Have a Good Day

I believe it’s only human nature to think whatever time of life you’re in has got to be the toughest road you’ve ever traveled.  I know I feel that way a lot of the time these days.

For more years than I can remember I have been helping my parents cope with their health problems.  First my dad; the last years of his life were very challenging for him.  Pop dealt with the pain and confusion as well as anyone possibly could, but the last thirteen months of his life were spent in a nursing home that we tried to make as much like home as possible.  He had the care he needed and the companionship he deserved.  There was never a day he didn’t have at least one (and usually more) family member there; I know that made all the difference in the world to him.

The after effects of a major anesthetic left my father with terrifying hallucinations for weeks after his surgery.  For what seemed like forever he saw insects crawling from his pores, and he refused to eat because his mind conjured up an autopsy in progress across the hall from his hospital room.  He was convinced everything they brought him to eat was the product of that awful vision.  We carried his food to him from the outside until that particular horror subsided.    

Now we face my mother’s declining health.  She is physically frail and seems to grow more and more confused as the days go by.  Even the simplest things present a challenge and require repeated explanation.  The past is vivid, the future frightening and the present beyond her understanding much of the time.  

Mom and I have officially switched roles; now I am the one urging her to eat her vegetables and to take a nap.  I am the mean care giver who has removed her from her home and taken away her car.  I dispense her medications and monitor her liquid intake.  In other words, I’m the ‘bad guy’.  It’s a painful role I regret ever having to play.

The challenges we now face with my mother are unrelenting.  Her short term memory and paranoia worsen as the days slip by.   Physically and mentally challenged, she feels stranded and lost and alone.  The deficits in her day to day life seem to be things I cannot replace no matter how hard I try, and the presence of a loving family, while precious to her, still cannot make up for all that she has lost.  She is inconsolable in her unhappiness…and I don’t blame her.

Given the fact that I’m an only child I know it could be much worse.  I am supported by loving children and a husband who, according to my mom, has reached the status of sainthood.  They prop me up when I need it, and Larry serves as the buffer between two strong female wills that  sometimes clash.  We just do it one day at a time.

Watching my parent’s I’ve become increasingly curious about the aging process in the brain.  When I was a young girl I remember my great grandfather sitting on his front porch, fishing pole in hand, as he waited for his brother to arrive to take him to their favorite fishing hole.  I must have been ten or twelve, but I still remember the way my relatives shook their head and mumbled to one another about poor Poppy’s ‘hardening of the arteries’.    In fact his brother had been dead for many years, but if you questioned him the next day he would recount what a gorgeous summer day it had been and about the fish he and his brother caught. 

   

I wondered then, as I wonder now, why that made everyone so sad.  His mind transported him to another time when he was younger, stronger and happy; time he spent with a brother whose company he enjoyed.  This time travel left behind the boredom and depression of being a very old man and restored him to a more active time in his life.  As a child I thought that was a win-win, and nothing I’ve seen since has changed my mind.

The experience I’ve gained from watching and/or caring for loved ones as they’re grown older leaves me with just one question…how do we summon happy hallucinations like my great grandfather experienced?  He is the only person I can remember who actually seemed happy in his deepening dementia.  Was he a happier person to begin with?  Was there a chemical in his brain that bridged the gap to connect him to happy memories instead of forcing him to  live in a horror movie?  Where is that switch…how do we access it?

Maybe it’s just a selfish wish, but if I knew how to resurrect those happy days in my mother’s mind I would do it in a second.  I would welcome the chance to see her waiting for a beloved brother, or her own gentle parents or a good friend, instead of aimlessly walking  around her apartment searching for things she’s convinced have been stolen by a stranger.   How wonderful  if she could smile at the sound of a footstep in the hall that she believes is my dad coming to take her to dinner, instead of seeing her frightened that every noise is the approach of a violent intruder.

Perhaps the most frustrating part is that I know whatever I learn from this experience will probably be lost in my own electrical storm that seems to be dementia.  I likely will be unable to remember how difficult this time has been for me, even though I would do anything to keep from putting my own children through the experience.   My hope is that the mental “trap door” my great grandfather possessed might exist somewhere in a corner of my own mind.   If so, I may someday be a very old woman sitting on the porch waiting for my husband to pick me up so we can head to the lake to enjoy a day of kayaking.

                                               Life is Good