Today, she called it Alzheimer’s

I just went on a walk with Trevor and the dog. I thought walking outside in the Spring air and colors would be healthy, helpful. But as soon as we got outside my eyes welled up and my heart got full and I tried to keep from crying. Deep breath. Another one. We walked.

At the end of our street I saw an older woman, in her mid-sixties with white hair and a blue apron, walk her family to their car. They were all dressed up; maybe they came over for an early supper with their mom/grandmother. They were smiling and happy and hugging and kissing. The white haired woman hugged her family, and her family hugged her back. They were piling into the car after the nice time they just shared with her, heading back into the life they left in their own home, maybe a few miles away, maybe a hundred miles away. Maybe they had just spent the whole week with her, building memories they will all remember fondly.

They will talk about this trip, this late lunch, for years to come. When the kids are older and grown up, the brother and sister will smile when their grandmother tells them they used to have nice visits and late lunches together, and that they would put on their best clothes and she would put on her blue apron and make them their favorite foods, ham and cheesy potatoes, just for them. They will one day smile at these memories of her cooking making them happy with food, with love. Food and love is what they will remember, and she will remember giving it to them and feeling love back.

I saw them, this nice family, all dressed up and heading home, and I was jealous. I, too, have a nice family, and we go to my Mom’s house for nice meals, and it’s true that she doesn’t cook and instead orders in, but the times are just as nice and she is just as happy to see us and we are all just as full with love when we go. And for now we can remember these good times, but I just spent the afternoon reading about what Alzheimer’s does to a brain, and what it will do to her brain, and instead of ham and cheesey potatoes, it will eat her brain and her memories of our late lunches and someday it will eat us right out of her memory all together.

I hope she gets her memories back in Heaven, but I can’t even go there right now.

We walked by this family and the woman’s white hair and apron and all their smiles and I realized the one thing I’m going to have to do to get through this is find my own way of coping. Spring colors and Spring air and the promise of birth and life starting fresh reminded me of all the Spring times I spent with my Mom, who nursed all my broken hearts, damaged by stupid boys or by some other disappointment, and I thought about how every time I’ve ever felt sad the one thing that could always make me better was my Mom. I realized that I am going to have to learn a whole new way to take care of my heart that is breaking because my Mom’s brain is dying.

Her training in bereavement counseling, and her experience losing her own mother, father, and brother, have taught her how to grieve gracefully. She is grieving gracefully now, and she is trying to help me do the same. She spoke with strength today, from a stronger place than I’d heard her recently, and with 100 percent clarity. When she started losing her memory she became fearful about the uncertainty. We never said it, that word. We never called it Alzheimer’s. Now she uses it frequently, claiming it as her own. She says that she’s done with the fear part and she’s tired of it and now it’s time to start living, damn it. She and her new husband have always wanted to take the train across Canada, and now they’ll move it up to next year.

She apologized for having to tell me on the phone, and that she didn’t want to have to tell me at all. I know this was the hardest thing she’s ever had to tell me. She knows that I love her more than anything, and that I know she loves me more than anything, and no one wants to tell someone they love that much that something horrible is about to happen, something horrible is happening. But she’s doing it the best way that she can, and it’s actually the sweetest way I could imagine, and I get the feeling that we will both be in it together until she doesn’t realize that I’m there, and then, when I can’t reach her anymore, I’ll be beside her in case she looks for me and wants me to be there and then I will be.

But while she’s here, while she’s still Mom and fighting the best she can, and while she’s trying to not to panic each time she can’t remember something and worry that it’s getting closer, closer, I am going to have to learn how to cope with this. I have never had to cope with losing my Mom. I don’t know how to do this, or where my heart will go when it needs soothing, because it has always sought her for that same purpose. I can send it out to her now, but where will it go as she goes, leaves, moves slowly away from me?

Walking in the Spring air tonight, I felt like a baby bird pushed out of the nest for the first time. She needs me to go because she needs to go. She needs me to learn, and to know that I will learn. And that is just like my Mom, to prepare for what’s coming by nudging me in the right direction, showing me what to do while she still can, letting me know she will be there when I look back for her as long as she can be. I know we both hope my tiny wings will resemble hers, strong and unswerving, by the time we both need them to be.