My mom is 75 and has Alzheimer’s. When she was in her late 50s, she told us she was losing her memory and we all discounted it. In fact, we didn’t notice anything at first. After several years, we did notice some warning signs. She was misplacing money and jewellery. She was buying a lot of things she already had plenty of – toilet paper, food, even coffee makers.
We took her to the memory clinic and they set up a baseline test for her. What we didn’t realize was, on subsequent visits, she and my father practiced the answers beforehand so the doctors wouldn’t suspect anything. My dad was afraid they’d take his bride away.
Then, on December 26, 2013 everything changed. My mom suffered a brain bleed and was diagnosed with vascular dementia. My dad didn’t want her to go to a home, so he said he’d look after her, possible because my sister and I both live very close by.
My mom got progressively worse. She couldn’t talk about the recent past because she couldn’t find it. As the months passed, her memory lost the names of people she knew and progressed to no longer recognizing them, including her loved ones. As her memory failed, her need to socialize grew and she fulfilled it by going to the grocery story every day to buy things, but more importantly, to talk to people. A trip to the grocery store took forever because she would strike up conservations with strangers in every aisle.
Mom doesn’t always recognize me. She knows she has a daughter named Michelle, but she says it isn’t me. Her visual memory of me shifts between a young child and a teenager. So I travel alongside where her mind and memory go and when she calls me ‘Mickey,’ my childhood nickname, I answer.
Whenever we go out to an appointment, I take her to McDonalds or Tim Horton’s for coffee and I record our visit on my iPad as she shares stories of the past. We have a great time. I get to learn things about my mom’s life I never knew and I get to see her in a whole new light.