alzheimer’s abduction
my mother’s baby brother recently passed away unexpectedly.
death is like that sometimes, so i’ve heard.
he was a forty-something, attractive and friendly man;
the kind of man that every woman loved
and every man respected.
i remember crushing on him as a girl.
i remember being proud of my uncle Pat
because everytime he came to bat at a softball game,
the outfielders took a break.
you would hear the expected crack,
and then that ball would soar.
before his passing, he would check on his mother every day.
she lived within walking distance of his home.
at his funeral,
she walked behind uncle Pat’s girlfriend, daughter and sons,
with her oldest daughter, my mom, at her side.
she strolled nervously down the aisle to her seat,
a matriarch of a family of four daughters and six sons
– one now deceased –
in front of a line of her own descendants.
she was skittish, but affable, because she didn’t know what she was expected to do
in this new environment: a church funeral for her son, Pat.
her oldest daughter guided her path,
quietly whispering to her reassuringly.
afterward, as immediate family proceeded down the aisle,
she waved warmly to friendly-looking faces.
my grandma mozell is living with alzheimer’s
and my heart hurts because she doesn’t know me anymore.
the once verdant land that i consider home,
that has always been intertwined with her spirit
because of the work that her hands have put into it,
is on the verge of neglect except for grassy areas
that her sons keep well-trimmed.
the pears, figs and plums hang, heavy unpicked on the trees.
the unplowed fields are almost bare;
only the stubborn plants — sugar cane, onion, garlic, peanuts –
that used to grow there still pop up in irregular patches.
i love me some mozell,
but now our love is one-sided.
her eyes reflect the congeniality of a new friend,
absent of the depth of our past shared experiences:
her whipping me with switches for eating the green plums;
her making biscuits from scratch for breakfast,
then letting me eat the scraps of raw dough;
her driving the local school bus and flirting with strangers as she passed by;
her doing laundry at the town laundry mat,
then bringing the damp clothes home to hang on the clothes line;
her teaching me how to make quilts…
at the repast after the funeral,
she is the life of the party
in a room full of delightful strangers.
Filed under: earthling | 1 Comment
Tags: alzheimers, death, home
the aging process is not for the faint of heart.
it’s what “my grandma mozell is living with alzheimer’s
and my heart hurts because she doesn’t know me anymore.” made me think. i tweeted it.
i look at the changes to my own body, watch my mother become less & less of the shell i’ve always known & more & more of the woman i didn’t know she was capable of being. my 73 yr old uncle, a Q, driving from chicago in a pamper to be present for the centennial. women i’ve known as pillars in wheelchairs, reduced to limbs that no longer respond.
it’s difficult to imagine that we shouldn’t all age gracefully. it seems unfair that we don’t all get to do it in a dignified manner. that someone will be burdened by us, someone else will laugh at us, another still will disregard us as though we’ve made no contributions.
watching your grandmother be her in body but not the Mama Mozell you’ve always known is harder than i know for you. talk often of her to your daughters so that she never actually dies. give them her peanuts & onions & biscuit scraps. teach them to make quilts. pass on her lessons w/her sincerity. & teach them to respect the process so that just in case your own aging is not what we’d all hope for it to be, that they know it is their responsibility to hold your hand through it & then pass on the best of you to whoever comes from them.