Dad dropped Mom off at my house around 10:00 this morning.  It was going to be just the two of us until we picked my daughter up after school and tennis practice, close to 5:00 p.m.  The big deal for the day was that we were getting Mom’s hair colored, cut, and styled. She was excited, and I was happy we had a plan.

My prayer for the morning was simple: have a good day with Mom.  

Father, remind me, “Love is patient…love is kind…” and all those other things that I can’t remember at this moment but know I want to be.  I want to be as loving to my mother as she has been to me all these years.  My number one fan, my biggest cheerleader, the woman who celebrated all my successes and reframed all my failures. Let me be that and not cave to frustration or be cruel even. God, help me.

You see, Alzheimer’s is the most frustrating disease I’ve ever encountered.  And it is cruel to let that frustration slip out – in your tone or in your sighs or in your silence. Alzheimer’s is a minute-to-minute disease. In a strange conundrum, it slows time down because encounters become tedious instead of meaningful. After, you’ve answered the same series of questions for the fifth time or played the dice game that she knows she loves but has absolutely no clue how to play except that she throws dice. So every time it’s her turn, you make each decision for her, add every point, and you’re not really playing with anyone but yourself and someone who throws the dice. And the game is finished, and you look at the clock and only fourteen minutes have ticked off. You’re reminded of the years when you lived three and a half hours away from her and every minute of every visit was cherished because you knew Sunday evening would come quickly, and you’d have to leave to start the trek home and begin the work week, and a month might pass before you’d see her again. 

And now you have all these minutes, but they tick slowly as you answer that series of questions for the sixth time, “She’s at school today.  We’ll pick her up around five. She’s in the tenth grade.” Her granddaughter. Her daughter’s daughter. My daughter that she babysat the first year and a half of her life while I worked.  The sweet brunette with long hair and greenish eyes that she remembers still, loves still, adores still – as she does you. And you cling to that, that she still knows you and loves you because she has already forgotten so many that she once knew and loved.

Before the hair appointment, we shop for makeup that she’s forgotten how to apply. We go home and I powder her face and glamour her eyes and brighten her lips. And it is bittersweet because she is smiling and laughing and making fun of how old she is, and then she asks you, “How old am I?” And you know the answer doesn’t matter because she won’t remember it anyway, so you say from the depths of your heart, “As old as you want to be, Mom.” And you cherish the laughter because you’re cognizant that there seems to be less of it with each passing week. Alzheimer’s is that disease that takes a vibrant personality and locks it inside a deteriorating brain that forgets when and how to interact and to smile and to laugh. But you thank God because there are still moments of laughter.  

The hair appointment is long, but it occupies us. It gives us a present focus, and we can be in this shared moment because it is fairly tangible. When she is called to sit in the stylist’s chair, she tugs my sleeve as she gets up. She wants me to go with her to help answer those very hard and confusing questions, “What color are we doing today? How short do you want it cut? Would you like me to style it or let it dry naturally?” And we decide. I decide. She is not sure, and searches my eyes for each answer.  And the stylist washes and cuts and colors and dries and curls and combs until the new look is perfected, and she turns to my mom and says, “Do you like it?” And my mom looks unsteadily my direction because she truly doesn’t know.  The Alzheimer’s has stolen her perception, her judgment, her confidence.  And I tell her it is beautiful, and she smiles, relieved.  

My brother offered to buy our dinner at a local restaurant because he too wants to spend this precious time with the mother who always made time for us. I tell her that he has texted, and we’re going to meet around six. She asks if he just wants me to have dinner with him or her also. I tell her, “He wants to take you to dinner. I’m just along for the ride.” I will have to assure her three more times before we get to the restaurant that she is his guest of honor. And we pick up the granddaughter with the eyes that are mostly green and go to the restaurant to meet my brother for dinner. 

We arrive before he does and while we’re waiting, she’s worried. She knows that it is incomplete without him there – that he is supposed to be there.  In a terrible twist, Alzheimer’s tends not only to make you forget but in some situations make you remember obsessively. She cannot relax until he arrives.  But he does, and I take pictures to capture the moment – her beauty, her smiles, her time with people she still remembers. I am more sad than happy as I take these pictures because I’m acutely cognizant that I can’t do this for much longer – take pictures of my mom while she knows just who the photographer is to her – her only daughter, the saucy and independent firstborn who has blue eyes just like her.

After dinner, we take a walk on this unusually cool September evening. And as we make our way down the street, I am careful to slow my pace to match hers. I hear her breathing and the breath is too labored, and I don’t know if this is the awful disease or something else, so I stop to notice mushrooms growing on a lawn so that she stops and air can find her lungs. But she loves the walk.  She’s proud that she was able to go around the block. She tells me that she’s been walking around her house and getting more exercise. In that moment, my mother is completely present – the fierce fighter who never allowed anything or anyone to tell her that she couldn’t. The brilliant, defiant, stubborn high school dropout who rose to management in a corporation that wouldn’t allow you to be two levels below her without an MBA. 

Finally, there’s time to watch a little television before bed. I know that I have to pick out a show where the plot is easy to follow and will begin and end in a single episode, with only a few characters and simple punch lines. Even within these guidelines, television has little meaning to her because she can’t follow most of today’s complicated plots and subplots or dynamic characters who deliver subtle innuendo or sarcastic wit that must be deciphered to be understood. We choose “The Golden Girls,” and it seems to fit the bill. She watches an entire episode before she falls asleep in the recliner, and I shut off the television and pray, “Thank you, God, for this good day.”

*This is article is published in rough draft form – raw and real and immediate.