The Winter of Life

2011 (C) Shelly Stotts Photography, used by permission

Loss seems to permeate my reflections during these winter months. As the ground lay frozen and frost and snow clings to the trees, I cling to this time I have with Mom, despite its frustrations, knowing that someday our time together will end, and I'll experience a finality to this loss we are inhabiting.

Obviously, Alzheimer's is associated with "loss" as slowly loss creeps in, but it's not just the inability to recognize people (although that may happen eventually, if mom lives long enough). I noticed that's a typical response from relatives who infrequently visit. They are surprised and pleased that she recognizes them,  as if that is the only loss of memory we might be experiencing as a family. Loss of memory incorporates so many facets of our lives.

For instance, Mom loses things, because she can't remember what she did with them, nor can she remember what she was doing at the time she misplaced them to retrace her steps. That takes memory and reasoning, both of which elude her in these winter months of life. She loses not only tangible items (like her underwear, socks, glasses, sweater, the television remote), but also life events, and yet I'm fascinated by shifts that occur from one minute to the next and how the mind seeks to find itself.

Sometimes mom laughs over a lost item and asks me to help her find it because, "I put it somewhere and can't find it now." Perfectly reasonable, we all lose things and can't find them, it's just her days are sometimes filled with trying to find one item and then another. Other times, a shift occurs and frustration sets in. She can't admit to losing an item, and thinks someone, meaning me, must of moved it, or on those days when paranoia sets in, someone came in and took items that she REMEMBERS putting in her drawer, or taking out of the dryer, etc. She probably does remember doing it, just not THAT day. It's a memory from sometime in the past. Time collapses and events get mixed up in memory. She becomes agitated at the thought I might be trying to make her seem crazy because I won't admit someone has taken them. The last time this happened, I just bought her some new socks and underwear rather then argue someone didn't take them. When she received them, she, of course, had forgotten that it had recently been a major issue for her.

Events can be lost. "I don't remember whole sections of time when I lived in California, but I remember vividly my life on 28th Street when I was a child, why is that?" Those cherished events in her life, when her father was alive, seem frozen in memory, and are repeated endlessly with only slight variations. Its comforting for her to recall the same stories over and over as proof, she remembers.

Curiously, I've noticed lately, other memories are new, just not of events in which she actually participated. Mom can remember events clear as day that never happened, to her. She thinks that they are events that she lived, but in fact, they are memories of stories told to her by others, that she now incorporates in her mind as hers.

As an illustration, yesterday, she remembered someone and was recalling an association. She told me she spent two years with a young man and got to know him before his death. "He grew into a fine young man, really special." This never happened to her, but somewhere, deep within her mind, she remembers the story of his life and now, she has incorporated it into her life story. So surprisingly, at least for mom, the loss of memory includes a found section.

And then too, amazingly enough, there are times when automatic responses kick in and her mind doesn't really grope for information. Having worked in the medical field for decades, when my brother was recently hospitalized, mom talked to him on the phone and asked all the pertinent questions and responded to his answers meaningfully. But, once the conversation ended and time passed (it doesn't take long), she had trouble remembering why he was in the hospital and asked repeatedly, what was wrong, what were they doing, and she accused me of not telling her everything. Trips to the hospital helped, while we were there, but then afterwards, it all disappeared except for the uneasiness and agitation of knowing something was wrong. It was difficult for her to process it all, but the memory of the emotions when learning of his hospitalization remained.

I just finished reading, The House on Beartown Road, by Elizabeth Cohen. In it she recounts a winter she spent caring for her father (an Alzheimer's victim) and her infant daughter. All our experiences as children and/or caregivers of Alzheimer's sufferers are unique, but hers was particularly poignant as she cared for loved ones at the beginning of life and at the end and made associations between the two. As I came to the end of her memoir, and read about her father's condition at the time of publication, it reminded me (such a good word...to re-mind) of what may be in store for mom, for loved ones, or for me, in the winter years, but who knows.

I read predictions about the likelihood of baby-boomers suffering some form of dementia if we live long enough and I'd be lying if I said it didn't concern me. Watching mom lose things, events, people, in a weird sort of way, it's encouraging to know that the mind still seeks to find itself, and if it can't, it incorporates the memories of others as its own in order to comfort itself in loss.