Warning Signs

My 80-year-old mother has Alzheimer’s, a brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills. We started noticing early signs of dementia in her about six years ago. It has not been an easy journey for our family, and it has been different for all of us. This is my perspective on how the changes affected my mom and the people around her that love her. 

The first clues that my mom was changing were small, and it took us a long time to piece them together and understand what was happening.

She was always a busy person, never without a project or a task: she loved to write, work in her home and garden, knit, read, travel and host gatherings at her house. I never knew her to be bored or idle. When the changes started, it seemed like she had lost her confidence; she wasn’t sure what to make for dinner, what to pack for a trip, or what book to read. She asked me for suggestions and ideas, writing them down and intending to do better, but she couldn’t seem to get started. We thought she needed some motivation, or some better planning.

Sometimes, she called my sons by my cousins’ names, or my daughter by her sister’s name. She asked questions over and over, so innocently, with no idea that she had asked the same thing just minutes before. Her smart phone became a puzzle; she couldn’t remember how to look at photos, open her email or check Instagram. She wanted so much to spend her time doing valuable work, but she was having a hard time with the tasks.

One Sunday afternoon when my parents were visiting us, we went to Golden Gate Fields to see the horses run. “I’ve never been to a racetrack before, have I?’ she asked me. I reminded her she had, many years ago when she and dad took my horse-loving daughter on a trip to Kentucky and went to see a horse race. “Oh, yes.” she said. A few minutes later, the same wide-eyed question, “I’ve never been to a racetrack before, have I?”

Reading had always been a favorite pastime, but she began to read the same page of a book over and over, making little progress on the story. She spent hours looking at her calendar, flipping pages back and forth, writing things down, but she couldn’t grasp the big picture of when her appointments were, or when I was going to come visit again.

My dad and I played a game of Yahtzee with her one evening, laughing and having a great time together. At the end of the game, she did her own adding to tally up her score. According to her calculations, she won the game with an amazing score in the high 800’s. I looked over her score card; her adding  had become mere guesswork. Instead of explaining her mistakes, we congratulated her on her win.

One day, we were driving to Boulder, and the mountains in the high county had snow on them, but the closer Flat Irons were bare. “Isn’t that strange,” she asked, “that the higher mountains don’t have snow on them, but the lower ones do?” Her eyes and her mind were playing tricks on her, making spacial relationships hard to understand.

When I was alone with my dad, I asked him if he was noticing the same things. He was, but we were not yet able to put it all together; neither of us wanted to face what might be ahead. I was beginning to realize, though, that she was slipping away.

Though I was losing my mother, at the same time, I had more of her than ever before. When she lost her ability and ambition to do all the traveling and working that kept her so busy, she had time to sit and talk. Her short-term memory was spotty, but her memories of the past were full and vivid. When we were together, all she wanted to do was be with me.  There was no where she needed to be, and nothing to hurry off to do. It was just a moment, a calm before the storm. I am so grateful for that short, sweet time.