When parents become babies

What do you do when the person you love who took care of you when you were young and taught you everything you know about raising your own children starts the slide back to infancy?

A year ago, my mother would sometimes forget small, inconsequential things. I didn’t think it was a big deal. At 84, her mind was otherwise as sharp as ever. I told her not to worry; I was starting to forget things, too. I’d forget where I left my keys or my reading glasses or whether I’d taken my vitamins that morning. I’d go to the basement and forget what I came down for. It’s no fun being 62, I complained. Mom laughed. Wait until you get to be my age, she said.

I should have been more observant. The signs were there. She used to read, though she didn’t have the same voracious appetite I have for the written word. I read at a fast pace, impatient to get to the end of the story. Mom read with the appreciation of an epicure, a gourmet savoring each word and turn of phrase, taking her time to digest the beauty of a passage before moving on to the next.

I don’t remember when she stopped reading and started merely collecting. It dawned on me one day that she had accumulated a motley collection of paperbacks, stacked neatly on her headboard: mysteries, romances, suspense thrillers—the kind of books she never read before. Huh, I thought. How weird is that?

Were the books a visual reminder to herself that she needed to start reading again? Was she challenging herself to be more open to other vistas of the imagination—those that would make her blood sing with thrill or revulsion or those whose intricate plots would engage her facile mind? Did she really mean to immerse herself in the spell-binding, heart-pumping, ass-kicking adventures of Zoe Sharp’s Charlie Fox or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher? WHAT was she thinking?

Of course she planned to read the books, she snapped. She didn’t put them there merely for decoration. The uncharacteristic asperity of her response surprised me. That alone should have clued me in.

In those early days she fooled herself into thinking that she was still all right. We all bought the myth. In truth, the books she collected—the books she never read—were the first of the signs that she was, in fact, “losing it.” To me they became a symbol of a door that had closed, a path no longer taken.  Of a mind gone awry.

My mother was not what you would consider an active person. She was the sedentary type, preferring activities around the house rather than outdoor exertions of any kind. Perhaps that explains why her gradual slowing down went largely unnoticed at first. But one day I realized she had stopped dusting and rearranging her collection of blue china. You could tell by the time and attention she used to lavish on this task that this was absolutely something she loved to do. And now she couldn’t be bothered with it?

Then came the day we had to rush her to the hospital for heart complications. Her decline rapidly escalated from there. She was always too tired and weak and her doctor’s appointments taxed her to the limit. She stopped coming to family parties, and the last time she did, she appeared tentative and uncertain, like a reluctant foreign guest who didn’t really want to be there.

Each week there was one more thing she wouldn’t/couldn’t do any more. Her activities and the area around the house that she inhabited became progressively limited. She spent most of her days watching TV until she stopped doing that altogether. She vacated her room, encamped on the couch, and lay there the whole day except for meals and bathroom breaks. Soon after, she hardly even got up for those.

I thought nothing was worse than the loss of my mother’s short-term memory, the loss of herself. She couldn’t remember what she was thinking from minute to minute; if she ate, what she ate, if she took her medicine …….who I was.

But every time we changed her diapers and helped her into fresh clothes, I prayed she would have one of those forgetful moments; that she would not remember that assault on her privacy, the loss of her dignity. Please don’t let her know she has been reduced to this inchoate, helpless, needy baby, I would plead silently.

Mom was the gentlest, kindest, most loving person you can ever imagine.  Her one wish was that she would die in her sleep. On Saturday, Sept. 18, God took her by the hand and very gently led her into that good night. –Manila Standard Today

Ms. Villa lives in Tacoma, Washington and blogs at www.belmavilla.blogspot.com.