Mother’s Day as a daughter of – Alzheimer’s – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Caregivers
“Last year, I gave birth to a baby of my own. Just four days later, I celebrated my first Mother’s Day. I cried and cried, mostly because for the first time I understood the power of a mother’s love for her child. I really miss my mom, and I hope and pray that my baby never sees his mother brought down by Alzheimer’s.”
I grew up with a strong sense of occasion. In our house, we commemorated not just our birthdays, but our birthday weeks and half-birthdays; not just the anniversary of my parents’ wedding, but also the anniversary of the day they met; all 12 days of Christmas and academic achievements, however minor, were equal cause for celebration. In each case, it was my mom who went out of her way to make these days special, which makes it all the more strange that I don’t have any special memories of Mother’s Day from my childhood. I don’t think this is a poignant commentary on my mom’s selflessness– my parents’ birthdays were as hyped as mine and my sister’s–but a strange omission. In early adulthood, I always sent my mom flowers or called – some gesture to acknowledge the day – but it always felt like more of a Hallmark event than one that truly mattered.
Mother’s Day hits harder now. Six years ago, my mom woke up in a hotel in Chicago where she had stayed visiting me many times before and didn’t know where she was. Over the next year and a half my sister and I made cross-country visits to get her to doctor’s appointments and diagnostic tests. In late 2012, at the age of 63, my mom was diagnosed with progressive dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. We moved her first into an assisted living facility where she put on a brave face, but I later found her crying. I said, “I’m sorry, Mommy, but we think it will help,” and she responded, through her tears, “But it’s not the same as being a whole person.” Later, we moved her into a memory care facility where every resident has Alzheimer’s or a related dementia and the staff is equipped to help. Each year it makes less sense to send my mom anything for Mother’s Day, especially since she doesn’t recognize it as different from any other.
My mom was brilliant with a fierce independent streak. She has a Ph.D. and was widely published in her field. She was a beloved professor and mentor for 30-odd years before Alzheimer’s took it all away. I sometimes get phone calls and emails from former students and other academics she collaborated with who reach out to connect with her. When I tell them about her condition, they, like I, cannot believe that the vibrant, vocal, opinionated person they once knew can now not even form a sentence or feed herself. Who she is now cannot recall who she once was. It’s unfair to even call her a shell of her former self.
On Mother’s Day in 2015, the first year she felt fully gone, I went to see a stage production of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The movie version was a favorite with our whole family, and the book was a shared favorite for both my mom and me. My mom instilled in me a love of reading and the power of words from my earliest days. The books she loved became the ones I loved too, so it was not uncommon to have a shared favorite. Sense and Sensibility seemed particularly poignant, as it is the story of a widowed mother and her daughters. The serendipity of having it staged nearby on Mother’s Day seemed the perfect way to celebrate. Unfortunately in this particular production the characters of the mother and the daughter named Margaret were both written out. I felt the loss anew.
Last year, I gave birth to a baby of my own. Just four days later, I celebrated my first Mother’s Day. I cried and cried, mostly because for the first time I understood the power of a mother’s love for her child. I really miss my mom, and I hope and pray that my baby never sees his mother brought down by Alzheimer’s. There are so many things about my mom that I hope to replicate as a parent. I want to give my child unconditional love and the encouragement to be a strong, independent, and loving person – and of course, a sense of occasion.
As a daughter of Alzheimer’s and as a mother to the next generation, I now find Mother’s Day to be another reminder of the importance of working to end Alzheimer’s. There will be no greater occasion than the day we succeed.