One of the bloggers I follow, Diana Trautwein, often mentions her interactions with her mother who has Alzheimer’s and lives in an assisted living community. She mentioned that though her mother cannot remember the names of the employees or residents, she unfailingly greets each person she encounters with a beaming smile. Her mother has done this all of her adult life. Alzheimer’s has not taken that away from her. Diana mentioned that she was helped by a book The Geography of Memory : A Pilgrimage Through Alzheimer’s by Jeanne Murray Walker. Since many of the Grace Village residents are dealing with Alzheimer’s either personally or in a family member, I looked it up on Amazon. Very good reviews. I ordered it using our small cash donation fund.
The book arrived yesterday. As I read the introduction and acknowledgements, I was startled to see Lake Ridge Bible Church mentioned. This is the church I attended for the first 14 years of living in Texas. The book blurb had mentioned that the author’s mother lived in Dallas. The church is in Mesquite, a suburb. Then it mentioned that the mother lived in a Christian Care Center bungalow. This continuous care community is across the freeway and down a slope from the church. Did I know her mother? The only Murrays I knew did not have a daughter named Jeanne. She also mentioned her sister Julie and brother-in-law Rich. Could this be the Thomas couple I knew at Lake Ridge? It was not until the 4th chapter that Jeanne gives her mother’s name: Erna Kelley. Erna Kelley! Though we were not friends, we had been on a first name greeting basis. Apparently, Erna’s last name reflected her now-deceased second husband. Erna’s decline started around 2000-2001, about the time that I changed to a different church. I remember her as a classy older lady, an impeccable dresser with lots of jewelry and coordinated shoes and purses.
In many ways, the book is more about Jeanne than Erna. As Erna started her path into Alzheimer’s, Jeanne started a journey back into her childhood and adolescence. She lives in Philadelphia and must work with and through her sister Julie with whom she has had a cordial but not close relationship during her married life. She describes her visit to see her mother. While her mother talks on the phone, Jeanne gets a glass of water and opens the freezer for ice cubes. A package of ham falls out of the crammed freezer. Her mother has never liked ham, but when Jeanne looks at the freezer contents she sees it is mostly full of ham. That night has she is reading she wants to take some notes. She opens the desk drawer to find a pad of paper and finds a mishmash of photos, bills, letters, and coupons. Her mother has always been a meticulous filer. The now-expired coupons are for dog food. No one in her family has owned a dog in over 20 years. An uneasiness descends on Jeanne. Over the next few months she and her sister decide her mother has cognitive difficulties. When the accountant who does her mother’s taxes calls Julie to say that she has not been provided with income statements and necessary documents, in fact has been given by Erna irrelevant documents, the sisters decide to have a medical evaluation of Erna.
Erna knows her daughters suspect problems, but she is not ready to give up driving or her independence. She knows how to charm her doctor (and subsequent doctors) when asked evaluative questions. No, she can’t remember the 3 words the doctor gave her to remember over a few minutes, but claims Julie distracted her by talking to her. Erna was the one who initiated that conversation by trying to get Julie to tell her the 3 words while the doctor was out of the room. She always had a witty remark for the doctors when she couldn’t answer, and at that time the exam for Alzheimer’s was not very refined so they laughed at her wit and declared she had slight memory problems but nothing significant. But of course she did. As time went by, she became slovenly, disoriented, couldn’t handle her finances. The beautifully coordinated outfits became outlandish mismatched pieces. She began to talk of things in the past as though they were the present. She called Jeanne’s son Michael (his name was Jake) when she visited. He was about the age of Erna’s son Michael when he died. Though Jeanne could see some similar mannerisms, Jake did not look like Michael.
However, as Jeanne thinks on her own past, she finds she can understand the illogical statements of her mother because she knows the personal history. Jeanne ends each chapter with her questions and thoughts about Alzheimer’s. What is memory? What is the self? Will her mother become a different personality?Lose herself? She decides her mother has many selves, and the control part of her brain can no longer sort them out and tell the Minnesota farm girl, the nurse, the widowed mother of 3 children, the Dallas resident apart. But because her mother was a story teller, Jeanne recognizes the past history and sees her mother uses metaphors from the past to try to communicate in the present. Her mother loses abilities, but she never loses herself. Her essence endures.
In the past, my ideas of Alzheimer’s were rather vague. Now it had a face. Erna was a person I knew and lived where I had lived. Since moving to Grace Village, 3 acquaintances from my former years in Winona Lake who now live at Grace Village have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I hope this book will help me relate better to their situation and realize that in essence they are the same ladies I knew.
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