Introduction

Minute By Minute

 

“Nancy Reagan died?”

“Yeah, Ma.”

 

Mom and I were watching the nightly news.  David Muir had just given the rundown of tonight’s stories.  Later in the newscast, they’d be covering Nancy Reagan’s funeral.  Even though Mom and I had watched the news together a few nights ago when Nancy Reagan’s death was reported, she forgot. 

 

That’s normal these days.  I’ve stopped reminding her that she knew something she forgot.  Her life is minute by minute, now.  And there’s no point in me trying to get her to understand that.  If it does sink in, she’ll just forget a minute later.

 

A few minutes into the news, David Muir cuts to the funeral.

 

“Nancy Reagan died?”

“Yeah, Ma.”

 

The doctor’s report said “…mild atrophy and severe white-matter ischemic change…”   Mild dementia caused by cerebrovascular disease and maybe a little Alzheimer’s. Tiny pieces of Mom’s brain are now dead.  And they aren’t ever going to get better.  It will only get worse.

 

She’ll be 85 in July, and for a woman of her age, she’s in remarkably good health, except for what’s going on inside her head.  She could live another 10 years, easily.   Maybe even 15.  She comes from a long line of long-livers. 

 

This is what I dread most.  That her body will outpace her brain, and someday, she won’t be her, anymore.  For now, she’s still Mom.  

 

I haven’t been able to convince her that it’s time for her to move in with me.  It’s tough to explain to someone that they need to be taken care of when they can’t see that there is anything wrong.  She doesn’t know she forgets because she can’t remember she forgot.  But I’m going to have to put my foot down sooner rather than later and I honestly have no earthly idea how to do it.  Any scenario, any tactic, seems cruel.  She’s incapable of understanding why she can’t live alone anymore. It’ll feel, to her, like I’m kidnapping her.

 

I had a glimmer of hope a last week that maybe she was beginning to understand her condition.  Somehow, her brain let her realize that she had forgotten something she shouldn’t have.  I’ve seen my mother cry, but I had never before seen her sob.  She sagged in my arms and sobbed, so hard she gasped to catch her breath.  She made me promise not to put her in a home.  That was an easy promise to give because it’s the last thing I want for her.  She said she never thought she would lose her mind.  Neither did I.  This is all new territory for both of us.  Even though it broke my heart to see her in such pain, though, I hoped this was this realization I needed to allow her to let me help her.

 

But she forgot.  The next day, I asked if she wanted to talk anymore about last night.  She cocked her head to one side and stared at me quizzically.  I let it drop.

 

There are times, however, when she tries my patience, and we are just regular mother and daughter.  Yesterday, she popped the lid off the travel mug she drinks water from and screeched in terror.  Scared the s**t out of me and the cat.  She snapped the lid back on the mug and slapped it back on the coffee table like it was on fire.

 

“What?”  I asked.

“There’s something in it!”  She was coming unglued.

“What is it?”  I thought a lizard.  She hates lizards.

“A BUG!!!!!”  Oh, Christ.  You’re afraid of bugs, too?

“Get it out of here!”  Yes, Mother.

 

I took it outside and without looking inside the mug, I opened it and tipped the remaining water into the grass.  But I didn’t see any bug in the wet grass.  I don’t know if hallucinations are part of the symptoms, but I have to check that out.  I swear, really don’t think there was a bug in her glass. 

 

Minutes later, we were driving to Sam’s Club for some shopping and the whole time she’s sitting there close to hyperventilating over this damn bug that might not have even been a bug.  Is her house full of them?   I’m sure it’s not, Mom.  Are there bugs in her purse?  Your purse was nowhere near the glass, Mom. 

 

No matter how I tried to steer her mind away from the bug, she wouldn’t let it go.  It took everything I had to not blurt out, “Of all the things you have the capacity to instantly forget…..”

 

These are our days.  These are our minutes.