Fun With Alzheimer's: Appreciating moments of lightness and acceptance

Visiting my mother in her Alzheimer's care facility, she didn't recognize me at first. After some explanations she caught on to who I was. I showed her pictures of my wife and boys and there was no recognition. Over the course of 30 minutes she asked me what I did for a living at least five times. Every time I answered the same: I’m in advertising. She seemed to understand this, but it was met with a complete lack of interest. Since I knew she was going to forget, I thought I might as well mix it up a little bit. “And what is it that you do for a living up there in the North?” she asked. Since my German vocabulary is limited, I went with one of the few professions I knew. “Well, Mamma,” I said. "I’m a lawyer.” Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened.

“You?” she asked, like it was some kind of mind boggling impossibility. "You’re a lawyer?”

“That’s right, Mamma. I’m a lawyer.” She gasped and beamed and looked so proud I thought she might burst.

“For how long?”

“For the last twenty years.”

“That’s outstanding, Stephen,” she said, shaking her head to herself in disbelief.

An old man in a wheelchair scooted into our room. I met him earlier when he said something incomprehensible in a thick Tennessee accent about getting some pussy or a nice piece of ass after one of the nurses walked by. He now swore something at my father and gave a lecherous guffaw. “I’m glad you’re hard of hearing so you don’t have to listen to this guy,” my father said to my mother. "He’d be a bad influence on you.” She had no idea what was said but she laughed along because the rest of us were.

After five more minutes she asked me again, “And what is it you do up there… where is it?”

“Seattle,” I said. “I’m a pilot.”

“Oh, my goodness. A pilot,” she said with enthusiasm. “That’s truly excellent.”

I chuckled. I was beginning to see how low advertising ranked on her internal list of impressive careers. My eyes met my father’s and he was giggling too. It was good to feel light. This is what acceptance looks like, I thought.

9 months ago when I visited the facility, the experience was a punch in the gut for me and I fought back tears the whole time. I was helping my father move out of his house of twenty years, I had just started a new job, and it was the first time I had seen my mother in her new and final home. It was too many transitions for me at once and I felt fragile. When I found myself alone, the tears came and wouldn’t stop for a long time.

But now I can find some humor and even beauty in this ugly situation. Watching my father dote on my mother has been an amazing thing. They hated each other for as long as I can remember. Separate beds, venomous arguments, resentments and grudges without a hint of resolution, no forgiveness, no tenderness, no laughter. They were a model couple of what not to want in a marriage. And here, in this Alzheimer’s care facility, my dad is treating my mother like a princess. I’m watching him kiss her more times in one day than I saw living with them for twenty years. He’s calling her Sweetie-Pie. He’s holding her hand.

As we were moving out of their old house, my father was plagued with remorse. “It was your mother that did all this moving stuff before,” he said. "When we left New Orleans, and left Chattanooga and moved to New Jersey, I never lifted a finger. She’d do all the packing and unpacking. She'd set up all the furniture and hang the curtains and put pictures up. That takes a talent, you know that? She’d make it feel like a home. She never complained. What did I do? Did I ever praise that effort? Hell no, I didn’t. That son of a bitch. I never appreciated her.” And there were bitter tears in his eyes.

My dad once came home from being out of town on business, which was frequent throughout my youth, and he made an announcement at the dinner table. “I was reading an interesting article today,” he said. “It was saying how important affection is and how everyone should get at least one hug a day.” And from that point on he’d give us a hug a day.

What that was, I see now, was an attempt. Closeness was not easy for the man. He grew up on a farm in North Carolina after the Great Depression. His father killed himself when my dad was just a young boy. He had to be tough. He bootstrapped it, as they say, and made something of himself. And the byproduct was a hardness that distanced him from everyone. But that is not all there is to him. He makes attempts at softness and connection. And however ham-fisted some of them are, it is the intention of the attempt that matters. He tries and I love him for it.

“And what is it you do for a living over there in Wa… Wa…" my mother asks again. "Washington," I fill in for her. “I’m a doctor.” She just nods because she didn’t hear me this time. I let it rest, but I’m excited to know that my success in her eyes is only limited by my knowledge of German. I’ll have to study up and find out how to say congressman or neurosurgeon. And I feel strong again. Acceptance is good. I’m not battling this reality or judging it or hating it. I’m experiencing it with some kind of neutrality.

Even in the morning when I went with my father to the bank to go over, in painstaking detail, all the financial arrangements he has made for when he dies, I didn’t well up this time. This is happening. This is reality. He is going to die and he has set me, my family, and my brother up for success in as wise and methodical a fashion as possible. He has planned everything to the letter. Now I accept what he’s done with gratitude and even a few smiles.

And perhaps my biggest test of all, when I walked on the Walnut Street Bridge this evening, where I scattered the ashes of my first born son over twenty years ago, I didn’t sob quietly to myself on a bench the way I always do. I just had a nice walk and that was it. Acceptance sometimes takes me a while. Thank you, Lord, for a healthy dose of it today.