I walked into the kitchen and my mom stood by the oven,
quietly murmuring about something. She
had volunteered to make two dozen chocolate chip cookies for a fundraiser for
our church that night. I remember, as a
child, coming into the kitchen after a long day at school or after playing out
in the snow for hours, freezing and tired, to the delicious aroma of my mother’s
chocolate chip cookies baking. This
time, however, my mother stood glaring at a cookie sheet with one cookie on
it. One GIANT, flat cookie. It was supposed to have been twelve. I had lent her my recipe since she couldn’t
find or remember the one she had always used.
It’s fairly basic, easy to follow.
I had not thought to monitor or help my mother as she set off to do what
she had been doing for more than 50 years.
I looked over the recipe, the dough still in the mixing
bowl, and the enormous melted confection on the oven and attempted to find the
problem and, therefore, the solution. My
mother wrung her hands and jabbed at the blobby mess on the tray as I looked over
the ingredients I had left for her on the table and what remained. I came to realize that she had very likely
used twice the amount of butter, possibly omitted one of the sugars, and
forgotten the baking soda. The cookies
still tasted good, albeit quite buttery.
I will never forget the look on my mother’s face, drawn and dejected, as
she realized she had lost the ability to do what she deemed to be a simple
task. I mean, mothers are supposed to be
able to bake chocolate chip cookies, right?
Isn’t that, like, Mothering 101?
The previous autumn, while my father (who has Parkinson’s
disease) was in the hospital recovering from a triple bypass, my 75 year old mother
finally consented to see a neurologist and confirm her worst fear: she had
dementia. Vascular Dementia, to be
exact. Her simple response to the
diagnosis of “Oh, darn” had broken all 5 of her adult children’s hearts. Although we had wanted to get it diagnosed,
it wasn’t any easier to have it confirmed.
She reluctantly agreed as the doctor strongly urged her to surrender her
driving privileges. She sat, looking
like a small child, as the doctor explained what this diagnosis meant for the
rest of her life.
They started her on medication. The medication was meant to slow the progress
of the disease, not cure it. Since
Vascular Dementia is caused by the shrinking of the blood vessels (causing reduced
blood flow to the brain), there is no reversing the damage, only slowing its
progression. Vascular Dementia is also
different from other forms of memory degeneration, like Alzheimers, in that
instead of it being a gradual decent into the disease, it happens in
steps. Tiny (or large) strokes occur
along the way, and memories and abilities are lost in chunks instead of
drizzling out gradually. The fact of the
matter was it was only going to get worse, and it could get worse very
suddenly. And there’s no telling when
that will be, or if the disease will cause other problems. There’s just no way to know.
The day she forgot how to bake chocolate chip cookies was a
rough one, for her and for me. I didn’t
tell my siblings about it. My husband, children, and I had moved in with her and my
father about eight months earlier, knowing rough times were coming but not having
any idea how quickly they would descend.
She has really good days where It’s almost not perceivable- this disease
that’s stealing my mother. Then there
are the not so good days. The days when
she’s angry, hostile, frustrated, emotional, forgetful, easily stressed and
flustered. She’ll struggle to zip her
coat, or heat up soup, or spell “exterminate” (ecs…..?). Some days she can’t remember where she has
kept the cups for the last fifty years or what the name of her bank is or even
what a bank statement is. Today she
dropped dinner all over the floor, shortly followed up by dropping and breaking
a dish in the sink. She leaned her head
on her arms on the counter and just sat, trying not to cry.
We take a lot of deep breaths these days.
I wish I could say I’m patient with all these changes as my
mother and I struggle with the day-to-day.
I wish I could say that I laugh off the insignificant and smile at her
quirks and hug her and make her feel better every time she’s hurting. I wish I could say that I do better than I
do. While my mother is losing her sense
of self, I’m losing my mother and I’m not handling it very well. It’s an experience for both of us… one that I’ll
remember and hopefully learn from… one that she’ll someday forget
entirely.
The important thing I try to remember is this disease is not
my Mom. It may be accentuating her worst
traits and weeding out her best, but that doesn’t change who she has always
been. On the roughest days this is hard
to remember. On the rough days it’s hard
not to go to bed with my thoughts all knotted up wondering how in the world I’m
going to help her get through this… how I’M supposed to get through this. My Dad has rough days, too. Parkinson’s disease causes dementia as
well. We live in a forgetful house where
things are repeated repeatedly and fully comprehended infrequently. There are a lot of shortened fuses and rising
tempers as we navigate this new depth of life we have sunk into. We try to be patient. We try to show love when we can. We try to bestow forgiveness often.
We take a lot of deep breaths these days.
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