Thoughts about Mom today.

Most people who lose a loved-one do so suddenly - one fell swoop: heart attack, car accident, stroke, aneurism . . . POOF! Gone.

They go from having this person they love in their lives to NOT having anything but their intact memories of that person. There's a funeral where all who love that person come to tell you how sad they are for your loss, and they cry with you, tell you what they love about that person, and they bring you food.

With Alzheimer's disease, I started losing my mother YEARS before I even knew it. The changes in her were so subtle, so gradual, and so private that I did not know parts of her were simply disintegrating.

When I finally realized it, I was (am) just so ANGRY at her for getting this disease! How could she become incompetent? negative? paranoid? I argued with her, I blew up at her, I walked her down paths of logic so many times . . . pointlessly, because logic was gone, the will to argue was gone, all purpose was gone.

This anger completely consumed me, until about five years ago, when I bought this little book for her for Mother's Day. It was a hardback book filled with printed pages, chapter after chapter, that evoked memories of childhood and helped you think about different aspects of your mother. Then there were blank areas for you to write in your memories about YOUR mother - all to be given to her for Mother's Day.

I gave Mom her special book, like a kid giving her mom a handprint on a Valentine, thinking it was incredibly weak and lame as a gift, but it was all I could come up with at the time. Dad said she read it over and over and over, all weekend long. She wrote me a three-page thank-you letter for that $10 book.

The true gift given was to me, however. For so many years, I had been struggling with this Mom who was different, negative, paranoid, dependent yet resentful, and who was not a person that I liked at all. I responded with anger, because it was more comfortable than being weak and crying about it. I could not get a positive picture of Mom into my head. Then the book, with it's words and it's blank spaces and prompts, helped me to search my memories; to revive long-dormant pictures, audio tapes, and pieces of my Mom, and it helped me remember the wonderful, giving, loving, artsy, wacky woman who pushed me, inspired me, and influenced me every day to become everything she had no idea how to become - an educated, independent, self-fulfilled woman.

Back to those people whose loved ones die suddenly:
Their memory of that person is frozen at one point in time. I, however, watch my Mom's very being evaporate - molecule by molecule - imperceptably day to day. Every single day of her life she dies right in front of me, little by little by little. The amount of grief that I would've experienced suddenly had she died before this disease has now been parsed out over the last twelve or thirteen years (so far, with who knows how many more to come.)

Mom, wherever she IS spiritually, because it isn't heaven or hell, would be screaming at the top of her lungs - 24/7 - to be released from her miserable failure of a body. She, of all people, is too proud, too vain, and too obsessive about the well-being of her children to ever put them through this particular meat-grinder-to-the-psyche-and-body kind of hell called Alzheimer's.

Intellectually, I know that this time in her illness will serve to slake off selfish, hardened, and unneeded parts of my character, if I bear up under this unreasonable burden of (my) expectations.

Honestly, I'd really like for this to be over. I'd like for Dad to have rest and peace and time to regenerate and enjoy his golden years after properly caring for his wife of 57 years through this 20-year-plus tragedy.

I'd really like to have the relatives and friends visiting my house and the funeral home telling me all the things my mother did for them and how much they appreciate and admired her. They would tell me how she always talked of nothing else, but "Becky did this," and "Becky won that," and "Becky's going to so-and-so place." They would talk about their un-marred memories (and in so doing, give them to me) of the beautiful, strong-willed woman who believed in people, who saw things in them nobody else took the time to see, who helped them realize a dream. They wouldn't know anything about that woman that I see: that woman with my Dad who staggers because she's losing the ability to maintain a proper gait; the woman who looks for no person to talk to and no place to go; the woman who truly believes that her husband is viciously stealing her money and holding her against her will; the woman with that blank stare whose once-fiery eyes held the entire universe for me.

No. Thank God, most people will never meet that woman. Hopefully, Dad and I will be able to keep in our minds a holy place that contains snippets of Mom in all her beauty, love, and wisdom. That is my wish for her and for us.

Quiltin' Bee at Big Mama's House

The beds are made, the dishes are done,
and the laundry's on the line.
Towels and sheets flap in the breeze,
soakin' up sweet sunshine.

Casserole's in the oven bakin',
and Jell-O's in the fridge.
Soon the neighborhood ladies will come,
walking up over that ridge.

Today we're makin' a log cabin quilt
for Aunt Elsie's grandbaby, Sue.
There'll be huggin' and stitchin' and talkin',
and later some good eatin' too!

Aunt Elsie's here first with the quilt top,
and batting and backing, too.
Spread the quilt out, layer it, roll it,
and clamp it on big wooden frames. Whew!

Bring chairs in from the kitchen and porch,
then get those in the yard.
Aunt Estelle heaves a weary sigh
and says, "Whoo, now that wasn't so hard!"

Aunt Ivy, Aunt Flora, and Aunt Estelle
work on the side of the quilt by the wall.
Mama Davis, Mrs. Hunnicut, and Aunt Grace
work on the side by the hall.

Big Mama and her baby sister Aunt Elsie
work on the end by the door.
My mother and I work on the other end,
but mostly, I play in the floor.

The quilt makes a magical hideout,
with plenty of light coming through.
I get to pretend and play with my doll,
and listen to gossip, too.

The food smells good and I'm sneaky,
so I steal just a little taste.
Then they give me a needle and thread
and teach me how to "baste."

I feel really big as I sew with the ladies
at Big Mama's Quiltin' Bee.
None of my cousins know how to sew,
just special, little ol' me.

At lunchtime, everyone takes a break
to stretch, and eat and rest.
The feast is waitin', and we all dig in
just as soon as the food's been blessed.

The ladies work until afternoon,
until they need to start supper at home.
We wave 'til they disappear past the ridge,
and we're all sad when they are gone.

Aunt Elsie's quilt will be finished next week
when the bindin' is carefully sewn.
She's proud of this wonderful gift
that would've taken months of workin' alone.

Together they'll craft many quilts this year,
each one a sight to see!
I'll always remember bein' at Big Mama's house
and enjoyin' the Quiltin' Bee.