Do I Know You?

I had just got back from spending four days at my mother’s house. I felt like I could lock myself in a closet and cry for a week and it would not wash away the pain.

My mother was a victim of Alzheimer’s.

Unfortunately, I moved with my husband and children across the country from my mother seven years before and she just didn’t understand why I didn’t just get in the car and come on over. She was at that stage where she was beginning to lose her ability to communicate and confusion reigned. For many, this means a quiet slippage into a fathomless void where sons are mistaken for husbands, grandchildren for siblings, and the days are spent sitting quietly and staring blankly or else feeding imaginary chickens or talking to people who aren’t really there. My mother, however, was not going so gently into that good night. A feisty, argumentative person most of her life, I can remember her yelling at another parent at a little league game, “the last time I saw a mouth that big it had a hook in it!” She had—as the saying goes—“a tongue that could clip a hedge.” And everything around her stayed neatly trimmed. Now, that character trait was almost all that remained. For her this meant constant anguish and torment as everyone around her was “a damn, stupid idiot” for making such little sense.

In attempting to medicate her mood swings, I considered that a tranquilizer gun with darts might be more effective than the anti-anxiety drugs she was taking. All 97 pounds of her were keeping us hopping every minute she was awake. We would at first try reason and then finding that a futile effort, we would end up simply trying to placate her constant chatter, salty language, and befuddlement.

The overwhelming sadness was she just wasn’t there anymore. Gone was the mother who would call to chat about gardening, the wife who loved to dance the two-step, and the grandmother who would stop by on Saturday morning with a warm box of donuts. Only tiny glimmers remained that were rapidly fading.

During my visit I wanted to do things that she might find enjoyable as most of her days were spent at home now in the care of a “sitter.” We planned to have “fun.” We went to get our nails and toes done and she fell asleep in the chair. I took her to get her hair washed and cut. She thought it felt soft. She fussed over her shoelaces constantly and continually wanted to know why she was wearing my clothes, which she wasn’t.

Then one evening, I enticed her out for a drive to come with me to pick up some Mexican food, since restaurant eating had long since become too difficult. Upon arriving, the Mariachi Band was in full swing. Always a good dancer she began to bob and sway to the music. One of the hostesses took her by the hand and looked at me to see if it would be okay to take her back to where the musicians were busy serenading the evening’s diners. I nodded and I began to pay for the food that had arrived in a take-out bag. Clapping began to drift in from the dining area. The hostess motioned for me to come see.

The band had made a space for my mother who was happily dancing up a storm, smile beaming from ear to ear. Everyone was caught up in the abandonment of her actions and they were clapping and smiling too. She grabbed one of the young waiters around the neck and gave him a big hug and he hugged her back. It was a magical moment.

As we got in the car to go she exclaimed, “Now that was fun!” She then proceeded to ramble on about how nice the waiter was and that he had good skin and she wished she could have stayed because she thinks he kind of liked her and she didn’t think it would have been wrong to dance with him and how my step-father was probably going to be jealous. I was so grateful I almost cried. I couldn’t help but think this may very well be the last “fun” she ever has.

As it turned out I wasn’t far from right. A change to a new medication seemed to help. She was a lot calmer, and during our next visit to the beach house we would rent, she actually went for several walks along the shore with my brother and several of her grandkids. The beach house had been the solution to having a place where everyone could come and be together. Unfortunately, before this trip the beach had terrified her and she always stayed in the house, clinging to her dog afraid to even look out the windows that lined one whole side of the house. Yet this time it was different. She was sprinting along the edge of the water, my oldest daughter struggling to keep up. There was the tiniest hope that she might still get to enjoy a little more of what life might have to offer but it was just that—tiny. Peering into the face of a good friend she had known for over 40 years she said, “Do I know you?” When informed that yes—she did and they were old friends she shrugged and in typical form, she told them, “You know, life’s a bitch and then you die.” Two months later she died of a heart attack

George Carlin was right. The devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.

At her funeral, my oldest daughter read a poem and I gave the eulogy. I talked about her feistiness, the fact she was one of the first women to drive a gasoline tank truck for Exxon and that she was an accomplished seamstress who made all the clothes I wore to school. I also talked about how much she loved to dance and when they played Ave Maria through the piped in music, I couldn’t help but think, it really should have been a Mariachi Band.