World Mental Health Day - 12th story: Hanging out with Mom (or what's left of her)

The 10th of October marks World Mental Health Day - leading up to it, I've decided to share a series of blogs I've written in the past years, and shared with my friends and colleagues at Swiss Re, about my parents fading away, my dad's passing, my brother's suicide, my mom's dementia.

I'm sharing these blogs here in the hope that they help raise awareness to the many invisible burdens we carry, and that they may give someone out there the courage to open up. Whatever you're going through, know that you are not alone - and that's what you'll experience when you let someone know. More about the rationale for sharing these stories (and more stories).

***

Hanging out with Mom (or what's left of her)

(Shared internally as is at Swiss Re on 26 November 2019)

Mom's been affected by Alzheimer's for years now. I often visit her at the elder care home and every time there's a bit less of her there. Her memories, most of them, are gone by now - what remains is, luckily, a happy old lady who loves people and enjoys visits (by strangers like me). 

For the past two years, since she's moved to the home, I visited pretty much every weekend. It's been good, nice for her, important for me. Day after day and week after week, memories would slip away. Conversations would increasingly loop and loop and eventually become mostly one-sided. You can talk about anything you want with my mom, life, art, politics, history - she'll smile, she'll pretend to listen and she'll be genuinely pleased to be there, wherever there is and whoever that person opposite her might be. But, by now, when you get half-way through a sentence she'll have forgotten the first words of that sentence. There are no more actual conversations. All that's left is a bit of verbal ping-pong about that which is not already lost to her mind. 

And so we enjoy the moments. We talk about the colors of the leaves as we walk through the forest and she'll comment about what she sees, experiences, right then and there. Colors, weather, people with their dogs passing by ... actually, that's about it. She'll be eighty-five in a few months - no more long walks. Until a few years ago a long walk was bliss for her. Now, a ten minute walk is about it, beyond that, she won't manage. This is partly her age, partly Alzheimer's. While they have exercise classes and some such at the home, she does nothing on her own anymore. She simply doesn't know what do to - she doesn't even know where she is, of course.

She'll talk about the long walks she takes daily, and the morning exercises she does, and how often she goes swimming in the summer and how much she loves it ... and you know that those are all just phrases from her past - she does none of those things and hasn't been able to for a long time. She used to do crosswords despite her Alzheimer's - no more. Concepts are vanishing, too - concepts such as "if X, then Y". Something as basic as a crossword, you need to understand the concept, right? There's a box that tells you what the hint is, and an arrow that indicates the direction of where the answer needs to go. And then of course the concept of one square, one letter ... big things, little things, gone.

I was there on Sunday. When I arrived Mom was sitting with a group of her floor mates, enjoying coffee and yacking. Mom happily engages when addressed and she spouts whatever comes to mind and it's fun - all the more so because it's loving. Her mates, old-timers one and all from the same village she was born and raised in, know her. They know she doesn't know. They know she enjoys their company and always meets them for the first time. So they talk, and they sing, and they enjoy themselves ... I watched them for a moment and smiled. It couldn't be better, under the circumstances, it really couldn't be better.

Then Mom looks up and sees me and I get a big fat nothing from her - a blank stare. I keep smiling - I'm just a person, some person standing there. The mates around her see me and nudge her and smile and the jolly old guy next to her asks her, "Do you know who that is?" Mom grins and shrugs and proclaims that she doesn't have a clue. The old lady on Mom's other side leans over and says, "That's your son, Rosmarie." She looks at me again, zero recognition, just as happy and smiling as before ... could be worse, right? Could be a lot worse.

I walk over and give her a hug and everyone's happy for her and with her and we chat for a bit and then Mom and I go buy some cake and visit her sister (my godmother) and her husband. Old memories go last and so, while I'm gone from Mom's mind, her sister's still there. Mom remembers bits and pieces from her childhood - and one of those strong childhood memories was that Mom, the big sister, always had to take care of her little sister - the connection's still there.

My Gotti (godmother in Swiss-German) and I talked for a while about Mom and Alzheimer's. She also visits Mom regularly at the home ... and we both know that, for Mom, it would be just the same if we never showed up there - ever again. Terrible as that sounds, she'd never, not once, not ever, miss us. And still we go. We hang out, we have non-conversation conversations, we hug, we laugh, we go for shorter and shorter walks and talk about the color of leaves and the weather. We know that, in truth, we're not doing it for Mom, we're doing it for ourselves. Call it peace of mind, call it unconditional love ... call it self-inclicted harm as we watch Mom vanish, little by little, before our eyes ... call it all of the above.