Mom kept pointing out at the phone’s display as if it were a mirror. On my last regular visit with her, I brought the kids and we had lots of fun taking pictures. Eventually she stopped showing interest even in this. As words disappeared and speech began faltering, I’d show her recent kid photos on my phone and tell stories to fill the emptying space.
Regular outings became less frequent till we couldn’t even take her out to a nearby restaurant for her birthday. She’s been disappearing from us for a long while. A quick Google search confirmed this was an Alzheimer’s drug and a call with the doctor later that afternoon helped map out the road ahead.Īlzheimer’s is a slow-motion death. She told me her “brain was dying” and that the doctor was putting her on Aricept. When she called to tell me the diagnosis, she couldn’t even use the A‑word. But by 2010, she must have known she wasn’t going to have Mrs. At the time she let us all know, repeatedly, that she would be leaving it “in a box.” Caulking trim, replacing windows, and troubleshooting a mud room leak that defied a dozen contractors became her occupation, along with volunteering and watching grandkids. She had bravely bought her first house in her late 60s. After she read a study that crossword puzzles keep your brain sharp as we age, she became an obsessive crossword puzzler when the Sudoku craze hit, she was right on top of it. I had been joking for years that my mom seemed to have only twenty stories that she kept on rotation. The news didn’t come as much of a surprise to us family. My mom, Liz, must have sensed that Alzheimer’s was a possibility when she scheduled that doctor’s visit. Goldsmith had come to her in a dream the next night to congratulate herself, saying “See, I told you I was lucky!” For years afterwards, my mother convinced herself that she would go in a similarly elegant way. My mom thought that was the best exit ever. Growing up, we had befriended an active elderly neighbor who had gently died in her sleep after a minor slip on some ice. This had always been her most-feared scenario for aging. It was quite brave of her to get the testing done when she did. This is just the final moment of a slow-motion death.Ī little over five years ago my mother was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
While I’m overwhelmed with the messages of prayers and condolences, at least at some level it feels like cheating to accept them too fully. Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses
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