Daughter’s Log: February
by Rachel Parker Feb 13: People frequently ask how old my mother is — as if somehow knowing her age can put her dementia into context. It doesn’t. Dementia — be it the dreaded Alzheimer’s or some other form of fundamental memory loss — is cruel no matter when it strikes.
In my mother’s case, I’ve begun describing it as the slow fade. Think of all those kitschy movies of the 1970s, when the main character is coming to realize that he or she is in danger, threatened by some formerly positive force. The camera zooms in on the hero, then focus slowly fades.
Now that I think about it, this is EXACTLY the metaphor I’ve been looking for. When my mother’s disease started, she was highly attuned to her needs. She checked her blood pressure daily for evidence of vascular dementia. She walked to doctor visits including her acupuncturist for weekly tests and treatments. I visited and supported more treks to more specialists. The camera was close in on her, and she and I were focused on her needs. Brain games and memory classes, you name it, she tried it.
We still are focused on her — she’s our heroine in this story, remember — but she’s not so much. The diagnosis of progressive dementia is a life sentence. Sure, there are suggested treatments for improving some memory function or other. And, some exercise/sleep/diet combinations seem to forestall some symptoms. But, we’ve been through all of that. Now she is just forgetting who she is and was.
For the record, my mother holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology. She wrote her thesis on rural healthcare practices, using interviews with people living in small towns across the United States. From this sprang a new field called nursing ethnography, and she literally wrote the book on the subject. Look it up. Ethnography in Nursing Research by Janice M. Roper and Jill Shapira. For 40-odd years, while raising her family and while getting her advanced degrees, she worked as a nurse at the Veterans Administration in West Los Angeles, and founded and led the nursing research department. She was an accomplished and respected woman whose advice was sought in many realms.
But, today when asked about her past, she doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t really remember that she went to nursing school, or where. She knows that she grew up in a little town called Booneville, Iowa, and that she has a love-hate relationship with the place. But I don’t think she knows that it takes a 5-hour plane ride to Des Moines to get there. She can compensate pretty well with many folks, who often ask leading questions like, “I hear you are a nurse; did you like nursing?” and she’ll politely reply, “Oh yes, of course.” But, she might also answer so politely if posed with this question: “I hear you’ve played the bongo drums with Green Day. Did you like it?” She doesn’t remember that she taught me to bake cookies and bread, or to treat an upset stomach with warm Jell-O or a sore throat with hot lemon and honey.
Which doesn’t make her less our mother, less our friend. We just have to know that she’s fading in her own sense — that her memory of herself is less sharp, and it is up to us who love her to keep her sharp in ours.
