Alzheimer's, for those who do not know, is a cruel and nasty S.O.B. It takes the person you know and love and empties them of most or all of the things that made them the person they were, eventually leaving only the outer shell which still looks like the person you used to know. What remains is someone who is, most times, beyond coherent communication. Someone who may be just as likely to sit and stare off at nothing as they are to sit and weep for no apparent reason, or turn to you and give you a big beaming smile.
Our mom turns 75 on September 28. My sister and I put her in an Alzheimer's care wing of a nursing home in Bluffton, Ohio a year ago this past week. She had been diagnosed several years prior and she had reached the point where supervised apartment living was no longer a viable option for her. I wrote the following bit of verse last year, as I drew from events that heralded our mother's time of independent living was about to come to an end. I wrote this for my family, friends and others who know what it is like to have to deal with the heartbreak of someone afflicted with Alzheimer's. I also wrote it for those who have not been directly touched so that they might understand. Since her seizure in May (which hospitalized her for most of a week), her, heretofore, clearly enunciated gibberish has been reduced to a slow, tear-filled drip of mostly incoherent whispers. I saw her again last week. This year she did not argue about her birthday as she had last year, she simply didn't remember anything about it at all.She defiantly insists
Today is not her birthday
Yet she can't say when it is
The room is dark, curtains tightly drawn
How long has it been
Since the time she knew what day it was
Or the month she's living in?
She sees familiar faces
Is put as ease by a warm smile
But keeps repeating questions
Although you’ve only just arrived
Collecting dust now its main task
To merely suggest bathing
Makes you wish you hadn’t asked
The pieces of her puzzle
Do not fit and aren't much fun
Confusion now controls the day
Am I a brother or a son?
Medications neatly sorted
Beneath a month of plastic tops
Passing by them all throughout the day
She never takes them, never stops
“The world is out to get me”
“Why don’t you leave me here to die”?
Paranoia says these things . . .
Paranoia’s been known to lie
The room is still, the air is thick
How long has it been
Since the time it mattered what day it was
Or the month that she was in?
Today will be her birthday
She won't recall her gifts
Today is my Mom's birthday
And that's just the way she is.
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