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| Dementia: the longest Good-bye |
Cruel in its clarity.
Looking back on the events leading up to Mother's Day 2016, and “the Big Reveal” I can now see the signs. The telltale “tells” that something was very wrong. Who knew? Who really wanted to know. You never want to face the hard, painful, awful truth that something is WRONG. Terribly wrong. Especially when it has to do with a parent or a child.
In my case it was Bettie. Bettie Alice as my dad liked to call her, my mother.
Always a strong no-nonsense type. The family disciplinarian. The insane neat freak. The worrier, the pragmatic rainy day planner. Bettie was the financial brains of the family, keeping the books, paying the bills, investing for the future. A life-long learner.
Bettie was always the keep-it-to-yourself sort. The stuff-your-feelings kind. We were not a particularly close family, from my perspective. My mother was absent for many of my watershed moments throughout my life, including the birth of my son. As the firstborn, I felt I came 'out the gate' expected to be the bigger person. I seemed to be the one that was blamed when my sister and I bickered, regardless of who was a fault. I was nearly eight when my brother came along, a live-in babysitter and an extra pair of hands for my mother. We were raised with the knowledge that upon reaching the age of majority we were sui juris. Returning was not an option.
Once we were adults, we got together several times a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas mostly. The rest of the holidays were do-it-yourself, Bettie and my dad were almost always away at their vacation home, or later, traveling. They did not have much time for what would turn out to be their only grandchild, so busy were they living their own life.
That said, we didn't visit much. After my dad died Bettie continued to lead her own life, traveling with friends, volunteering, I don't really know what else. We spoke occasionally, exchanged cards for occasions like birthdays and Mother's Day, got together for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Sometime early in the New Year of 2016, Bettie began to feel ill. 'Unwell', she said. 'You probably shouldn't visit', she said, 'you might catch something'. This worked for a while. I stayed away, calling here and there. My brother was the first to notice. Bettie had asked him to drive her to a doctor's appointment, she was having trouble with her 'eyes', you see. After a trip or two accompanying Bettie, my brother group messaged my sister and I. Mom was off, something amiss, not quite right. About the same time one of Bettie's oldest friends reached out, concerned, Bettie just wasn't herself. Isolating, making excuses, constantly 'unwell'. Phone calls to her didn't have the same results. She sounded fine! Just under the weather, maybe the flu, she'd say. But then email began to go unanswered, or the return was delayed and the response puzzling. When she missed my birthday I began to worry. Maybe she was really sick? Phone calls always had the same result, just not feeling well, something about her eyes (hard to read the email ... ) ... I lived nearly an hour from her by car so "popping" over was never an option.
When Mother's Day arrived and she still did not want visitors I decided I was not going to play her game any longer. It was (past) time to go see what was really going on.
And I did.
Boy, what a shock!
Bettie was in her pajamas in bed, thin as a rail. The pungent odor of cat urine hanging heavy in the air. There were stacks of papers, mail, and bills, on every flat surface. Unread newspapers piled high on the kitchen island. And notes! So many notes! Notes to remind her about the notes! It was surreal. And frightening, I think. I was initially in shock, not believing I was seeing what I was seeing.
This was certainly NOT my mother. My mother was neat and tidy. And very well organized. Just what was going on? Further investigation was required.
I offered to help her organize her papers, she said that she had "just taken them out" to sort and file. I offered to clean the litter box and she said she had just cleaned it "yesterday". I offered to make her something to eat or perhaps some tea; tea was acceptable and I headed into the kitchen. The kitchen presented its own brand of nightmare. Bread and cake growing spectacular fuzzy biospheres littered the counter, the refrigerator hosted green cheese, grey hotdogs, and myriad rock-hard no longer identifiable leftovers. No wonder she was so thin! What had she been eating?
(Clearly, my actual mother had been abducted and an alien was returned in her place. What other possible explanation could there be?)
As I was experiencing the kitchen and trying to process what I was seeing my husband started to poke around, discretely, in the pile of official-looking papers on her table. I made the tea, cleaned the litter box (the cat was very grateful) and threw away what I was able in the kitchen. I don't remember much of the rest of that day, I don't think we stayed long, but we did promise to return the next day to take Bettie to the store for fresh supplies and help tame the paper mountain.
Through my confusion, I started to become angry. Angry that this was going on, angry that Bettie was receiving no help, concern or acknowledgment from the Senior Living Community in which she lived. (More on that later) Aren't they supposed to have "eyes" on their residents?
Driving home my husband revealed what he had discovered among the papers on the table - 1099's and other year-end tax documents. Had Bettie forgotten to file her taxes? This did not even make sense, I started to get a sick feeling, a knot in the pit of my stomach; this was the start of something unimaginable. Now, I was really starting to panic.
That night was sleepless as I tried to process what I had witnessed and tamper my rising anger.
to be continued .......
© 2019 Anne Faulkner | it came with the head | all rights reserved
