I really can’t thank all of you enough for helping us make this trip.
Mom is in a good place with dedicated people and under 24/7 supervision. That wasn’t a ‘relief’ as I already knew my brother and his wife were making sure she was taken excellent care of.
She can’t be left unsupervised. She gets lost, has forgotten how to do things, etc. and they both work a lot. They don’t need to come home to find their house burning down because she forgot to turn the stove off or something similar.
Seeing her was a shock. For me, it was as though she’d grown old in the blink of an eye.
From this:
To this:
Mom’s always had something of a weight fluctuation going on after having four kids. She’s gone from about a size 16 to 10 several times over the past three decades, so seeing her not much larger than myself was really strange.
To be honest, between that and the rest of the changes in her, if I walked by her on a street while she was wearing a pair of shades, I wouldn’t recognize her.
She feels frail and looks about 20 years older than she is. Her hair has gone completely white. She’s fearful, indecisive and it’s a complete about face from the confident, not afraid to get in your face person I remember.
‘Heartbreaking’ is an excellent word for it.
She did recognize me instantly, which meant a LOT to me. Her mouth dropped open she said ‘Gay!’ and almost ran to me for a hug. We were both pretty teary-eyed.
My sister-in-law took us to Hollywood Boulevard for lunch and some sightseeing the first day. I held Mom’s hand most of the time and basically listened to her chatter. It was like tending to a small child, except without the curiosity that makes them dart off to look at things.
She was afraid of getting lost and kept asking me if I’d stay right there, wait for her and not leave her when she wanted to look at something or used the restroom.
I think for most of the day, she knew who I was. There were a few times when she called me by my sis-in-law’s name and once she called me ‘Momma’. A couple of times, I caught a look on her face like she was wondering where she was at and who the hell all of us were.
She seemed to recognize my son despite how much he’s grown; her first words to him were ‘My god, how tall are you now?’ but she didn’t say his name but twice the entire time. She told my daughter that she was getting big and looked pretty, but couldn’t remember her name at all when asked.
I don’t really think she remembered their names, but the girl didn’t notice. She just chatted away like she always does and didn’t blink when Granny said something odd. The boy understands what’s going on, so he walked with her a little bit and just went along with whatever she said, acting like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
I’m rather used to having different voices yapping around in my brain, so I was able to follow along her jumps from present to past to fanciful without any trouble. Another bonus to being a writer, I guess.
The most important thing was seeing her.
I already knew Alzheimer’s was fatal. I understood that from the first moment my sis-in-law told me the diagnosis. I knew the progression of the disease in Mom’s case was very rapid and there’s been a couple of people who’ve told me some things to expect from their own experiences with loved ones suffering from it.
My brother and I had a talk the evening I arrived. He was trying to prepare me for the fact she might not recognize or remember me – there’s been instances when asked where she’s responded that he’s her only child. Prodding her a bit usually resulted in her agreeing she had more kids, but there was always the question of whether she actually remembered the rest of us or was just agreeing with him.
One of the things we talked about or rather, he talked and I reassured him about, was what to do when the time comes.
Mom witnessed both her father and step-father being kept alive by artificial means for several months, and how miserable they were at the ends of their lives. Back then it was standard procedure.
She and my grandmother were both very clear that they didn’t want the same thing for themselves. When my grandmother was in the ICU for her final days, Mom signed the DNR order for her and had her taken off the ventilator. My grandmother was going to require either mechanical assistance or, if she managed to continue breathing on her own, 24/7 care and would be living as the proverbial vegetable. Her higher brain functions were gone.
Knowing that, I agreed with him that the important thing was to make sure she was as comfortable as possible but when the time came, to just let her go. No resuscitation, no mechanical assistance to keep her alive.
She’ll be cremated as per her wishes and he’s going to bring her ashes back home to Texas to spread.
That’s not a decision you ever want to make for any member of your family, but in this case, it’s not a hard one to make. It would only be trying to stave off the inevitable and there’s no reason to do that for any reason. She can’t be miraculously cured.
The whole trip boiled down for me to her seeing me, recognizing me and that hug. That was worth all the stress, begging and everything that went into getting there.
Again, thank all of you so very, very much for making it possible.
