Dealing With My Mother’s Alzheimer’s
She’s not the sharp, funny, loving woman I once knew. Her modes of conversation have diminished, and the few subjects she has left all seem to be negative. Alzheimer’s has minimized her world and turned her into someone I can hardly recognize. I always heard about and experienced this disease with much older relatives — grandparents, and great aunts and uncles. At 17 I wasn’t prepared or healthy enough to cope with my mother being diagnosed with early onset dementia. At 27, I’m a little more fit to deal as it’s transitioned to Alzheimer’s.
It’s bizarre, confusing, and of course upsetting for a high schooler to be told their mother has early onset dementia. At the time, though, such a diagnosis was irrefutable. She was beginning to ask the same questions repeatedly, and constantly forgetting where she left keys, her wallet, and everything else. I would have to answer questions like, “How was school?” multiple times until I grew frustrated. I didn’t have the patience then, and I certainly wasn’t mentally fit enough to understand and simply let go.
Being that I was just 17 years old, I felt this was wrong and like some sort of torturous punishment. “How could this be happening to me?” I angrily asked the unseen force I deemed responsible. “This is something older people deal with, not a kid,” I thought. Despite this disease affecting my mother directly, I selfishly took on a lot of self-made hardship. As a young, budding alcoholic, I was searching for anything to be about me. I could have made misery out of any situation, and this depressing scenario was the perfect sad drinking fuel.
Someone with the disease of alcoholism will find any reason to drink, and typically be unable to stop after the first. It transitions from a want to a need, and for me it did so early. I was going to drink regardless of my mother’s condition, but her dementia did play a role in the frightening frequency and amount with and of which I drank. I think I felt sorrier for me than I did for her.
Once college rolled around, I was out of the house and onto the freedom I needed to drink booze and smoke pot as much as I wanted. I was also seeing my parents a lot less frequently, so each time I saw my mother over weekends or holidays her decline was more apparent. My dad was kind enough to drive up to my school in Philly to see me every few weekends or so. We would go out to eat, or do a little shopping. I couldn’t help but notice my mother becoming more repetitive. She was talking about less. If I brought a friend along with us, I’d have to preface my mother to them by warning, “She’s going to ask you a lot of the same questions, and probably repeat things.”
As my mother circled back to the question, “So where you from, Jake?” I was thinking about little else but my next drink. My parents were kind enough to come and be with me, and make an effort to meet my new friends. My mother was doing her best; truly curious about my time at college and interested in the people I was around, and I was half-present, internally plotting an evening filled with Four Lokos and cheap vodka.
Despite my drinking growing more dangerous by the month, and all the legal hell I put myself through as a result, I managed to finish college in 5 years. I was walking away with a borderline useless Bachelor’s in Communications (plus some sober time under my belt,) and my mother was set to move into an assisted living facility. By the time I finished school, her mind was severely worse than when I began. Her ailments when from forgetfulness and repetitiveness to outright odd and disturbing behaviors. One week she’d be convinced she had a cold, and needed a slew of anti-flu medications. Another she’d be going on endlessly about some insignificant moment from over 40 years ago in nursing school. Whatever strange new fixation she had, she was consistently resentful and unhappy.
Her new hot topic of conversation was how we were no longer in the childhood home I grew up in, and the removal of all her original furniture from that house. She was convinced my sister had taken her furniture, and everyone was out to get her. Additionally, she no longer had a filter and couldn’t be trusted to not say anything inappropriate around any non-family members. She was always at least slightly negative and inappropriate, in a thought-out funny way, but this once vibrant, fun-to-be-around woman was now too draining for anyone to handle.
With her being so demoralizing to be around, we had no choice but to move my mother into assisted living, and that meant I had to find somewhere to live. Unfortunately, between the stress of finishing school and the wavering pursuit of trying to stay sober, I hadn’t exactly lined up a job. I looked for unrealistic writing work in New York and panicked until my oldest sister invited me to live with her in Denver, Colorado. I knew very little of Denver, and never once had any inkling to reside there, but it sounded a whole lot better than not knowing what the hell else I was doing. For a guy fighting to live sober with a history of pot use, it probably wasn’t the best choice but me, but I had no other options. Just one month after graduation I was on a plane to Denver, and my mother was to be moved into a home.
I’ll sum up my early experience in Denver by saying this — I wasn’t quite ready to be sober. For the first few months I was smoking pot day and night, drinking occasionally and blacking out every time, and a complete recluse who felt a great deal of guilt being across the country as my mother sounded to be rotting away in an assisted living facility she hated. Her calls were sporadic — there would sometimes be 4 in a day because she forgot she called the first time, and then there would be periods of weeks where she didn’t reach out at all before I had to make the effort. The calls all went the same way, beginning with her declaring, “Mike, I hate it here.” She may not have known much, but she knew where she was, and how horrific it was for her.
Throughout those calls she’d issue the same several complaints about her living situation and furniture being gone. She would rant about the “fuckin’ old people,” she lived with, which wasn’t overly insane to say considering she’s much younger than many other residents in her facility. As for the actual happenings of the home, they were and remain too depressing for me to hear about; therefore I can’t actually put them in writing. The dejected phone calls absolutely crushed me, to the point of imposing more guilt upon myself.
I sat around, alone, in a locked apartment doing very little besides smoking pot and overthinking myself into mania. I felt like I was trapped in a miserable place; rotting away, very much like my mother was. I pictured her sad and alone in a room, in the same position I was. Of course this thinking didn’t spur me to change for the better. Madness continued until I was again in the territory of hopelessness. Luckily I knew what helped me in the past, and all along knew the exact choices I needed to be making. The loneliness, hopelessness, and self-resentment had gotten to be overbearing, and I finally started making the choices I was supposed to. I immersed in all that was good, and sobriety at last began working for me.
It wasn’t until I got and stayed sober that I could get over the guilt of being away from my mother. My father told me time and time again, “Mike, there’s nothing you can do for her. You have to find your own happiness.” Amidst my drinking and smoking days, those words of wisdom went in one ear and out the other every time. My main objective was numbing and escape; happiness wasn’t in the cards.
As I’ve grown to accept who and what I am, I can better accept my mother’s condition. I can accept it’s a senseless, disheartening disease. I can accept there’s nothing I can do, aside from call her from time to time and visit her when I can. I used to drink over her, but that obsession is gone. I used to cry each and every time I spoke about her. That’s still sometimes the case, but I don’t soak in that sadness. I get a little upset then move forth, which is unfortunately all I can do.
Advice I consistently receive is to hold onto the good memories. Fortunately for my sisters and I, there are so many fond memories with my mother. At a very young age she put me onto thrift stores and flea markets. She was a woman of great, vintage taste — a clothes hound, collector, lover of art, and borderline hoarder. Thrifts, fleas, and yard sales are the ideal shop stops if you happen to share those tastes. I used to love our excursions at Jake’s Flea Market, and expeditions at the Salvation Army. Today, I peruse thrifts like a madman. I, too, am obsessed with clothes, a collector, a fan of art, and a straight up hoarder. Whenever I’m scavenging racks at the Goodwill in search of a cool jacket, or rummaging through bins for a neat painting, my mother’s in mind. I know she’d love everything I’ve pieced together.
Dealing with a mother whose losing her mind and well-being to Alzheimer’s is so very far from easy. Sadly, sometimes dealing with it means not doing anything. You can’t stress, worry, or overthink, which used to be the extent of my hobbies. As my dad always said, all I can do is find my own happiness. I’m still in the process of that. I can’t destroy myself over her. I can cry, but just for a short while. My mother would want me to be joyous and free. For her, I can reach those points. Thanks to the memories she’s always with me, and thanks to her I am who I am. I owe her so much, and what I owe her is my own happiness.
