A Birthday With No Memory

Irma c. 1938

Today, Mom turns 90.  There will be no celebration, no gala birthday party.  The champagne punch will not flow.  For Mom, it will be another day of merely existing.  For her family it will be a day of remembering.

 Today we will take her cake and some gifts, sing "happy birthday" and hope that she will respond in some way.  These days dementia allows her to recognize things only when all the synapses in her brain cells are connecting.  Lately, the messages seem to be getting through less and less.  Mom has been sliding downhill into late stage Alzheimer's and dementia for the last 12 to15 years.

It is hard to pinpoint when it started.  I remember, maybe15 years ago, asking her if she could pick me up at the airport, something she often did.  She told me it was too hard for her.  I didn't realize what that meant.  It meant, she couldn't remember how to get there or how to get home.

We talked on a daily basis, she and I.  Then one day I noticed she was not calling me. I was only calling her.  She couldn't remember my phone number.

She would forget she was not supposed to bend over to take care of her feet.  Several times she was rushed to the hospital by ambulance in terrible pain.  She had forgotten and reached for her toes, popping out her artificial hip.

It was a slow, insidious process.  We began to notice that she was no longer cooking.  She could not remember how to put a meal together.  She stopped driving after getting lost too many times on her way to shop or do her volunteer work at the library.  The progression was so gradual we hardly noticed.  At times she talked about feeling like her head was full of cotton.  We began to find little stashes of torn up tissues in her drawers. Huh?  She always took a brief afternoon nap, and then she began to spend her entire day in bed.  She was a woman who loved young children and worked professionally with them as a teacher.  We knew something was not right when she began losing her temper with her own grandchildren, and eventually completely lost interest in their activities.

When I tell people that my Mom has Alzheimer's, they inevitably ask me the same tiresome question, "Does she know who you are?"  The answer is, "Yes, at some level she recognizes us. On a really good day she might remember my name.  On a bad day, she will lower her head and barely respond to anything."  I believe we are familiar to her in the way we speak to her, in our demeanor and our appearance.  It has taken all of us a long time to realize the depth and complexity of Alzheimer's disease. Essentially, it is a severe brain injury. Understanding it has been a difficult process for us and very likely a frustrating experience for her.

So, on the occasion of  her 90th birthday, each of us, daughters, sons in law, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, will remember who she used to be, before this terrible illness took her brain.

IRMA, born in Portland, Oregon, a graduate of Alameda Grade School, Grant High School, and the first in her family to receive a college degree; she was an award winning equestrian, who won dozens of ribbons riding competitively during her high school years; she was a professional preschool and kindergarten teacher for more than 25 years, who was beloved by many hundreds of students who still remember her; she was a fervent  FDR liberal who taught her children, nieces and nephews, the importance of equal rights and equal education for all; she loved animals and birds, as long as they were in the zoo, not her own home; she was a marvelous cook; a gardener, and a grandmother who took an active role in raising her young grandchildren; she loved to read and took her children to the library every week; she loved jazz and Broadway musicals, and her family was the core of her existence.

She was a bright, educated, and accomplished woman, who was respected in her professional life.  Alzheimer's has taken it all away --- wrecking havoc with her brain and impacting so many of us who love her.  We have witnessed the slow mental and physical deterioration of a beautiful and bright spirit, and experienced the frustration, anger, and finally total sadness as we see our Mother and Grandmother disappearing before our eyes.

Today we mark her milestone 90th year and hope we can somehow convey to her our love and pride in the many accomplishments of her life.  We realize she can no longer understand the intangible gifts she has given to all of us.   There are so many, but perhaps the most important being, learning to be patient with her limitations, treating her situation as an illness, and finally, the importance of giving her all the dignity and respect she deserves.
  

Irma c. 1930

Irma  c. 1940

Irma  c. 1950

Irma c. 1969

Irma c. 1980

Irma c. 2012

Happy 90th, Mom.