Mother, What In Tarnation Are You Doing Now?

First off, I want my readers to understand that I am not belittling the state in which Alzheimer’s puts its victims. It is a terrible, tragic disease that robs people of their memory and their ability to function as it progresses. However, I have learned that, as my mother has regressed to a level much like a child’s, there are times when her actions lead me to laughter. I also have the philosophy that you should laugh at some of this. If you do not, you will just sit down and cry until you are useless to the person you are caring for and worthless to the rest of the world. We don’t hesitate to tell everyone when our children perform some antic that causes us to grin. We should also do this with our parents. It offers great release and will leave you better memories to fall back on when life becomes a deep, dark hole that has swallowed the once vibrant personality you knew as your loved one.

Don’t think that the care of an elderly parent comes easily to anyone. You grow into the life of caring for your children. You mature as they do. You learn as they do. Then they leave the nest behind. Suddenly you have time to do things like take a bubble bath undisturbed, dawdle in the store no kid wanted to be dragged through, eat junk food without guilt. You can drink a few margaritas and go home to fall asleep in front of the TV without fear of hearing, “You fussed at me for that.” You develop a lifestyle that erases the memories of childhood particulars. With the care of a parent one will find oneself going back in time, quite often questioning how difficult those child years really were. The catch is the fact that we were young in those child-rearing days. With age we lose speed, astuteness and thought processing on that level. It is something we have to re-learn as we deal with our parent when those child-like attributes arise, and it appears I must be a slower "re-learner" than I thought.

When my sister, Alicia, and I had the ‘family discussion’ about what we were going to do about mother as she steadily slipped into the troubled waters of Alzheimer’s, we had few conclusions available to us. My brother was already caring for a ninety-plus mother in law. My sister had one child in college and one was still home. She certainly could not afford to move to a larger house and there was no room for mother in Alicia’s home. The biggest stumbling block was the fact that I lived in Baytown one hour away. Mother lived in Richmond in the same neighborhood as Alicia, and mother was comfortable with her church family and all her doctors were in that area. To move mother to Baytown would mean a new start with physicians, friends, church, etc. Added to that, I would be too far away for Alicia to help with medical appointments and social activities. The logical answer for everything was for me to be the one to make the move. Knowing that change can throw a kink in family life, I looked at possible road blocks. There were none. All I had to consider were the dogs, and I knew the dogs wouldn’t care what school district I moved them to in the middle of their high school years.

I had a plan in place for the day the doctor would tell mother that she could no longer live alone. I leased a good sized home with a separate master suite. When the doctor was to say those specific words I was going to chime in and say, “Oh mother, look here. I just moved to this big, empty house. How perfect.” With the help of Hurricane Ike (2008) it all played out exactly as I planned. Mother weathered the hurricane with me in the Baytown house because the Richmond property had just been readied for the move, but the impending storms of 2008 put off the actual move date several times. Once Ike hit, Baytown was without power and running water for several days. The power was back in service in Richmond three days after the storm. Heading for better living conditions made the excuse to move a blessing. Mother ended up moving without the tension that oft times accompanies these decisions. In fact, she moved in without knowing she was actually doing so. She was under the impression it was all due to the storm. Within weeks the doctor made the prepared speech and it was simply a matter of saying, "So, you're already staying with me. Let's make the best of it."

I should clarify that I didn’t plan well enough. I was unprepared for a number of issues. I had no idea how much I would have to oversee when it came to her blood sugar. Mother has suffered from diabetes and insulin dependency for years. She knew the things that are bad for her but had the mind set that she could eat whatever she wanted and just take more insulin - wrong attitude. My first goal was to get her diet in check and control the amount of insulin she was taking. She was a screaming roller coaster on the diabetic chart. I couldn’t believe she didn’t stroke out or go into a diabetic coma before I started regulating her. I took all the treats away. Bread, sugars and starchy foods vanished from my cooking routine. Everything went from pallet pleasing to boringly bland. I was a bad, mean daughter who took away all the good things to eat. I soon learned I wasn’t clever enough to think ahead of her on a good number of levels. Reflecting back, I should have moved into my new house with only oatmeal, lettuce and coffee in the pantry.

Shortly after the move to Richmond, Halloween rolled around. Halloween was one of mom’s favorite times of the year. She always planned for the kids and decorated the front door with a large witch. This year was different. After explaining the event several times I simplified the story with, “Tonight’s the night we feed the neighborhood children candy.” I could have just as easily said, “Tonight’s the night I destroy their parent’s lives by putting the little gremlins in a sugar rush that will leave them puking through the evening and too sick to go to school tomorrow.” It would have made the same amount of sense to mom. The costumes simply blew her mind. After one goblin left with his axe murderer buddy and the princess in cowboy boots, I gave up trying to explain their appearance and told mother that the kids' mom just dressed them funy.

After the evening wound down, I caught mom with her hand in the candy bowl. No, mom, ain’t gonna happen. I waited until she went to bed and put the bowl on the highest shelf in the kitchen cabinet as far back as I could place it. I went to work the next morning feeling assured that I was a clever girl. When I returned from work, I found mother puttering around in the kitchen checking her insulin before dinner. 385!!!! Why on earth was her blood sugar so high? All I left her for lunch was steak and broccoli. I questioned her. “Mom, did you use sugar in your tea? Like about two cups of sugar?” “Did you eat something out of my shelf you weren’t supposed to eat?” Her answer was No to everything. Then I noticed the step stool was out instead of resting in its folded position beside the refrigerator. I pointed to it and asked why it was out . . . oh, she said she used it to put away dishes . . . . I asked, “You mean the dishes on the bottom shelf you can easily reach?” . . . . yes . . . the light bulb hovered over my head, glowing dimly as I asked more dim-witted questions. I remembered that I took the trash out the night before. I yanked the lid off the trashcan and said, “Voila! Mom, how did all these candy wrappers get in the trash?” “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied, “maybe those funny looking children left them there last night.” Busted. I packed up the candy and locked it in the car. Then I proceeded to pour out all the jams and jellies. I squeezed the little plastic honey bear until he was empty and weeping from my bruises on his rotund belly. My precious, delicious pumpkin butter for my Saturday morning toast had to go. I wept as I sent goodies down the disposal. Girl Scout Cookies were tossed - even the good ones with the chocolate and the coconut. It was a snack travesty. Chocolate became a casualty of the war over high blood sugar. Desserts suffered a disastrous end. I even had a thought running through the back of my mind that I should wait until she went to bed. Then I could wrap all the treats in foil, pack them in unlabeled zip lock bags and hide them in the back of the freezer to enjoy alone in the dark of the night, but it was for mother’s own good that she witness the bad stuff going away.

Food wasn’t the only thing I had to ride herd on. I thought nothing of what mom watched on television. She usually landed on an old movie channel. Even though she could no longer follow the story line on most movies and programs, the TV blared constantly. She actually spent one whole day on the Spanish channel. When I walked in the door she informed me the TV was broken and talking funny - she couldn’t understand a word those people were saying. That was a quick fix. I gave her some lame explanation and showed her what to do with the remote if they started talking funny again. The movie I came home to on Halloween weekend was another story. It was the typical B movie for that time of year. It was set in a haunted mansion and featured a popular wrap artist and his gang doing drugs and slashing throats. Blood was spraying everywhere. The poor actor playing the part of the drug mule who swallowed the balloon full of cocaine expired a writhing death with the theatric elements only a truly bad actor can pull off. He died just in the nick of time because the gang had just run out of milk, bread and cocaine. They promptly sliced him open and got the soda straws out, sniffing cocaine out of his internal cavities as his heart chugged out its last beat. I walked in with my eyes bugged out. “Mom, do you have any idea what you are watching?” “Oh, it’s a movie.” “Any clue what they are doing in this movie?” “Just a movie.” She wasn’t phased by the horror. Maybe she knew it was all fake. Perhaps she thought everything on TV must be fake. The real-life reindeer on the Christmas show last season didn't seem real to her. I could not convince her that it was. It was the darndest argument I gave up trying to win. She actually thought someone nailed a tree branch to some poor creature’s head to make it look that way. Taking the remote away, I tried to explain they were bad people in the Halloween movie. She just looked at me. “I always watch that channel. There’s nothing wrong with it.” was her response. I added television to my growing list of things to monitor.

Little did I know. . . . remember that line about being a slow learner and that I didn’t think ahead of her enough? I couldn’t believe my eyes the evening I came home to the Playboy channel. How on earth did she find that? Here she was, the prim little Baptist lady just a-watching the bunnies bouncing around the pool. I know they had to glue those strings in place on their tops - well, on the ones that had strings on the top. My voice got a little shrill when I said, “Mom, what are you watching?” “Just a movie.” “Mom, do you know what kind of movie?” “Oh, they’re just showing some stuff.” “Yeah, mom, those girls are showing all their stuff to those men who aren’t very nice.” She innocently said, “Oh yes they are nice. That man right there is nice to all of them. He pets them and they go, hee, hee, hee, and tell him he’s sweet.” Just visualize an aging Hugh H. shuffling from girl to girl in his bathrobe acting like he’s still got it. Well, he does still have the mansion and the money, but he looks like a withered old toad stumbling from one lily pad to the next literally waiting to croak. Mother would have been horrified at the scene just a few short years ago. I grabbed the remote and quickly learned to implement Parental Controls on my PARENT. And can I just tell you the conversation I had with the cable company trying to get the charges for the eight hours the Playboy Channel ran that day. "Yes, ma'm, we get this all the time from parents of teenage boys. We simply can't believe you are blaming your elderly mother for this."

In the Spring of 2009 my sister took mother on a trip to Oklahoma to visit family. Before they departed I gave her five words of wisdom, “Think Five And You’ll Survive.” She looked perplexed and walked away from me with mother in tow. We loaded the car with mom’s suitcase filled with more clothes, jewelry and shoes than would be needed for the four day trip. [I begged for a week but Alicia claimed work, husband, church obligations, etc. prevented her from being gone any longer. Smart gal.] The house was quiet. The dogs looked at me like I was Hard Hearted Hannah because I sent away the woman who fed them from her plate every day at lunch. They were the beneficiaries of the fact that mother no longer remembered that she was the one who scolded me for years saying, “Don’t feed the dog from the table!” On the second night of mother’s trip the quiet was shattered by the ringing of the telephone. I answered to hear my sister whining, “Can I come home? My children weren’t this bad when they were five.” The story was that they went to a restaurant with my aunt. Mother was admonished that she could not have a peppermint from the bowl by the exit. Well, I could have told Alicia that, unless she taped mother’s arms to her sides with duct tape, there would be purloined candy hidden somehow, somewhere. Alzheimer's affects everyone differently. While mother has succumbed to much memory loss, she has the cunning of an eight year old. I should have warned Alicia to be on her guard. A stop at the grocery store left Alicia and mother in the car while our aunt went in for eggs. Alicia heard a rustling sound coming from the back seat. “Mom, what are you doing?” “Oh, nothing.” Seconds later the rustling was heard again. “Mom, do you have a candy?” “No.” Then mother pointed toward the window and excitedly shouted, “Oh, look at that dog out there!” As she pointed out the window with one hand she popped the candy in her mouth with the other. Alicia was torn over whether she should just shout at her to spit it out or crawl over the seat and fish it from her mouth like a child who just ate a bug. I merely said, “Welcome to my world. What are you watching on TV tonight?”