Driving Ms Nancy

Nancy (18 yrs)  before leaving CA in 1941

Mama misses her car. Not this one, her last one. She endlessly laments "letting it go," although there was no question, with her Alzheimer's, she had to stop driving. So that job falls to me. I get such a kick out of the movie Driving Miss Daisy, that I tell Mama all the time, "You're a doodle, Mama."

One of the stories Mama repeats endlessly, if I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand and one times, is about where she was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. She was living in California with her widowed mother and her sister's family. They spent two years there after her dad died in 1939. Fear of air strikes caused her family to return to Nebraska in 1941, a seven-day trip at 35 miles-per-hour over two-lane highways. This is one of many regrets that get rehashed in her mind and retold as if she were telling it for the first time. Having to leave California and the endless ride back to Nebraska.

Mama loves to ride, or at least she did. Since Mama moved in with me over two years ago, we've taken rides to help with the agitation that builds over perceived threats to her well-being. Long rides calmed her, much like taking a colicky child on a ride before bedtime will sometimes help them fall asleep. The rolling hills and fields of Nebraska, playing music on the oldies radio channel, allowed her to reminisce and enjoy a sunny day, when otherwise, she'd be sitting watching old movies (although, the old movies are a help too, especially those Rodger's and Hammerstein, or Lerner and Lowe musical favorites).

But lately, not always, but sometimes, and I can never predict when, she gets agitated when we go away from home. Fear of being displaced, of being carted off to some facility somewhere, even though I've assured her again and again that there are no plans to do that, that I love her and want her to be here with me, has her repeatedly saying, "You can't fool me, I'm not stupid. I know what you are up to and I don't deserve to be treated this way." She is worried I've taken her for a ride so that someone can come in and move all her things. She's afraid she'll arrive home and find her furniture has been carted off somewhere, I'm not sure where. She warns me, "All hell is going to break loose." Reassurance doesn't help, she knows what she knows. The fact that every time this happens and we arrive home with nothing changed is lost to her, because each time is new, having never happened before, because she doesn't remember.

Mama has always been perceptive, she knows something is wrong, she is just not connecting the dots, or rather, she connects them much as our thoughts do in dreams, all mish-mashed together in some strange pattern that bares a resemblance to reality, but is just not reality. It's HER reality. Dreams, perceptions, hallucinations, traces of comments, people, places, all get mixed up as she tries to make sense of her thoughts. She refuses to accept that she has a memory problem (I'm the one that needs to admit I don't remember things, right?), so I don't even try to change her perceptions any more. It's too frustrating for me and for her.

As a result, Driving Ms Nancy is not always as pleasant as it used to be, for her or for me. It's one more area of Mama's life that is closing in on her. It's one more area that is causing grief, one more area we may have to let go. Last evening, I drove Ms Nancy into Iowa, across the bridge, to buy a CD of gospel favorites that I played for her in the morning (she wanted her own copy to play on her DVD player...I would have let her use mine, it was an excuse to ride :)). I guess I'll have to forget those days it doesn't work (like Thursday) and be thankful for the days it does (like Friday). What a difference a day makes. Letting go is never easy, though with acceptance, hopefully, there will be peace...or not.