's. My father had Alzheimer's. He had it back in the late 1970s when it was just coming into the American consciousness and diagnostic criteria were still being hashed out in the medical community. My father had it before my mother suddenly and without warning left him in the summer of 1980 and took me with her. He had it afterwards when he was found wandering alone up and down the sloughs and knocking on doors at all hours of the day and night looking for us, asking if anyone knew what had happened to his wife and young teenage daughter. He had it when he answered the phone a few days later when my cowardly bitch of a mother made me call my daddy and tell him we were never coming back. He had it when he was made a ward of the state and committed to the
I loved my dad. And he was the one person in the world I was sure loved me.
The marriage between my parents was very complicated. Not that my father was blameless in the mess, but my mother brought a whole otherworld kind of crazy into that relationship. She was a master of deceit and deflection. She was the poor little girl nobody loved all grown up into the woman who couldn't get enough love. I don't mean to be flippant when I say that. She grew up with incredible neglect and abuse, and came out with the kinds of coping mechanisms and cunning that most of the time goes along with that kind of crap. I think she was sure there were two people in the world who loved her...her Aunt Glady and her brother Gibb. Aunt Glady died when I was three years old. Gibb died when I was six. At that point my mother felt all alone in the world. And from then on it seems as if her only motivation was to fill that void and feel loved again by whatever means possible.
This was an unfortunate turn for me; I was in the way.
She created multiple personas and was known by different names within different, non-overlapping, social circles in the community, each one allowing her to act out and acquire a different feeling of love. She couldn't leave me with a babysitter fearing Dad might discover she was doing something other than what she'd told him, so I often accompanied her on her outings. Sometimes she just left me places until she returned. And sometimes she traded my innocence for companionship. I was made to be mute on all matters of her behavior under the threat that Daddy would stop loving me if he knew where I'd been. This kind of reasoning makes sense to a six year old when it comes from your mother. My mother was and is loved by everyone who has ever met her. Even when I was a teenager I think many of my friends liked her better than me...she was so much fun.
Consequently, I manage to live every day with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, with some occasional run-of-the-mill anxiety too. At the age of 45 I am still learning my triggers and responses to things like being lied to, my own capacity for duplicity, feeling invisible, the smell of thrift stores, or having to make a phone call. My biggest fear is talking to my mother. Within five minutes of seemingly playful conversation she can evoke in me such intense feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and distrust that I cease to function. In the 27 years since I left home, I’ve seen my mother seven times.
Three years ago my older half-sister called to let me know Mom has Alzheimer’s and it’s fairly advanced. She’s expected to need full-time care in a facility within four years.
My fear of getting Alzheimer’s grows. I begin taking fish oil supplements for brain health. I begin taking note of every time I forget something. One day I miss the freeway exit for my house, knowing as I pass the exit sign that it is supposed to mean something significant to me but I can't remember what. I have to get off at the next exit and backtrack to get home, where I research symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s and wonder if I have them. I research the hereditary nature of the disease…it’s inconclusive. I don’t want this disease. I watched it take my father’s memories, the most recent ones being the first to go, so that he slowly relived his life backwards. I don’t want that to happen to me. I have worked hard to leave behind the days I spent as my mother’s child and cultivate confidence and joy in my life. I do not want to lose these days and be left with those. I don't want my loved ones to leave me.
A year passes and I realize I have to go visit my mother. I have a 15 year old son who has only met his grandmother three times, the last time so long ago he doesn’t even remember her face. Despite my fears he is entitled to have a memory of his grandmother. I have to do this for him before she becomes the memory of a nursing home, or the memory of a hospital.
So two years ago in August, I pack my son and my boyfriend into the car and we take a drive to
We drive to Mom’s apartment and her husband answers the door and shows us in. Mom is set up in a recliner and stands up as I make introductions. I think we hug but I don’t remember. Her husband stays and chats with us for a bit. I see that Mom watches him and frowns occasionally to indicate that she disagrees with whatever he is saying at the time. And then he leaves so that the three of us can visit with her. I try to bring up topics about her grandson that might stimulate conversation between the two of them. It doesn’t really work. She is animated and conversational, but it soon becomes apparent that she doesn’t know who we are. She has five topics that she discusses and she talks about each one in order and then starts over. I no longer remember what three of her topics were, but I do remember two of them. Her daddy was 4’11” and her mom was 5’10” and they made a funny couple; and, nobody can take her sense of humor away from her. We stay for an hour.
When we leave I am elated. Not only have I accomplished my mission to give my son a chance to meet his grandmother and remember it, but I don’t feel like killing myself. She didn’t push a single one of my buttons. She doesn’t remember me well enough to remember I have buttons that she loves to push and make me squirm. I’ve had a pleasant visit with my mother. Later my son and boyfriend make some sly joke about nobody taking their sense of humor away from them and I scold them for making fun of the poor lady. They reply, “Ha! We got you to feel sorry for your mom!” And they’re right. Despite the PTSD, depression, and anxiety, I came out of my childhood of neglect and abuse with a strong sense of compassion for those who cannot help themselves. I had to in order to forgive myself for the things that happened to and around me that I could not prevent or control.
Two years later, I’m still afraid of getting Alzheimer’s. But in my mother’s case, at least when I saw her, it seemed that her memories had eroded back in time and settled on some happy ones for her. And maybe it will do the same for me too. Her loss of memories about me opens the door for me to fulfill some of my daughterly duties as she nears the end of life…a task I thought my half-sister was going to have to handle all on her own. There is the hidden gift in this case. For this I say thank God for Alzheimer’s.
