at the door

When I was a teenager I watched my grandma eat a cheeseburger with a spoon. She giggled the whole time. I somehow innately knew that correcting someone with dementia was fruitless, so I giggled along with her and hoped taking bites of my cheeseburger while holding it in my hands would remind her she could pick hers up and it would be easier. Spoiler alert:

That doesn’t work with Alzheimer’s Disease. Being a good example goes totally unnoticed, but what else do we know? We learned to try to be good examples.

Yesterday while my dad was napping, my mom came to our door, which is lucky because half the time she doesn’t know I’m next door. But there she was. Lately she is looking to me for comfort and to answer her questions. That’s a change. She once was disgusted by any attempt I made to help. I know, she’d say, with venom. Or she’d blow up if I did anything hands-on at their house. I CAN DO THAT MYSELF!

Now, even when she doesn’t know how we’re related half the time, or if we are at all, my mom comes to me for comfort. Truth be told, even before the disease, this never happened. I’m grateful that something inside her trusts me this way now.

This time she arrived in her long winter coat and some loafers, scared. I opened the door and she said immediately, “I don’t know what happened to the kids, I don’t know where they are,” and she was on the verge of tears.

Here is how it works.

My head spins with what to say and what to not say, what to do and what to not do. Okay, I think without thinking, First put on your boots, Heather. Put on your coat. Keep the dogs in the house. Call out to the kids that you have to go. Make eye contact and smile.

Okay, mom. I’ll go home with you, how about that? She said okay with such relief and then started to try to explain what she was worried about as we walked across our driveways to her house next door. Where are the kids that we here, she repeated and repeated, asking about a responsibility ages old.

I listened.

My head spins with words, which ones will break her mind free from the current cage? I know not to argue, but then how do I create a story that releases her?

Later that evening my dad called for help and mom took the phone. I have questions for you, she said. He says he’s my husband!

There was silence. Do I say, Well that’s because he is? Do I say, Oh! Well who is he? Do I validate or correct? Because he’s staying there and she’s staying there. Oh mom…I’ll come and talk it over with you.

Okay, she said, with relief again and then when I got there she rushed toward me, and I hugged her. She trembled and whispered, I just want to go home, I want to find my mom.

I know, I said. That’s all. I know.

When someone with Alzheimer’s says things, the words might mean something literal, or not. The words could mean she’s referring to kids that she once knew, or her own kids at a different age, or her grandkids if she were still capable of watching them. She could be seeing my dad as his own father, who died years ago, but he sure looks like him. She might be remembering him only as his young blonde self and herself the same, so who is that man in the recliner? While she spins, she asks me questions to clarify who I am and where I live.

Who are these people and where has everyone familiar gone?

After a lot of comforting and validating and smiling eyes, she settled into the couch. We FaceTimed with my sister, her other daughter that could be the child she was looking for, and it seemed to help. She yawned repeatedly and maybe the body just finally has mercy sometimes.

She says her chaotic mind does not stop with its questions. She says that it tells her all kinds of things. So it must be me. Maybe he’s not wrong. I was worried about him. She laughed. What’s wrong with him, that guy saying he’s my husband!

There are glimmers of this insight, rare, when she knows this is an illness and she repeats and repeats that it’s here now. Like it’s new. Like she hasn’t had Alzheimer’s for years. Like it just arrived at the door in its long winter coat and loafers, begging and desperate and stirring her into her boots and out into the wind.