Second Day- Visiting Mom

SECOND DAY- VISITING MOM

When I awake the second day of my visit, and walk into mom’s living room, and see all her beautiful things, and open her dining room cabinet, I see why she does not want to leave her home.  As for now she does not have to.

 In the morning after mom gets up and she sees me, she becomes so funny and cute.  She sees me making instant coffee in the microwave and she asks me how did I warm it up?  I tell her in the microwave and she asks me where the microwave is?  I point and mom says I don’t even remember how to use it, and I say “that’s because you are Princess Ruthie. You don’t cook, clean or run the wash anymore, you are a real Princess”. We both laugh and this has become an ongoing joviality.  Ruthie then says from nowhere,” why I don’t look pretty enough for you”, and we both laugh. My mom is naturally pretty, and I tell her so.

The next day we take my mom out for lunch and to the supermarket.  She pushes the cart and after going home we unpack the food. My mom is looking all over for her pocketbook and then opens the refrigerator to look for it.  My brother asks her why she is looking in the refrigerator and she says” I don’t know where should I look” and we tell her to look in her bedroom.  She then asks where her bedroom is.  Sometimes she’s okay and moments like this you certainly do see the effects of the Alzheimer’s disease.  Mom also becomes like a child with all her questions.

While waiting for my brother to come pick us up the next day, to go out with my mom, she keeps walking around in circles, pacing back and forth and asking me over and over who’s coming.  I keep answering her and it’s something I had experienced with my husband, after he fell off a retaining wall and had a concussion. He kept asking me the same question over and over again even after I gave him the answers.  It was like a record that had a scratch and keeps playing the same word over and over.  

Mom starts to tell me that she cannot go anywhere because her car was taken away from her. My brother said that it was parked outside for 2 years and she never used it. She had once told me several years ago that when she went to her doctor she couldn’t find his office and she kept getting lost.  She said that she did not understand it, because she had been there so many times.  I did not know why then, and as I look back I understand that her Alzheimer’s was starting to take over.  I guess that is why she wouldn’t drive her car.  She knew something was happening, she just wouldn’t say what.  I found myself feeling like I wanted to scream, which of course I didn’t.  Everything that was happening to her she had no control over.  How could my mom just sit in her house for six days a week just watching a television?  What was I going to be able to do for her?  I felt lost and in my heart and I just knew that whatever time that I had with her was something to really cherish.