The Driving Issue
My mother’s 12 year battle with dementia finally ended last Wednesday 11/23/16, and this weekend we are gathering to celebrate her life. Here is a piece I wrote a while ago about an earlier stage of the disease, when I finally was able to convince her that she was no longer able to drive safely.
When I was a teenager and begging for independence, my dad taught me how to drive in the empty car lot of an amusement park. Playland’s most famous attraction is a classic wooden ride called “The Dragon Coaster,” which takes its cars through a tunnel resembling the serpent’s body, complete with roaring sound effects and fake smoke.
The driving lessons my dad gave me in the parking lot below the Dragon Coaster were thrill rides as well. I can still feel the power of accelerating at a pace all my own. We’d spin donuts in the snow or parallel park between two imaginary cars. Once the joyride was over we’d have put miles on the Buick in that multi-acre space.
Much later in my life, my 62-year-old mother was diagnosed with dementia that made it dangerous for her to drive. The more her disease attacked what doctors call executive function — her ability to perform daily tasks appropriately — the more fixated she became on maintaining her right to drive.
“Go,” she’d say. “Oh please? Go.”
I decided it was time to take her to the parking lot at Playland.
“We’ll have a driving lesson!” I said, hoping to lift her spirits. She grumbled, and I understand why: my mother hadn’t gotten a ticket or had an accident in thirty years of shuttling her three kids to soccer practice, play rehearsal, and scores of trips to Costco. In her deteriorating brain she thought that, even though she couldn’t make coffee or operate a phone, she was fully capable of operating a vehicle.
It was a grey winter day and I pulled into the lot about a hundred feet from the Dragon Coaster’s tail. My mom and I switched places and she got behind the wheel. I told her that the first thing she should do when she got in the car was fasten her seatbelt. “Of course,” she said. I pointed out that there was no evident ignition in the Prius. The car would sense the key and turn on when you pressed a button. “Okay,” she said, aching to move.
She rocked back and forth in the seat and tapped the wheel with her palms. She seemed elated, back in her behind-the-wheel throne.
“Okay, Mom. So. What’s the first thing you do when you get in the car?” She took a deep breath, certain that she could finally prove how capable she was.
“This.” She tapped the dashboard with her fingernail. Nothing happened.
“That’s the dashboard, mom.”
She rocked back and forth again in her seat. We sat in silence for a beat and I checked in on the dragon, whose clawed fist seemed to close slightly in anticipation.
“What’s the first thing you do when you get in the car?” I asked without looking at her. She slapped the wheel to get my attention. She was looking for a hint.
Long before my dad taught me how to drive, my mom and I would sit on her bed, a wineglass of bourbon in her hand, a practice test in mine, working on my homework. She was wonderful at giving me hints when I got discouraged, and there were ways I could have offered clues now. I could have coughed the word “seatbelt” and she’d have laughed as she reached for it.
But did I want her to be encouraged? If my mother believed she could drive, she’d be putting herself and the community around us in danger. I shifted in my seat, inadvertently mimicking her nervous rocking as I realized a devastating truth. If I gave my mom hints right now about how to work the car, she’d think she was capable and fight even harder to drive.
“Mom, what’s the first thing you do when you get in the car.” The pitch of my voice seemed to lower as I came to grips with what I was doing to my mother. The dragon above us seemed to grip the wooden struts even tighter.
“This?” she pointed to the steering wheel.
“No, mom. That’s the steering wheel. You can’t make turns yet. What is the first thing you do when you get in the car,” I repeated. She sighed as if finally getting down to work, taking the ding with more stride than I could have as a kid.
“Oh,” she said. “Here. This.” She wiggled her finger at the little knob marked with the letters D, N, and R.
“No.”
“THIS.” She turned on the windshield wipers. No again. She fiddled with the rear view mirror. “Ok, sure, you can fix the mirror if you want,” I said. She held both hands up as the frustration started to break her.
“Well, then WHAT. What?” She begged. She never would have treated me like this as a child. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“Think, Mom. What’s the first thing you do when you get in the car. Think.”
I made it sound so simple but I was asking her to do the thing that the disease prevented her from doing, and I was providing her with no aid. There was a long silence. I stared at the unmoving dragon on the roller coaster in front of us. I was looking at his tail but I knew that a silent scream poured from his wide-open mouth and retching train-track tongue — perhaps a reaction to the humiliation I was inflicting on my mother, whose mind was already riddled with disease.
And then, she said it:
“I’m never gonna get this, am I.” I reminded myself to breathe. I turned to face her, head on, and whispered:
“No, mom,” I watched her mouth, prepared for her to let out a sharp dragon scream.
“My…” she paused to find the word, as she often did with her aphasia.
“…Authorship.” She said.
I gasped. I was astonished that although many of her words had vanished, she had still found the perfect one to describe the loss of all of her power, control, and pride to this foul disease. At last, I started crying.
“Ohhh,” she said, empathetically, instantly transforming herself from the child I had shamed to the mother I remembered. She put her arms around me.
“It’s not safe for you to drive, Mom,” I wept. I felt her chest shudder, and she said two words that changed everything:
“I know.”
That wasn’t the last time my mother got behind the wheel of a car. A couple of weeks later, on Mother’s Day, I drove us both down to the same spot in the Playland lot again. The dragon seemed playful now, its colors brighter with spring approaching. We switched places, and she got behind the wheel. I performed her executive functions for her: I reached over her left shoulder, grabbed the seatbelt, and clicked it into place. I put her foot on the brake and pushed the power button on the Prius. Loud, raucous music played on the radio, and I placed her foot lightly onto the accelerator. I knew I could slow things down at any time by putting the car in neutral.
“Go for it, Mom!” She squealed. We puttered at about five miles an hour making long circuits around the lot. If we got within 50 feet of a tree or another car, I’d adjust the steering wheel for her. Other than that, she was in charge.
For that moment, my mom was once again the author of her life. She was the executive controlling the limited function she had left. The dragon seemed to hover above us. We sang loudly like teenagers on the last day of school. That day, in this parking lot, I learned my final driving lesson from my mother:
Be forever grateful for the ride.
